Nbox media player - under US$30 - best deal on the planet?

My Nbox N82 arrived (from China) in the US Mail today - much quicker than I thought.
In fact, faster than a lot of packages I get when they are sent from the American East Coast.

I'll have to see when I will get a chance to play with it.

First impressions: the N82 is very light. The remote control is smaller than I thought it would be but the layout is good.  The RC is the length of a plastic CD case, under 6" (14cm). I am surprised to see that the RC did not come with the two AAA batteries needed.  I've got lots of AA's but I may have to look to see if I have any AAA's. No HDMI cable is included.

The power adapter cable is a relatively short 5 ft (150cm).  The power adapter supports both American 115V and European 220/240V although mine came with the standard flat two-prong American connector.

Last edited by NewCityVegas (2010-08-05 04:16:12)

I had a request for some followup about the Nbox N82 on another message board.  I'll share that here.

Overall, it is a great product especially with its low $64 price and fast/free shipping from Hong Kong.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.42636

Unfortunately, mine arrived somewhat defective but not important enough for me to return it.

There are 3 basic video display modes: (1) HDMI (2) Component (3) Composite.  On the unit I received, component video output did not work.  This is where the 3 primary colors RED, GREEN, and BLUE have separate video outputs.  I don't use this mode anyway.  For non-HDMI use, I just send the NBOX N82's single "composite video" output's signal to my DVDR and send the DVDR's 3 "component video" output signals to the component video inputs on my non-HDMI TV.  Used in this manner, any video quality differences between component and composite are minimized.

HDMI is always going to be your best and highest quality option for modern TVs.

The N82 has a much faster CPU than earlier versions and earlier generations of similar products (some quite expensive).  It plays most video formats very well, including MKV.  Unfortunately, it does not play *.wmv files (likely for legal reasons).

For photos, it displays most formats but not GIF files (probably for legal reasons, again.)

For audio, it again plays a wide variety of formats.

I did have to rename the filenames for one video format and one audio format to get them to work.

RENAME all *.m4v to *.mp4 video files (m4v are video files for portable devices.)

RENAME all *.m4b to *.m4a audiobook files.

The N82 has both USB and SD/SDHC data slots, a very welcome feature.  BTW, USB always has priority.  The USB port cannot work with a USB hub, you can only use one USB device on that port.

Unless you physically press the OFF button on the rear of the N82, the USB port stays active.  If you just use the remote control to turn the N82 off, the USB port stays alive.  (That might actually be handy if you mostly use SDHC for data and USB for an LED snake light.)

For the USB input port, you can use either USB memory devices or USB hard drives.  I have tried both new and older external USB "notebook" drives and all worked fine without needing an external power connection.  Large capacity up to 1TB (tested) works too.

I did note that "very" rarely I might get a downloaded video that starts out in good audio/video sync but loses that at some point in the video.  Often, if I simply paused the video and then pressed play, it would re-sync, but not always.

You can go into SETUP and choose button or text listing for video, audio, and photos.  I found that "text" (the default is menu buttons) was faster and more useful if you have lots of files.

The N82's video resizing button just above the pause button was very useful since I have lots of video files with different resolutions and widths.

Another great feature is the automatic "remember where I stopped" memory for each file.  You then get a playback option (1) start from beginning or (2) start from last viewed position.  This position memory remains active until you remove the USB or SD/SDHC card.

BTW, there does seem to be a new 1080p NBOX N33 shaped like the original NBOX (not like the N82).  However, I cannot find any site actually offering this new version in North America.