Zyxel’s DMA-1000 is a small box whose dimensions strongly resemble those of a personal time planner. Weighing only 400 grams (excluding cables), it is also the lightest of the three A/V clients in our test. All of the connectors, including the USB 2.0 jacks, are found on the back of the device. This is a cumbersome solution, especially if you intend to play back files from external USB media, as you always have to pick up the device. The player comes with an HDMI output as well as an S-Video connector. A SCART interface is nowhere to be found, though. Sound output is handled through an S/PDIF interface or two cinch connectors. The HDMI interface transmits both audio and video signals. We encountered an issue with the HDMI interface during our testing, as our Full-HD display only showed a purple screen when we used an HDMI-to-DVI adapter cable. Zyxel was able to provide an explanation, namely that the HDMI interface on the DMA-1000 is designed for playback exclusively on HDMI devices. It does not support DVI displays that process HDMI signals using an HDMI2DVI adapter.

There are a number of LEDs on the front of the box that keep the user apprised of the receiver’s status. During movie playback, several of these LEDs continually flash on and off. This is very distracting, especially if the DMA-1000 is set up next to or under the TV.

In general, Zyxel’s DMA-1000 does quite well with video material. Almost all of the DivX/XviD files played perfectly, and even high-definition MPEG2 material posed no problem. Things didn’t look quite as rosy with QuickTime or WMV files. We also encountered a strange phenomenon with a few DivX movies. Depending on the source they were played from, i.e. the specific A/V server, the files were shown in the navigation view but could not be selected. This happened whenever we tried streaming files from a TwonkyMedia server. It was a lot rarer when we shared the files through the media player. For cases like these, Zyxel bundles its own software with the DMA-1000. However, this application only works with Zyxel’s own device – the other two clients were left out in the cold, unable to find the server on the network.