The Mvix player has a small 4-line backlit LCD panel in its front bezel that displays menu and media information. When navigating the menus the LCD panel mirrors the menu information that is displayed on your TV screen. During use, it also shows the file name of the movie, song, or photo that is being played. At first glance such a display screen might seem pointless - after all, it's much easier to see the menus on your television screen. However the Mvix is one of the few network media players that doesn't require your TV to be powered on in order to find and play audio files. This is important, because the life span of an HDTV can be measured in lamp hours, so leaving a TV on just to play audio files has always seemed pointless to me. With the Mvix I was able to navigate to my audio folder and play my music without needing to use my TV.

Remote

The Mvix's remote performed its function well without a whole lot of finesse. Overly long, skinny and lacking backlit buttons the remote was less than comfortable to use. The buttons would stick slightly when pressed and the red, white and blue coloring looked rather cheesy to me. It took me a little while to get comfortable with the remote, as some of the buttons were not intuitively labeled, requiring that I check the manual to clarify what they were supposed to do.

The Mvix remote

A Minor Problem

As soon as I received the Mvix I threw in a hard drive full of digital media to test. Unfortunately, the Mvix did not come with an ATA/133 cable for installing the hard drive. Like a true geek I have plenty of spare cables lying around so I grabbed one and finished the installation. Unfortunately my cables are all the standard size (18 inches) and were much too long to fit in the very confining space inside the Mvix. Using all of my cable management skills I carefully tried to cram it into the case, but after several attempts I was not successful in getting the cover to close properly. I suspect that the cable might have been left out of the box unintentionally because I can't imagine why the Mvix would choose to leave out something that is obviously proprietary.