The new 3Q F344HC media player arrived in our newsroom. This is not the first guest of 3Q in our editorial office, so no one was expecting much of a surprise. 3Q players are not bad, the range is extensive, so there was no fear that something would be new “not very” – and accordingly, and there will not be a frequent problem of journalists: how to write so that the manufacturer has approved and was true – very often these things, to put it mildly, do not go together. During testing it turned out that the media player is really “not very”. After that we checked the manual and found out that it is not a media player at all.
Interface
The device is equipped with a good set of connectors for devices of its class, – there is an audio output RCA stereo, audio digital coaxial, video output composite, component and HDMI 1.3. All of this, plus USB 2.0 Type B, – located on the back. There is also an input and output for connecting the antenna, as in VCRs, if you remember.
On the right side panel of the media player are interfaces USB 2.0 Type A and an SD/SDHC card reader.
There is also a slot for the internal hard drive, which can be connected via SATA.
No network socket, – if you read somewhere in the description about the ability to work with the network, – don’t believe it.
The menu
There are several standard items that allow you to set the output video resolution, display parameter, language settings, broadcasting system, perform auto search, etc.p., – The obligatory gentleman’s kit.
This is also where you can navigate your hard drive.
You need to select the type of content you are looking for – music, video, pictures, or broadcast records. When selecting a certain type only the corresponding files are shown, the others are ignored as if they don’t exist at all. This solution, – with the breakdown by kind of cotent, is used now in many machines, although the way, of course, controversial.
When watching video you can switch the preview mode on – a window will appear next to the file name. But it’s a little frustrating that in this case, when selecting, you must first press “stop”, then “play” and again “OK”, activating the pop-up item “continue” -.. so you need to perform as many as three steps!
Watching Movies
Standard test videos – including some tricky flv, which not all devices are not able to, the player has played, rewound and even stopped without problems. But Guy Ritchie was unlucky – his 16GB “Rock’n’roller” – naturally, in mkv – was ignored.
“The Truman Show” of 8 GB was more lucky – playback and rewind did not cause difficulties, lighter mkv files also “flew”. The problem is most likely not the file size, but the codec – Rock ‘n’ Roll was VC-1, and Shaw was AVC. Of course, “it happens to everybody”, but you can’t take anything out of this world.
Speaking of mkv. Somewhere on the Internet you can see that the device reads only FAT 16 and FAT 32, – but this is a lie. The device perfectly recognizes NTFS, – but the volume of the external flash drive is limited to 32 GB. DVD video menu, – t.e. video_ts file.Ifo in the folder Video_TS, the player can not play. Images from the files *.iso, – even more so. With *.vob files had no problem.
The only additional options are to change the size and color of the subtitles and set the double-channel PCM sound. There is no audio sync, no picture adjustments brightness, contrast, etc. , no audio playback. , not to mention filters, are not provided.
Watching TV and listening to the radio
Seeing such unpretentious abilities of the player we decided to spend some more minutes on another function – a TV tuner and an opportunity to record broadcasts. Here begins the most interesting part.
First of all, the manual describes the device as a “Receiver of high definition digital TV DVB-T2 with the media player function”, but not vice versa.. The main one is, after all, the TV tuner.
Turn on.
When I started the automatic tuning, I found the TV and the Radio channels, and the device recognized by itself which of them was talking and which was showing, and distributed them in two columns. Of course, the content of some TV channels is such that it would be nice to remove the picture too, moving TV into the category of Radio, but this is a high-tech issue of the future. In general, the basic functions are similar to those encountered in all modern televisions: you can arrange the channels as you like, watch the name of the channel and the current program the “i” key , and turn on the TV guide – EPG function.
There is a delay of several seconds when turning the channel, and this can be annoying for people, used to CRT TVs, at first. When you listen to the radio, you see a happy rainbow splash screen, – a few drawn notes and a radio receiver moving in the background.
Recording programs
This function is realized in the same way as in VCRs of our youth: you can record programs in two modes.
The first is just to press the button with a red circle while watching and “stop” at the end. By the way, the function of starting the recording with a time interval, multiple of e.g. 30 min., would not be superfluous. I remember that my Philips smart VCR had this feature and it pleased me a lot. Now of all the home appliances only the timer of the Electrolux washing machine is able to “think in intervals”.
Here we come to the second mode – timer recording.
You select the channel, date, time to start and time to stop the recording, – by the way, the TV Guide is very “by the way” here, excuse the tautology. It is also possible to choose a regularity, – to write something every day at this time, or the function is needed only once.
The algorithm, of course, is the same referring to the VCR, not the washing machine , but there is one very important difference – during the recording you can watch another channel.
To tell the truth, if you watch a wrong show which is being recorded, when the timer goes off the radio will be switched to the channel which is set for the recording, but you can return the previous channel manually, and the recording will not be affected.
If you press the “red button” while watching TV, you can also change the channel and the file will be recorded with the program you pressed.
A one-minute clip of 720 x 576 pixels with a bitrate of 1900 Kbps takes about 15 MB on the hard drive. The file will be recorded as an MPEG-4 AVC movie file in the mts container, which is the extension you’ll see when you watch it on your computer.
Strictly speaking, there is also a third recording mode, which is a Time Shift function. That is, if you want to “pause” a soccer game while your spouse asks you to take out the trash – press pause and the soccer will be recorded to your hard drive. When you resume watching you watch it from the moment when you stopped it, but already in the recording, – the device records and plays back what you have recorded at the same time.
This video file you can then find on disk,, – it will have the extension *.ts
To summarize
Of course, first of all 3Q F344HC, is a TV tuner with recording function with all the. For example, the transfer of records into the archive, as well as to remove a pleasant delusion of all those who believe that the adoption of Law № 187 can change something in the situation of content distribution on the Internet – but this is a topic for a separate discussion.
Naturally, a device of this kind should be able to facilitate the search if necessary and be able to show the recorded. It does that without faltering. When recording programs, the HBPVR folder is created on the disc, where all recorded segments are stored. Each of them, by the way, is given a name with the name of the channel, date and time, which in the search will facilitate identification.
The functions of the media player, of course, the device performs, “but not very,” – as Oleg Skripka said in “Radio Day”.
Therefore, this feature can be considered more of a bonus, at least until the release of new firmware.
Joy: n
Intelligent design, – has the ability to install an internal hard drive.
Rich connectivity. Can record and watch different channels at the same time.
A shame: In
Not all formats playback.
Limited video customization capabilities.
When you press the “return” key it goes to the root directory, not the level above.
Limited external flash drive capacity 32 GB .
Small remote control reception angle.
Tip:
If HD-quality content isn’t a priority for you, try using component video output instead of HDMI – you should like it. Sound, of course, will need to be output separately, but the “picture” will be softer. Same with television.
Technical characteristics
| Supported video formats and containers: | TS, MPG, MP4, AVI, MKV, DivX |
| Supported video codecs: | AVC/H.264, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 |
| Supported audio formats: | WMA, MP3, WAV, AAC |
| Supported audio codecs: | MPEG , MPEG1, MPEG2, MP3, WMA, ACC |
| Supported subtitle formats: | SRT, SSA, SMI and IDX+SUB |
| Supported Picture Formats: | JPEG, JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG |
| TV tuner: | DVB-T2 |
| Video Outputs: | HDMI 1.3, Composite RCA |
| Audio Outputs: | HDMI 1.3, analog stereo output RCA , optical S/PDIF |
| Communication interfaces: | USB 2.0 host, USB 2.0 client, SD/SDHC card reader |
| Supported file systems: | FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS |
| Supported hard drives: | 3.5″ SATA up to 2TB |
| Chipset: | Mstar MSD78 |
| Operating system: | Traditional Linux |
| Dimensions mm : | 200 × 135 × 60 |
| Weight g : | 800 |
| Operating Temperature Range ºC : | from 0 to 40 |
Can you clarify if this media player allows recording soccer matches directly onto the hard drive?
Can the 3Q F344HC media player record and save the soccer game as soon as we press pause, or do we need to manually initiate the recording feature for it to save the match on the hard drive?