This article is more than 1 year old
Crystal Acoustics PicoHD5.1
Compact, media savvy player for under-equipped tellies
Suffix and see
That said, of the many formats, the most inconsistent were AVCHD (using an M2TS container) and MPEG4 using the iTunes default ‘.m4v’ suffix. Some worked but others didn’t, such are the foibles of digital media (all were non-DRM).
Main menu
Video resolutions and frame rates are covered but not automatically according to what’s playing
Although it handles different frame rates, such as 24, 50 and 60Hz, it doesn’t adjust automatically. Instead it does an often juddery conversion on the fly to fit the pre-set mode. If you therefore have a mix of film and video-sourced content in both PAL and NTSC, you’ll have to alter it each time in the set-up menu to get the smoothest results. Once you do, the picture is respectable, as is its audio quality.
Video playback tweaks
Image size can be altered during playback. Its various options include the original pixel dimension, screen fit, 4:3 and 16:9. There’s also a resume playback feature for video and support for numerous subtitle formats.