Nixeus Fusion HD Review

The AnandTech Media Streamer Test Suite is constantly evolving, and we recently added a few more test streams in response to various developments in the media space. In v1.1 of the test suite, we have added streams with forced PGS subtitles in MKV container, couple of 1080p60 H264 streams from recent camcorders with multi-channel audio, a packed MPEG-4 bitstream and a MKV file with header compression. Now, we have 55 test streams with a total possible score of 368. The Nixeus Fusion HD scored 266 to get a normalized score of 72.28%. Compared to the WDTV Live Hub at 66.8%, it is indeed an improvement.

One of the main reasons that the Fusion HD scores over the WDTV Live series is full support for bitstreaming of all HD audio formats from both M2TS and MKV containers. Amongst the standalone media streamers we have evaluated so far, the Nixeus Fusion HD is bettered only by the Boxee Box.

The good score in our test suite doesn't mean that the product is bug free. Here are some reasons why the Fusion HD lost points in our test suite, and also a list of pending bugs in the implemented features:
 

1. DVR-MS and WTV file extensions are not recognized, even though the internal codecs are supported
2. OGG / Vorbis and Real Media streams are not supported
3. Hindi subtitles do not display correctly (surprisingly, Hebrew and Vietnamese subtitles with which the WDTV Live series had issues are fully OK in the Fusion HD)
4. Deinterlacing is as bad as it was in the WDTV Live Hub.
5. PGS subtitles (forced and unforced) in MKV are yet to be supported. Supposedly, a firmware update is on the way to fix it. As of today, PGS subtitles in MKV are recognized, but not shown.
6. The M2TS splitter has a bug wherein some 1080p30 L4.1 H264 streams exhibit stutters. The WDTV series and the Boxee Box's release firmware also have the same issue, but many other Sigma based products and all Realtek products are OK.
7. Blu-Ray ISOs and folder structures play the largest M2TS file. Branched titles are not supported. There are no menus for Blu-Ray ISOs or folder structures.
8. One of our MKVs with DTS-HD audio exhibited random dropouts when bitstreaming. However, a couple of other movies with DTS-HD MA in MKV bitstreamed for the full duration without any issue. But, some points were docked because our test stream didn't play perfectly.
9. Some of the camcorder clips with 1080p60 H264 in MP4 had slight stutter (same issue with the WDTV Live series also). I believe this is an issue with the splitter again.
10. VP6 and VP8 in FLV and WebM are not supported
11. ASS subs (stylized and karaoke effects) are not supported properly.
12. More than 2 warp points are not supported in Xvid (MPEG-4) streams, same as all other Sigma and Realtek based streamers
13. MKV chapter navigation is very rudimentary (pressing NEXT to get to the next chapter, with no display or ability to select a chapter by its name)
14. In M2TS files, the PGS subtitles tend to overstay their welcome. The subtitles start at the correct timestamp, but don't turn off till the timestamp for the next subtitles set starts. Two screenshots are attached below showing the issue.

We also ran the HQV 2.0 benchmark suite on the Fusion HD. Unsurprisingly, it got the same 56 out of 210 that the WDTV Live Hub had scored. I guess there is not much point in running the HQV 2.0 benchmark any more on the SMP8654 or SMP8655 based media streamers.