Nixeus Fusion HD Review

Nixeus deserves praise for putting out a promising product first up. They have been very prompt in responding to user issues, and have had a regular firmware release schedule. Each of the firmware releases has improved upon the core functionality. The reviews on Amazon are quite positive too. We agree with all (and can corroborate) the comments made by the reviewers on Amazon. However, at AnandTech, we set the bar quite high.

When considering all the players in the market at the same price point, the Nixeus Fusion HD is not the best for the meticulous consumer. For example, the Boxee Box beats the Fusion HD in terms of codec compatibility, online media services and user experience. However, it does consume too much power and doesn't come with a hard drive slot (which might be a hard requirement for some consumers).

With no hard disk installed, the Fusion HD consumed less than 8W when playing 1080p H264 videos over wireless compared to the Boxee Box's 14W. Even with a high performance Barracuda XT 2TB drive, the unit never consumed more than 17.9W despite being stressed with demanding media streams. The noise from the fan might be a concern for those with very sensitive ears, but that is the case for almost all the streamer models out there with support for 3.5" internal hard drives.

Therefore, our concerns do not prevent us from recommending it in certain scenarios (as the media streamer test suite scores show). Discounting the user interface, we can even say that it is the best SMP 865x based media player in the market right now for local media playback.

Bundled with a hard drive of suitable capacity, it makes a very good gift to your parents or relatives whom you meet regularly with, and share your media. At any point of time, the unit can act as an external hard disk, and this makes it easy to update the hard disk contents from your own laptop when you visit them. They can also take advantage of their AV receiver setup because the Fusion HD does support HD audio bitstreaming from all possible containers.

To be taken seriously as a primary media streamer for everyone, Nixeus still has some way to go. There are a number of low hanging 'fruits' (bugs) which can be easily 'plucked' (fixed). These include:

1. Recognizing more files with supported codecs, but unsupported extensions
2. Handling PGS subtitles properly in both MKV and M2TS containers
3. Fixing the MP4 and M2TS splitter issues
4. Improving MKV chapter support

There are some difficult issues which might be left unfixed before the product reaches EOL:

1. Blu-Ray ISO navigation with menu support or, at least, support for branched titles
2. ASS (stylized and karaoke) subtitles (It is not claimed in the specs list, though)
3. Premium online services such as Netflix

Nixeus has let us know that they are indeed working on the splitter issues, HD audio dropout, PGS and ASS subtitles and recognizing more extensions. These will be implemented in an upcoming firmware release, and given their track record, I would trust them. After all, they did agree that it would be difficult for them to get Netflix or full Blu-Ray ISO support and let us know that it is not on their radar.

Native Netflix support has almost become mandatory for most primary media streamers. It doesn't help Nixeus that it happens to be a startup (not the flashy Boxee kind of startup, making headlines everywhere), and Netflix doesn't get time to work with the small guys. This is more of a chicken and egg problem, but, hopefully, more and more SoC vendors take it upon themselves to obtain Netflix certification for their platforms in the future. This would really enable startups to come in and make a difference by concentrating on other aspects of the user experience. The web browser was intended to be a differentiating feature, but the SMP 8655 platform is too weak to provide a proper experience. There were some efforts to get YAMJ (a movie jukebox) working on the Fusion HD, but the end result was not satisfactory for many users.

All in all, the Nixeus Fusion HD has the capability to be a good fit for your needs, provided you know what you are buying into. If the issues outlined in the previous section are not a concern, we are sure you will enjoy the Fusion HD like many other AVSForum members.

Note: Thanks to Comp-U-Plus for providing us with the review sample of the Nixeus Fusion HD.