TViX Slim S1 : Bidding Adieu to the Realtek RTD1283

The user interface is one of the strong points of the TViX Slim S1. The home screen presents a host of options (Movies, Music, Photos, Internet and Settings) in a 'Revolver' format.

The menu navigation is smooth and quick. The fonts are pleasing to the eye.

When selecting Movies, Music or Photos, one has the option to list content from an internal hard disk, network share, attached USB drive, uPnP media server or an optical drive connected to the USB port. One can shift between these using the left arrow.

The Internet option in the main screen lists the following Internet Services (Internet Channels, Internet TV, Podcasts, Weather and RSS).

YouTube comes under Internet Channels, and I found it to be much more reliable compared to the YouTube service found in other media streamers.

Some more screenshots (including the BD-Lite navigation methodology) from the user interface are found in the gallery below:

Blu-Ray ISOs and folder structures both play back in BD-Lite fashion. In the above gallery, there are pictures of a Blu-Ray ISO (2012) being played back with the BD-Lite menu. Playback of a Blu-Ray folder structure of Spider-Man 3 is also shown in the above gallery. Folder structure playback is initiated by selecting the index.bdmv inside the BDMV folder. The same BD-Lite navigation used with ISOs is available here also. Unfortunately, the BD-Lite methodology doesn't shed light on the names of the special features or the scene presented in the menu. It also fails miserably with structures having multiple M2TS files (such as the HQV 2.0 benchmark Blu-Ray). The vast majority of Blu-Ray ISOs / folder structures should play without issues, but don't be surprised if you find strange behavior with some titles. On the positive side, DVD ISOs play back with full menus.

One of the features of the TViX Slim S1 that I like a lot is the Web Remote. The unit runs a web server accessible over the browser (from another computer or mobile device). The web server provides a simplified interface to the menu available on the main display. It allows for full control of the media to be played back.

Some other streamers like the Netgear NTV550 also have a web remote, but the quality and simplicity of the TViX Slim S1's is miles ahead of the competition. The Web Remote feature is particularly useful for music playback (when you don't want your display to be switched on).

Network setup and shared folder access (both SMB and NFS) were quite straightforward and proceeded without a hitch. TViX also provides a Windows based NFS server called NetShare which can be used to setup NFS shares on a Windows PC. These shares are automatically configured for easy access from the Slim S1. For the movie jukebox lovers who want nice cover art and all those bells and whistles, TViXiE is a well known and frequently updated option.

A detailed look at all the available options indicate that the unit is geared towards the discerning consumer. Though there is no source-direct option, we have native frame rate support. Depending on your display, various frame rates can be passed on as-is, or pulled down to the appropriate refresh rate. For example, if you have a NTSC display also capable of 24 Hz, you should leave Native Frame Rate off for 1080p25. However, you can set Native Frame Rate on for 1080p24.

Another downer for the TViX Slim S1 is the fact that the unit doesn't advertise having a license for the DTS codecs. However, passthrough and decode seem to be officially supported for vanilla DTS in the setup options. There is no mention of HD audio anywhere in the menus, except for the 'Force Audio Passthrough' option. TrueHD passthrough is advertised, but DTS-HD is not. All this makes for a very confusing scenario. To complicate the situation further, there are some hacks for the firmware available online which enable DTS-HD passthrough. These are not officially sanctioned, but we went ahead with the hack for our testing purpose. In the next section, we will see how the TViX Slim S1 fares in our test suite.