Zioncom QR-130 PCBG Review

[TitanKing]

Written by Saint, Today’s review is on the QR-130 Media Porter from Zioncom. In the past we have had a look at some higher end Media Players like the TViX HD M-6500A which cannot do much more than the QR-130. Below you will see what the QR-130 is packing.

At First Glance
When opening the box I found a well packed QR-130 which Included:
• USB Cable
• A\V Cable
• Remote (Good look and feel)
• Power adapter
• CD and Manual
• Stand
• To my surprise a 54Mbps USB Wireless adapter WOW

The QR-130 comes with the following :
• Cooling Fan (Nice for those Terabyte Drives)
• Audio Out Left and Right
• Video Out (RSA Composite)
• Video In (RSA Composite)
• RJ45 10/100 Lan Port
• USB Slaver Port (Mini port to connect to your PC)
• Components Video Out (Y/Pb/Pr)
• HDMI
• USB Host Port, Unfortunately Only one
• Optical Audio Out

Unfortunately the QR-130 does not come with 5.1 Audio ports, this was bit of a let down.

Specifications

• Single Button Recording with Time Scheduling and Title Editing
• HD 1080i Movie Playback in various popular formats
• One button Music Playlist playback
• Digital Photo Album
• LAN Playback (Wifi LAN supported with optional USB Wifi Adapter)
• HDMI, Composite & Component Output (Max 1080i)
• Composite Input (640 X 480 @ 30fps)
• Audio Output: HDMI, Optical & RCA (Stereo)
• USB Host Port: Accepts Other USB Storage Devices Such As Flash Drives And Card Readers / Fat32 Read & Write NTFS Read Only
• Realtek RTD1262 Chipset Multimedia Standard Q

The setup
Well just like every other electronic device this is the part I do first, I set it up. This first thing that I did notice was that the QR-130 did feel and look a bit on the cheap side, like most media players it mostly consists of plastic but here it really shows. The one thing that bothered me is that the unit was only made to stand upright in the stand that is supplied, you can have it lying flat if you prefer but they have not supplied rubber feet. The setup is really easy whether you are using the HDMI or the composite cable, its Plug and Play. I tested the unit using both but stuck with the HDMI seen as it carried the audio as well as the video. The Hard drive can be installed very easily without being formatted as the Media Player is going to need at least a 10% FAT partition. This FAT partition is used when copying data using the Media Players copy feature. The Hard drive just gets screwed into a bracket which slides into the unit, a small plastic door slides closed to conceal the hard drive.

Testing
The GUI is very easy on the eyes and the menus can be worked without a bachelors degree. One of the things that really surprised me was how easy it was to get connected to the network with this unit, whether it was with the RJ45 or the wireless. This is as easy as it gets. I literally plugged the Lan cable into my router and off I went, the wireless was the same, I plugged the USB Wireless Adapter into the USB port (Bit of a struggle seen as it is a bit close to the HDMI) and flipped through the menu to the Lan settings, entered my Wireless Key and it was done. It is rather annoying that they only put one USB port on the QR-130, this means the USB Wireless Adapter and your External Drive have to share a USB port.

This does not sound that bad but every time you plug in the Wireless adapter you have to establish a wireless connection in the Lan settings menu. The wireless connection is a bit slow and streaming is not really a great idea but it can be done, just not on high quality movies. I did however experience some problems with regards to shared folders when using Windows 7 but Windows XP worked like a charm.

Finally the QR-130 was setup and connected to my network, Now I could start testing.

Like I said before the menu structure is laid out very well and it is really easy to navigate and switch between your network shares the Internal hard drive or even an external hard drive. Once I decided on the source and highlighted the movie it would preview the movie in the top corner and give me some details like length and size of the movie. If this was what I wanted to watch I pressed play and it would enlarge to Full screen at the desired screen size I preset set in the settings menu to 16:9 1080I, unfortunately the unit does not support 1080P so I had to settle for second best.

The movie quality is still great, not much less than you would get from 1080P.
It is also really easy to copy movies from the network or external hard drive using the copy feature that is built in, this feature only works when you have a FAT partition on the hard drive.
The QR-130 plays almost everything from Mpeg1 to Mpeg4 ASP, DVD ISO’s and VOB, it just cannot play Matroska files better known as .MKV (High definition) files. This did get me a bit down seen as there is no valid firmware update for the QR-130 available yet. Another great feature on the QR-130 is the music playlist that you can setup, you can play a song and browse the playlist at the same time.

Last but not least is the PVR feature, this records virtually anything you play into the Video In port to MPG format, whether it’s your DSTV or DVD player and it works, either start recording by pressing the record button on the remote or set the record schedule.

Conclusion
The QR-130 is really value for money as long as you are not looking for a MKV player. Its a bit plastic but does not look bad at all, it has all the necessary Media Player features including PVR. There is not much more you can put into a media player that Zioncom has not put into the QR-130.

Pros :
• Inexpensive
• Plays most popular movie and music formats
• USB Wireless Adapter included
• Easy setup
• Nice GUI
• PVR Functionality

Cons :

• Only one USB
• USB and HDMI port sit very close to one another
• Does not Support .MKV format
• Does not support 1080P
• Still needs a FAT partition to function properly
• They seemed to forgot to update their website as no specs are available

Combination Score
7/10

http://www.sonicinformed.co.za/