5.0 out of 5 stars
Top reviews from the United States
3.0 out of 5 stars Great for the road. Good in the home, although a little outdated.
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2007
I used this as a primary media player on my home TV for about a year before I began building HTPCs. It worked well and I had very few complaints about it.
I was able to put up to a 500GB drive in mine and it played back most all of my DivX and XviD encoded movies. I'm not into music, but I know it will play most of the more common formats.
Setup is not overly difficult, but is a little tricky to make the settings stick (especially for audio). Menus are simple, yet effective, and there are some decent playback controls available while viewing videos.
There are plenty of output options available, with even more if purchased separately (component for HD, for example). S-Video, Composite, analog stereo, and optical S/PDIF are all standard. There is also USB and Firewire ports for transferring your media.
Updates for the device are probably long gone as newer models have far surpassed what this is capable of. However, if you want simple and inexpensive (as this one should be now), it's a good device to take on vacations or weekend trips since the common hookups will attach to most hotel TVs without a hitch. This makes it great if you have kids and want to bring all their favorite shows (if you encode them, like I do).
On the downside, the device is a little slow to respond to the remote at times. Not a big deal, but it is there. Also, it will only take specifically encoded files, meaning certain features of supported formats will make it incompatible with the TVISTO (GMC/QPEL in XviD, for example). I would have also liked AVC playback, but I realize this is an older device and AVC was not as popular when I bought this.
1.0 out of 5 stars Bringing up the Rear...
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2006
I have purchased this product, as well as, the Mvix and Tvix and this product does not compare.
Cons:
* The A/V cables and power cord are specifically designed for the TVisto and they are cheaply made, so if they are damaged, as with mine, you cannot purchase A/V cables off the open market.
* The media folders have to be specifically organized for the TVisto or the device will not recognize the files or folders.
* Unlike the Mvix and Tvix, the TVisto does not have an internal fan, so the hard drive gets extremely hot.
* The Mvix and Tvix have easy access compartment for the hard drive, which does not require the removal of screws. The TVisto requires the screws be removed.
* To be such an inferior product, I would have expected the price to be at least half the cost of the Mvix and Tvix.
Pros:
* Uuuhhh, it has a nice remote.
The Mvix is the best.
4.0 out of 5 stars Works as advertised.
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2006
Tvisto works exactly as advertised. The setup is straight forward - install IDE hard drive, create folders in the hard drive, then add content to each folder. I only use it to store movies. Tvisto is a great way for you to transport all your and your child's favorite movies when your travelling or just going to grandma's house.
3.0 out of 5 stars A littie disappointed
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2007
Works as advertised, however, I have to manually reset with on/off switch every time I start up the unit. Also leads on supplied cable are too short to reach tv and sound system amplifier.
4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but be aware of what it can really do...
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2005
I recently purchased a TVisto. I have small kids who have a habit of destroying DVD's. Rather have them handle our DVD's I figured that this product could be a good way to give them access to movies without physically handling them.
Most descriptions and reviews talking about HD support. However, the AV cable that comes is an S-Video/Composite Video cable. Obviously an S-Video AV cable doesn't provide HD support. I haven't been able to find a source for HD AV cable in the US (only in the UK). So take HD support claims with a grain of salt.
Once received, you need a tiny Philips head screwdriver to gain access to the internal of the drive. Adding the drive is straightforward. I formatted the drive as an ntfs drive. This lets you save files larger than 2Gigs and is probably needed if you want to play DVD .iso files. Your movies, music and pictures must be placed in directories with specific names. That's not a big deal, but if you don't see your files that probably means you miss typed the name of the root directories.
I found the UI both straightforward and quirky. Navigation is easy. You can choose one of Movies, Music, or Pictures. Once you choose a file type, you are allowed to navigate the directories below until you find the file you are look for. This means you can forget your ID3 tags for music. If the file song name isn't in the file name, you'll never find the song.
The other quirky behavior is that you can't do any navigation while a movie or song is playing. You must press stop before any navigation key works. I found that confusing at first (I'm used to my Tivo and it doesn't have such a goofy restriction).
The documentation says that it supports SPDIF pass-through. My MCE machine manages to do this correctly. However, I haven't been able to get the SPDIF coaxial connector to output DTS 5.1 or Dolby 5.1. I don't know what's wrong (possibly user error).
Also, you can't use it as a media device AND as an external drive. Either you boot the TVisto plugged into your computer (which will cause it to act like an external drive) or you can boot it unconnected (and it will act like a media device). This threw me at first, mostly because it never occurred to me there would be such a strange restriction.
However, even with the restrictions and the misrepresentation about HD support, I like the product and will likely keep it.
I've tried DivX movies, DVD iso's, MP3s and JPegs. All have played flawlessly. My kids loved the unit. Hopefully, I will find a US source for the HD cable and I will be a much happier camper.