In the network set-top box market, there are all kinds of open and secret wars. The manufacturers have tried their best to play with technology, to look good, and to follow the ecology. However, these are useless. A good user experience is really good. As the first Internet set-top box of a proud brand, The MediaQ M321 inherits the advantages of Huawei's system design and technology. Its model also shows that it is inextricably linked with Huawei's secret box. This box is impressive both in terms of hardware quality and UI system experience. In the author's opinion, it is a network box with balanced appearance and performance and high cost performance, It is a very good choice for daily household use. Let's take a look at this network set-top box that is refined in core and simple in shape, and the evaluation experience of the glory box MediaQ M321.

Product parameters

In terms of parameters, this box also has many highlights. It is equipped with Huawei's own set-top box quad core chip Hi3798M and built-in HiVPX4 professional decoder. It has unique Impress engine image quality enhancement technology. Its decoding capacity is 50% higher than that of the ordinary quad core box. It supports a maximum code rate of 240Mbps, and fully supports various mainstream 4K video formats; Although there is no 5GHz Wifi in wireless connection, the 300M complementary dual antenna design is adopted. The 2.4Ghz Wifi rate is 100% higher than that of a single antenna, and the sensitivity is 30% higher. While enhancing the ability of signal passing through the wall, it realizes the improvement of twice the data throughput performance, makes high bit rate 4K transmission easier, and supports the latest H.265 video coding hard solution; In addition, in order to improve the remote control angle of the infrared remote controller, the enclosure of the box adopts a penetrating panel design to achieve 360 ° remote control. Although the parameters do not represent everything, this is enough to make people expect the performance of this box.

Unpacking: fashionable, fresh and environmental friendly packaging

Most Internet enterprises have their own distinctive product packaging features, and Glory is no exception. The packaging is highly recognizable. As a product of the top 500 enterprises, Glory Box also attaches great importance to environmental protection in packaging. It is made of recycled pulp and printed with soybean ink to avoid pollution to the natural environment.

The packaging box is sky blue on the whole, the front is simple, the middle is marked with the word "Glory Box", and the brand logo of Huawei and Glory on the lower right corner is familiar to all. The back of the national brand that Chinese people are proud of briefly introduces the performance characteristics of the Glory Box. What is worth noting is the SOYINK certification logo. It can be seen that while Huawei continues to innovate in value, It is also an enterprise with a sense of social responsibility.

PS: SOYINK certification is the certification of printing with soybean ink Or Vegetableink) is made of vegetable oil such as salad oil, which has excellent fluidity and colourability, high transparency, bright colors, is not easy to fade, is cheap, and has good printing effect. It conforms to various standards and specifications of printing ink. Of course, the biggest feature is that the environmental protection performance is very good, and it is widely used in developed countries such as Europe and the United States. At present, it is less used in China.

The inner box is designed in two layers. The upper layer is used to place the box host, and the lower layer is used to place accessories and documents. There are many marks on the partition in the middle of the inner box, including the abstract drawings of standard accessories and optional accessories, and the interface labels of the box. While unpacking, you can learn more about the products. The accessory layer uses cardboard to divide into three blocks to place different objects, Compared with the separate accessory box used in many products, it saves more resources.

All items include the glory box * 1, remote control * 1, power adapter * 1, HDMI cable * 1, battery * 2, instruction manual * 1, warranty card * 1. The instruction manual is printed in black and blue, and the whole sheet is folded into a volume. However, there is no standard base, so it must be purchased separately. It's a pity.

The materials and workmanship of the accessories are very good. The input of the power adapter 180~240V 0.5A and the output of 5.1V 2.1A are also the standard configurations of most boxes at present. This box's 11 key remote control does not use button batteries, but uses two No. 7 batteries, which has a longer endurance, but also increases the weight of the remote control. It seems a bit large.

Product: exquisite workmanship, humanized details in place

The details of this box reflect the design and workmanship of the factory. The overall black and square body, coupled with a heavy hand feel, gives a good impression. The exquisite workmanship and humanized design can be said to be excellent in details.

The surface of the box is designed with a bright surface, which is easy to be stained with dust and scratched. Apart from the logo of the interface and the honor, there is no other decoration. It looks fashionable and simple, and the parameters and logo on the back are simple and clear. The two large checkered anti slip pads on the top and bottom can not only play a role in anti slip, but also serve as a decoration. This design integrating practicality and decoration reflects the level of a large factory.

Most of the interfaces are located on the back, and only the MicroSD card slot is located on the side. The overall layout is compact, but they do not affect each other. For such a small box, there are many interfaces, USB port and MicroSD card slot are equipped with one respectively, especially the standard RJ45 network port, which is a bit unexpected. As can be seen from the figure above, this box is really thin, only a little thicker than the RJ45 network port, and each interface is marked with a name. The MicroSD card slot also indicates the card insertion direction. These small details are in place.

The box adopts an integrated design of penetrating panel shell to achieve 360 ° infrared signal reception. Although many boxes now use Bluetooth remote controls, the cost is increased, but the practicality is not increased too much. Compared with the Wifi remote control on mobile phones, there are not many advantages. The gap between the upper shell and the bottom plate is very small, The radian of the corner and the chamfering of the edge are also very meticulous, which also reflects the workmanship level of the factory.

The size that can be mastered in one hand is very delicate in the box sold in the market, but it feels heavy in the hand. It can be seen that its internal materials and design are not ambiguous at all, and it can be said to be a sincere product.

Experience: the system has powerful smooth video playback function

A successful box does not necessarily have the strongest configuration, but it must have a user-friendly UI system. Relying on Huawei's strong technical strength, the Glory Box has accumulated a lot of experience in the development of Android system over the years. It has not only achieved great success in the development of mobile phone UI system, but also made great efforts in the development of TV UI system, Huawei keeps a low profile and does not publicize it. Those who have used it will have a deep feeling. The UI system of this glory box is easy to operate and smooth on the whole. Some personalized designs also add a lot to the experience of the box.

Power on the box and connect the HDMI cable. Since this box has an Internet port, if there is an Internet cable interface at the right place, the Wifi connection can be saved, and the transmission speed is faster and more stable. If the LED indicator on the left side of the front is always on, the connection is successful.

The overall UI style of the box is not the same as the block list similar to WIN8 used by most similar products. A large number of rounded icons are used to make the system look more comfortable. In terms of program source, it cooperates with Galaxy Internet Television (GITV) Co., Ltd. as one of the seven Internet TV integrated broadcast and control platforms in China, GITV has strong technology R&D capability and massive video resources.

There are relatively complete options for video playback. You can select the definition and carry out various common operations. What is more distinctive is offline caching and downloading the programs you want to watch to the local mobile memory. The animation section has a special parental control function for children, which can set the age and opening period of children. This function is not included in the settings, It is in the animation section. Although it is easier to find, parental control is not just for animation. It feels more reasonable to put it in the settings.

The main UI interface of this box is fixed, and the applications added to the main UI interface cannot be customized, which highlights the provision of video content, but the functions of the application are not weakened. In the application section, all applications of the box can be started and managed. Several built-in applications are also more practical, but the number of applications in the system application market is relatively small, Applications can be installed into the system through USB and third-party TV management applications.

The experience of several built-in applications is relatively good. For example, the Media Center can manage the audio and video files in each connected device. When the music is played, it will automatically switch to the screen saver mode. The file manager uses the form of a list to manage the files of connected devices. This way is more passive when there are many files, and it is difficult to turn pages, In addition, there is no batch operation, which also reduces the efficiency of management. In addition, functions such as remote control learning are more personalized, but it is a pity that you cannot use the remote control settings of the TV.

The box supports keyboard and mouse operation. If you want to better experience the network box, it is recommended to install a third-party application market, which will make it easier to search for the desired video on demand, live broadcast, games and other applications. Thanks to the powerful chipset of the box, all kinds of applications have better performance, but there will still be a short pause when more applications are opened, However, there seems to be an internal mechanism for automatically cleaning background applications, but no setting item has been found. The practice of Xiaomi Box system is to press and hold the HOME key to call up the task manager, which can clean background applications by itself, and it is also worth learning.

The options in the settings are relatively common, and there is no special personalized setting. It is worth mentioning that there is a video quality setting in the playback settings. After the setting is turned on, the picture quality can be improved. In the settings, you can see the picture contrast before and after the setting is turned on, but the screenshot cannot be displayed inside.

◆ Video playback test ◆

With regard to the performance of video playback, the HiVPX4 professional decoder is built into the Glory Box, which is relatively powerful. The dynamic contrast enhancement and color enhancement technologies unique to the Imprex engine make the overall picture more vivid, and the dynamic effect performance has also been improved to a certain extent.

Screenshot of HD program source of Hunan Satellite TV live program

Small Times 3: Screenshot of 1080p movie source of the Age of Stabbing Gold

Screenshot of 4K video source of Journey to the West

I found several special tests in my own movie source area and 4K movie source area. Because my broadband is only 8M from Unicom, I can't meet the requirements for 4K online play, and it basically starts buffering after playing for a few minutes. In terms of picture quality, I don't feel that the real 4K level has been reached due to the source, and the picture definition is not very high.

Using the available resources, two 4K video demos of LG TV are selected for testing. Both videos are in mp4 format, and the bit rate is relatively high. See the following figure for details

Information of two 4K video files tested

4K film source Arctic segment

4K film source food atelier clip

At the beginning, the video was directly copied into the USB flash drive and inserted into the box for playback. The video got stuck badly. Later, the video was copied into the box flash memory, and the playback was no longer stuck. However, there was still a sense of delay when the remote control operated, but the overall image quality effect should still come out. Later, the video was tested and put into the shared disk with the LAN router, In the playback test, there was also a jam. It seems that data transmission is still the biggest bottleneck in the playback of 4K video, but the popularity of 4K video will take some time. For the current popular 1080p high-definition video, the playback of this box is even easier

After two hours of video testing, the temperature of the box was measured. Under the ambient temperature of 28 ℃, the temperature of the top surface of the box was basically kept around 42 ℃, which was a little high. However, video playback, especially 4K video playback, still burned the equipment, which seemed to be relatively normal

From the actual use experience of the box, ordinary video playback and other functions within 1080p can meet the daily use requirements. If you need to watch 4K video, one is to ensure sufficient network bandwidth, the other is to solve the transmission problem. In fact, using Wifi to watch 4K video is not a good choice, However, the box itself has strong capabilities in video decoding and optimization. Even ordinary 1080p high-definition video can also be beautified to bring a better experience.

summary

This glory box is exquisitely made, well designed, and its appearance meets the public's aesthetic standards. In terms of film source, GITV is selected for cooperation, which is rich in resources and outstanding in performance. Its built-in HiVPX4 decoding chip, integrated Imprex image optimization engine, and Dolby digital audio effect enable it to play smoothly even in the face of high bit rate 4K video source, However, the premise is that the files are in the flash memory of the machine, and the UI system of the box is also very distinctive. It is optimized around video playback. In general, the experience of this box is very good, and it is a network set-top box suitable for users who have certain requirements for video playback.