Vantec AVOX Jukebox

For this unit, I have a Toshiba 60GB drive that should work nicely.

Let’s take a look what’s underneath the hood. Once the top is off, you can remove the circuit board and install the HDD.

From here, we are going to take out the board, study the chips and learn what we are dealing with here.

We can see that Vantec has used the Sigma Designs REALmagic video processor and memory chips from Hynix.

As you can see here, we have the HDD in the tray, screwed down and back into the AVOX. Once everything is back in place, we will format the drive and transfer the media onto the HDD.

Before we get into the performance, let’s take a look at the specs of the AVOX.

Features
• Digital Multimedia Player via Home TV or Car TV
• USB 2.0 External Storage via PC (NTFS, FAT32)
• Audio – Stereo, Digital Coaxial 5.1ch. Sound
• Video – Composite, HD Component 480p, 720p, 1080i
• DVD Manager – Playback of DVD File same as Original DVD Title
• Easy Firmware Upgrade.

Specifications
• Power: DC 5V / 2A
• Weight: 160g (without HDD) approx.
• Dimension: 80 x 148 x 24 mm approx.
• USB Interface: 480Mbps USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 Compatible) / Slave
• HDD: Type2.5″ IDE HDD
• HDD File System: NTFS / FAT32
• TV Type: NTSC / PAL

Supported Format
• Movie: MPEG 1, 2, 4 (MPG, MPEG, AVI, M2V, DAT, VOB, IFO etc.) DivX, XviD (except GMC, Qpel option applied
• Music: MP3, OGG Vorbis, WAV, WMA (except WMA9 pro.lossless)
• Photo: JPG (JPEG)
• Available OS: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Mac OS 9.0 Higher, Linux 2.4 Higher

Output
• Video: Composite Components, Pb, Pr (480p, 720p, 1080i Progressive scan)
• Audio: Stereo L-R, Digital Coaxial (DTS Pass-Through Only)
• External IR: Support (Optional) Working Temperature: 0’C ~ 60’C
• Working Humidity: 10% ~ 50%

This information was pulled from Vantec’s website. Now that we know what the ‘jukebox’ is all about, let’s see if it can live up to all of the expectations.

Once everything transferred over to the AVOX, we took it to the television and took it for a spin. First up, I am going to try out the audio. For this, I am playing some songs from a favorite local band of mine who just happen to consist of some really good friends of mine. Let’s see how the AVOX likes 180 Out.

*Disclaimer: My TV isn’t new. In fact, it is terrible but what can I do?

As you can see, there are tabs at the top of the screen that can be cycled through via the remote. From here, you can select what folder you want, and in my case, the folders are artists. You also have the option to select the song "file" and get its information such as bit rate, length and file size.

Let’s move onto the video shall we?

Here we see Trinity talking on her phone in a little film titled "The Matrix." Heard of it? Thought so.