This media player is very simple to set up. I hooked it up to my hard drive that I've worked a full year on backing up all my dvd's to, pressed the power button on the remote, selected the USB option and ta-da, up and running. I like that you can change the way the folders are displayed, whether they be thumbnails or in list form (this was not available with my Argosy media player). Also, one feature that I absolutely love is the "night mode" for audio playback. This compresses the audio so that sudden loud noises or loud music in a show or movie stay at the same level - awesome! I tried it playing back an episode of CSI and it works!

So far, the only thing I've found that I don't like, is that you can't get it to "hide" the file types, so all my movies and tv shows are displayed as "xxxxxx.mkv" or "xxxx.mp4". If someone knows how to get rid of that, please let me know.

I still give it 5 stars - love it!

EDIT: One more feature I discovered that is very handy is that you can 'edit' names of files using the remote! Wow, I can't tell you how many times I've added a movie or two to my hard drive, hooked it back up to my old player and found that I transposed a couple of letters in a file name. So I had to unhook the hard drive, hook it back up to my laptop and fix it. Now, that's not an issue at all - I can fix it right there on my tv - very nice feature!

UPDATE: Have been using this player for about 32 hours of play and no freezing, as other reviews mention. I'm just guessing they may have gotten a bad unit and just need an exchange - I still love mine.

After doing extensive research into what device would play all my media files, I went with this one. So far it has played EVERY movie format I threw at it without any issues. The playback is flawless. It's simple to use and reads all the files from my external 2TB hard drive (NTFS). It comes with a remote, but I programmed my Harmony universal remote to control this device as well. The UI is very basic. You can do thumbnail view for your video files but it's not as polished as netflix, google TV, etc. Overall this is one amazing device and worth every cent.

I have a friend who owns one and it works great, overall. There have been few hiccups, but most electronic devices do. It has awesome features like creating folders and renaming files. I recommend this to all my friends, and any one else for that matter.

This device is fantastic for playing nearly any type of video format from an SD card or USB thumb drive directly into an HD TV. Just plug in the HDMI port and power supply, slip in the card and you're good to go.

You need the remote to navigate and play the files on the card. There are no controls on the device itself, so if you lose the remote, you can't play videos.

This device also plays audio files and still pictures, too. It has an SDMI port, a digital RCA port and analog component video and audio ports, so you can wire in the extra audio ports into your stereo system for great sound.

The video quality is excellent. In fact, it plays the video with better quality and less visible digital artifacts than playing it back using the camera that recorded it.

The card slots are on the side of the unit, which means you can't recess this into a fixture. Also, the SD card sticks out more than half way, leaving it susceptible to breaking in half if someone (likely a child) presses down on the card the wrong way.

All went well the first hour. After that, it locked up. It would no longer play anything, and would not power off and reset itself using the power button on the front of the device. Pulling out the power cord was the only way to reset it. It came back to life after about 30 minutes and continued to work properly for another hour. After that, it failed a second time and I've never been able to get it to work again. My suspicion is there is a thermal problem with the main circuit board.

If not for the failure, I'd have given this five stars for quality, and four for convenience. Having basic playback controls and a recessed card slot on the front of the unit would have given this five stars all around.