
Lately, there have been few discernable differences between external storage products. Examples of value-add attempts include Western Digital's addition of fancy lights to its devices. Macpower simply designed an external drive that looks like an Apple Mac Mini. LaCie and Maxtor looked to add value by combining two hard drives to surpass the magical 1 TB capacity threshold. We wondered out loud many times if vendors would ever think outside of the box and design devices that would do more than just backup and store PC data.
Multimedia Player MV-5000U, from the Virginia-based Mvix, represents an ambitious device design that is more than just another storage product. Called a "multimedia player," the MV-5000U is an external hard drive that can also play backed up audio, video and photo files as a standalone unit that works with an IR remote control, while unconnected to another playback device or a PC. It can even broadcast audio content with an integrated short-range FM transmission module.
As a multimedia player, the device has several outputs on the back and an LC display and a set of control buttons on its front side. The MV-5000U can also serve as an ordinary external hard drive, and it is not much bigger or heavier either.
Unicorn Information Systems Co. Ltd., based in South Korea, makes the MV-5000U. Mvix Inc. sells the unit either without a hard drive or equipped with a choice of 80, 160, 250 or 300 GB drives (UltraATA supported), all of which are available at the same cost as you would pay anywhere else.
Customers can also order a car pack for $ 24.99. This includes a 12 V mobile power supply and an IR port extension, but it does not solve the question of where to place the device inside your car.
Four different frequencies in the upper 80 MHz range can be selected to broadcast music (or the audio component of a video file) to your car stereo. Since only even frequencies can be selected for audio broadcasting, the device may have not been designed with North America and odd frequencies in mind. This inaccuracy causes the audio quality to be inferior compared to RCA cable transmission.
The drive comes with a standard USB 2.0 connector, optical and coaxial digital audio outputs, analog RCA audio jacks and composite and S-Video out, as well as component jacks for high resolution video. A tiny fan serves to ventilate the hard drive, which connects to an electrical outlet with a 12-V power supply. Mvix ships the unit with the power supply and USB and RCA audio/video cables.
As soon as you install, partition and format a hard drive, any type of audio, video or photo content copied onto the MV-5000U can be played back with the front controls and display or the remote control. The latter makes most sense if you hook up the unit to a TV or projector, since the unit will provide much more information and easier navigation. Common audio and video codecs such as MPEG-1 to MPEG-4 (DivX 3.11 to 5.x, XvidX) are supported. Exceptions are Windows Media Video, Real Audio/Video and Apple QuickTime. DivX 6.x seems to be too new to be supported as well. There were several new firmware versions released over the last couple of months. All of these offer better usability, but did not add support for additional video codecs yet.
| Mvix MV-5000U (made by Unicorn Systems Co. Ltd.), Firmware 1.40 | |
|---|---|
| Size | 7.5 x 6 x 2.5 inches |
| Storage Options | any 3.5" UltraATA hard drive (currently up to 500 GB) |
| PC Interface | USB 2.0 |
| Photo Features | jpeg support |
| Audio Interfaces | RCA out, coaxial digital out, optical digital out |
| Video Interfaces | RCA composite out, S-Video out, component Pr/Pb out |
| Audio Features | Playback supporting AC3, MP2, MP3, DTS pass through, WMA, OGG, M3U play lists FM transmitter |
| Video Features | MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (DivX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x, XviD), DVD-ifo/vob
Subtitles: smi, srt, sub Screen ratio: 16:9 or 4:3 Upscaling: 720p or 1080i NTSC or PAL Sleep Timer, Video Repeat, Screen Adjust |
| Other | IR port
Twin line LC display Front control buttons and status LEDs IR remote control Firmware update on the vendor website |
| Optional | Car kit with 12 V power cable and IR extension |

The MV-5000U has a plethora of connectors.

You get a full range of cables. However, no S-Video or digital audio cable is included.


This is included with the MV-5000U.

The manual is not very comprehensive, but covers the basic questions you might have.


It takes just a few seconds to open the MV-5000U. Hard drive installation is a relatively easy procedure, since there are no parts that need to be removed first. Any 3.5" UltraATA hard drive can be used, which is fixed by a single locking screw (see photo) after attaching power and data cables. Our choice was a DiamondMax 10 drive by Maxtor, featuring a total capacity of 300 GB. All you need to do then is to put the cover back on, and you are done.



As soon as a USB cable connects the MV-5000U to a PC, it works like any other external hard drive.
After connecting the device to a PC with a USB cable, it will serve as a regular USB hard drive. If you want to use it as a multimedia playback device, you have to unplug the USB connector since the system cannot playback media while connected.
After hooking up the drive via USB for the first time, you will have to enter the Windows Management Console and access Storage -> Disc Management in order to create and format a partition before you can begin dumping data onto your drive.
After unplugging the USB cable, you can use the device's display or your TV to view or listen to audio, video or photo files.

Setting up the unit is much easier when using a TV to display all of the options.


Browsing through the folders is not comfortable, but certainly doable via the integrated LC display.
| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor(s) | AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2.0 GHz, 512 kB L2 Cache (Manchester core) |
| Platform | Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI, Rev. 1.02
Nvidia nForce4 SLI chipset |
| RAM | Crucial Ballistix DDR-400 (BL2KIT6464Z402)
2x 512 MB, CL2-2-2-6 Timings |
| System Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200. (ST316027AS)
160 GB, 7,200 , 8 MB Cache, Serial ATA II |
| Mass Storage Controller(s) | Integrated nForce4 SATAII & UltraATA/133
Integrated nForce4 USB 2.0 Host Controller |
| Test Hard Drive(s) | Mvix MV-5000U & Maxtor DiamondMax 10, 300 GB |
| Networking | nForce4 on-chip Gigabit Ethernet NIC |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT, PCI Express, 256 MB GDDR3 |
| System Software & Drivers | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.1.2600, Service Pack 2 |
| Platform Driver | Nvidia Forceware 6.70 |
| Graphics Driver | Nvidia Forceware 81.85 |
Benchmark Results
Data Transfer Diagram





At constant 25 MB/s writing and 28 MB/s read throughput rates, the MV-5000U is certainly up to snuff for home and small office storage needs. A look at our data transfer diagram clearly shows performance is hindered by the unit's integrated USB controller, as the DiamondMax 10 drive would be able to provide higher transfer rates. So while the MV-5000U is certainly no data transfer rate performance monster, we also assume maximum throughput is not the unit's main purpose anyway.
Instead, the manufacturer tried to make this external storage device a great choice for the technically- savvy consumer by adding mainly additional audio/video features. Even inexperienced users will be able to install a hard drive themselves, if they are even slightly technically versed. Feature-wise, the MV-5000U plays any type of music and many video codecs, and it is capable of broadcasting audio to your (car) stereo via FM frequencies. A car kit is available for 12-V power, although we do not consider it practical to drive around in your car with it.
So if you seek a solution that serves your media storage and playback requirements at the same time, the MV-5000U should serve as a great asset. It is quiet and looks neat, and Mvix continues to offer firmware updates, which should help accommodate future audio and video codecs.
Meanwhile, for future designs, we would recommend a version that can be run as a NAS storage device with a network interface. An additional USB port for another storage device or a memory stick would be a plus as well. This would offer additional versatility and help bridge the time until media center PCs with storage finally become small enough to match the size of the MV-5000U.