Masscool MP-1370S ‘Media Mate’ Media Player

Playback Performance

Even before we loaded the first video to play on this player we had doubts on just what this player could do. Since this media player is based on the Realtek RTD1262PA chipset, it only supports a limited number of video and audio codecs and containers. We say limited because one of the containers it does NOT play is the very popular Matroska video container (MKV).

Even without the ability to play MKVs, the Masscool MP-1370S can still handle a number of different file types. We loaded an external USB hard drive with some of our favorite movies, previews, and sound files to test functionality.

As predicted, the 1370S didnt play MKVs, nor WMVs, MP4, Blu-ray ISOs, or RMVB files. At this price point, we really do expect a media player introduced in late 2009 to be able to at least handle MKVs and MP4s. Without this functionality, this really limits your options on what kinds of videos you can enjoy from your archive.

The MP-1370S was able to play AVI, TS, MPG, and DVD VOB files very well. Like the Patriot interface, the Masscool unit has a fairly logical menu system that makes finding your multimedia file pretty simple. There is also a preview window that will play your file when you highlight it. This was one of our favorite features when we looked at the Patriot Box Office, but many people find the preview ability kind of annoying. Again, like the Patriot unit, you can turn this off. We were able to not only play DVD VOB files, but we could navigate around to play and make our selections.

Audio and picture files played well also with this unit. MP3, OGG, FLAC, JPG files played clearly with no problems at all. Sharing your photo and music content with friends and family in your living room is nice, but most people who are looking at media players, however, arent really concerned about how their still pictures look on a television, rather, they simply want aneasy way of accessing stored multimedia.

The MP-1370S accessed our home network quickly after plugging the box to our Gigabit router. The network interface is identical to the Patriot and we were even able to use Patriots $15 wireless dongle to access the internet. Our shared AVI and MPG video clips played stutter-free over the wired and wireless network. Even though we didnt have the ability to play HD MKV files, we still had success in playing 720P and 1080P TS and MPG files locally and over Ethernet.