Great option for affordable streaming media box.
Several years ago, I cut cable from my monthly entertainment routine. Streaming media was in its infancy at that time, but Netflix was readily available and Hulu was a new platform in that space, too. I found that combined with those two outlets and local television that I captured over the air with an antennae that I was perfectly happy with my entertainment set-up. The only awkward element was my device for Netflix. At the time, I was using a PC tower computer that I didn’t really use for anything else. I just plugged it into my TV and turned it on whenever I wanted to watch a movie on Netflix.
Soon after, set-top boxes for streaming media started hitting the market in a big way. Now, there are three that I would consider to be the leaders in the market – Apple TV, Amazon TV, and Roku. Each has their own pros and cons, but they all have the same basic function – to allow you the ability and ease of watching streaming media at will. The only issue with them is that they can be price constrictive for some people. There are other streaming media options in the form of media sticks, but they don’t have the same functionality as the full sized players. For these reasons, I was very excited to find out about MXQ Amlogic Streaming Media Box.
This streaming box costs about half of the premium options I mentioned above and is comparable in service, too. The box has some decent power behind it with a quad core processor and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. I was surprised by how peppy the media device was.
Set-up of the box was very easy. It comes with two cables – one for power and the other is an HDMI cable. To connect to your TV, or even computer monitor, you simply plug the box into power and then plug in the HDMI cable to a port on your chosen monitor. You use the provided remote as the main method of navigation. The remote is actually the only part of the MXQ Amlogic Streaming Media Box that I had issue with. Since it’s a media player, I expected there to be a play/pause button, but it was blissfully absent. This one button would have really made a huge difference in my experience.
Once the streaming box was connected to our home WiFi network, watching TV shows on Netflix was a breeze. I found the box to be quite responsive and the quality of the video stream to be comparable to the other set top boxes I’ve tested in the past. While the interface isn’t quite as polished, I did find that it’s functionality and cost are worth the difference between the MXQ Amlogic Streaming Media Box and its premium counterparts.
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