Review submitted by Richard Grainger, ClanCarnage

Over the last few months I’ve been lucky enough to test out a wide variety of media players, a lot of them being manufactured by Noontec. So far I can say that I’m pretty impressed with their range, in September they released a brand new model and I’ve managed to get my hands on it, cover it in fingerprints and give it a test run – the A9 Android Smart TV Media Player.

The name of the player unfortunately gives it away in what I was hoping I could build a bit of suspense to, but yes, the A9 runs Android 2.3! Previous Noontec and AC Ryan models I’ve reviewed have all run custom operating systems, so I was excited to give this a spin. A quick Google search shows a fair few announcements on various tech blogs and websites regarding manufacturers bringing out Android based media players, but the press release from Noontec describes the A9 as the first official Droid 2.3 box on the market.

Let’s have a quick look at the full list of features:

• Play audio and video on your TV from USB storage, Ethernet/wireless connections and flash memory cards.

• Google Android 2.3 O/S – run apps, browse the web, use web services and download content.

• Install all your favourite Android apps on the 2GB internal memory which can be expanded via USB drives.

• Support for composite and 1080P (HDMI) video output, support for stereo, optical and HDMI digital audio output.

• 2 USB host ports, SD/SDHC/MMC card input available.

• 10/100 Ethernet and built-in Wireless 802.11N support.

I’ll normally add the specs in at the end of the review, however Noontec produced this handy little image which outlines what hardware is on the inside of the player and the formats it supports.

What you get in the box:

• Noontec A9 Media Player

• Red, White and Yellow AV cable (HDMI cable is available in a bundle)

• IR Remote control and AAA batteries for IR remote

• 100-240v Universal Power adapter with 12V barrel plug

• 2.4G Wireless rechargeable keyboard with RF USB dongle hiding inside it

• USB Male-A to MiniUSB cable to charge the wireless keyboard, from any available PC USB port

Setup:

Taking a look at the size of the A9 reveals that it doesn’t have any support for internal HDDs. You aren’t going to be able to store heaps of videos, music and pictures on it, so whilst it does save a bit of time getting it going and is better value for those who don’t find it necessary to dump their entire media drive inside a media player, you will need an external source for your content. Installing a free Android File Manager app, such as ES File Explorer, lets you easily connect to file shares on your LAN.

Physical setup is pretty simple, for mine I have it connected to my TV via HDMI for high definition goodness and the audio running separately via an optical (SPIDF) connection to a receiver. To my surprise I didn’t need to manually configure the audio to go through SPIDF and not HDMI, the A9 just recognized what I had plugged in and defaulted to that. For those who don’t have a HDMI-capable TV, fear not – the A9 comes with red/yellow/white composite connector.

Once I’d got everything plugged in, I played around with the O/S - I have used an Android phone so I felt pretty at home with customizing the background and fiddling with the settings, although it is fairly intuitive so any Android novices shouldn’t get lost.

The next feat was to get some sort of Internet connection setup, I elected to use the built in wireless as I didn’t have any Ethernet cables close by and it was extremely painless thanks to the wireless QWERTY keyboard.

The keyboard included with my test unit, (made for Noontec by well-known mini-KB maker Riitek, and also available separately at AusPC) has a hidden USB dongle stored inside it. The Riitek guys make around 5 versions of this, including Bluetooth and versions with laser pointers, LED torches, and trackpads located in the middle instead of at one end. The one bundled with the A9 is a standard 2.4GHz RF USB keyboard with trackpad mouse on the right, and will work on PCs as well as the A9. Just pull the dongle out of the keyboard, and plug it in to the A9's USB port to get it going.

The IR Remote has OK and directional buttons at the top, home/back/volume/running apps and power buttons on the bottom. I've seen some retailers advertise the A9 without the keyboard included, but would recommend against buying it that way unless you already have a USB Wireless keyboard to use, as it's not really possible to use it properly without a keyboard.

Design:

The A9 sticks to the basics, like its predecessors by having a glossy plastic finish. At the top there is a Noontec logo, as well as the power button which illuminates red when it is on standby, and blue when in use - you can press the button or use the remote to power it on - not the keyboard.

The front facing panel has a little Smart TV Box emblem to the left and the IR sensor for the smaller remote control on the right. The left hand side of the unit has a small vent for air flow, a USB host port to plug in any portable hard drives or thumb drives and the SD/MMC media card slot, handy for looking at newly-taken photos from your camera on a big screen.

The rear of the player houses all of the inputs and the outputs; on the far left there is a 12v power input, the red/white/yellow composite audio/video outputs, an optical (SPIDF) output, a 10/100 Ethernet port, a USB port (I find this the best one for the wireless keyboard's receiver dongle) and finally another USB port which can be used to connect your media player to a USB drive.

On the right side we find another two small vents.

Ease of use:

As I mentioned before, the previous models I’ve looked at have had a fairly basic, but extremely adequate menu system layout giving the user a handful of options - so moving to Android is quite a jump.

Booting up the A9 takes you straight to the “desktop” which has a few pre-installed apps at the bottom of the screen.

• Video – browse and play any videos on a storage device connected to the player.

• Music – browse/play and create playlists for any music on a storage device connected to the player

• Gallery – browse any images that are on USB storage connected to the player

• Market – Android's “App store”, which allows you to browse for eBooks and apps. Both free and paid apps are available.

• Browser – the default web browser for the A9

• Settings – shortcut to the setup menu to make any changes to local area connections, notifications, display settings, setup up Google accounts and so forth.

Being able to customise the desktop background isn’t a new feature (available on several previous Noontec models), but is worth mentioning for those who like to so. You can pin any of your favourite apps onto the desktop so they are ready for you as soon as the media player boots up. On the right there is also a rectangle with a few dots in it, mousing to this brings up a list of all the apps that are currently installed on the device.

The device uses an internal flash memory store of 2Gb to save your content. You can add more space to it via USB drives. (Ed: AusPC is bundling these with a free 8GB drive whilst stocks last.)

At the top of the screen there is a little pull-down bar which can be dropped-down to show you new notifications, like new email or app updates available in the market. It also houses a wifi signal indicator, volume bar, back button, quick home button and the time - exactly like most Android phones.

Media Playback:

Onto the main purpose of the A9 media player (or is it, after having Android on it!) – media performance. I’ve tested out a fair amount of standard definition, 720p and 1080p .mkv files using the default video browser and player – all without any issues. It recognised the stack of .mp3 files that I had on a thumb drive as well, and I could browse through artists or individual songs to find the title I was looking for. You can also create playlists which is handy if you want to have something playing in the background.

I gave the Gallery app a test as well, it did work well, although I did find it take a while to get going and load all the thumbnails. This is probably my fault though, as I did have over 600 photos sitting on the SD card, and these would take a while to enumerate on the phone also.

Wrap Up:

In total I’ve given the A9 a few weeks of testing by using it as my main media player – I can say that it is probably the best one I’ve used so far. Sure, it doesn’t have terabytes of storage space inside it, but the inclusion of Android OS and the wireless keyboard pretty much makes it a basic lightweight computer that can sit in your living room.

The only downfall I had with it was that when I tried to download certain apps from the market I was greeted with a message saying that it wasn’t compatible with this device! I did a bit of Googling and found a few posts that indicated it might be due to regional restrictions. Since I had the same Google account synced to my Galaxy SII, which downloaded and installed Firefox and Angry Birds fine I didn’t think this was the case.

I’ve tried doing a few things, but unfortunately haven’t found a fix for it just yet – I have found a workaround though! One of the default apps in the A9 is apk installer, so I downloaded an .apk file from the manufacturers website (luckily a fair few developers have these freely available on their website i.e. Firefox), put it on a thumb drive and managed to get it installed and running. Whilst this hasn’t resolved the App Market restriction, it’s made it bearable. The only issue is with this is that the App Market may not notify you and automatically install updates when they are available – to me this isn’t the end of the world. (Ed: Many apps are DRM'ed to their country of issue, eg the USA NFL Football and Pandora Radio Apps are restricted to streaming to USA IP addresses, so the App Market will state it's incompatible, with the detailed explanation being "this item cannot be installed in your device's country".)

In summary if you are in search for a slick looking media player (maybe it should be called a media pc) that is packed full of features I would definitely recommend considering the A9.

To see the A9 in action, have a quick look at this video:

You know you want one if you've read this far - here's the buy info:

See more specifications and buy the Noontec A9 here

AusPCMarket has the A9 bundled with a HDMI cable and 8GB Thumb Drive, where you will save over $28:

You can also buy it without the wireless keyboard, as it can use other USB wireless keyboards.