I bought a new media centre from BIG W to replace my ageing PVR and media centre in the Bedroom.

I bought a new media centre from BIG W to replace my ageing PVR and media centre in the Bedroom. II still have an old style TV in the bedroom. It does the job, but to use those and the DVD player I have next to the TV, I have an AV switching box with three positions, and expects to see AV plugs going in and out.

The old media player - a Phillips, about 4/5 years old at least - had an video jack-to-3 AV plugs cable and that's worked fine since whenever. The new MMC - a Laser B-18 - has an AV jack port in the back, so I expected it to plug in fine. NOPE! Instead I got an interference pattern on the Bedroom TV. I tried plugging it in (using the same cable) into the Lounge Room TV and there was a barely recognisable picture with the status bar showing SECAM down the bottom!

Now SECAM is the French TV standard!!!!. I was able to plug the B-18 into the Lounge TV via HDMI3 and it came up crystal clear, so it was a matter of some issue with the AV cable. After a search on the LASER website I found the following in the Q&A:

Why does the 3.5mm stereo AV cable I bought at the store not work on my media player?

The standard length of a 3.5mm audio jack is 14mm but this media player requires a longer jack of 19mm which allows it to also accept a video signal so a compatible cable is required. You can purchase the cable as it is sold as an accessory on the product information page of your device on our website.

????!!!!! And it WASN'T included with the B-18!!!! No wonder the things are marked down from $168 to $118.

Admittedly they DID include a HDMI cable, but I'd rather use the tech I have, rather than run out a better TV (which I'll do once it dies) so instead I ordered a couple of these from the site. Why bother? Why not just return the bloody thing instead? Because I did test it on the Lounge TV with the external drive I use with the Phillips and it ran really well.

It can record live TV, and has a wifi/lan net connection. It runs ANDROID 6.0 and you have a bunch of apps to do everything. In particular it has Miracast, so I can hook it up with a smart phone or tablet; KODI (formerly XBMC), an open-source media manager that plays (via plugins) almost everything!; three USB ports to connect storage and input devices (they were selling an "air mouse" as an accessory) to. You can also access Netflix, Youtube, and Crackle directly, the are apps for 4 of the 5 free to air catch-up sites, and also the Android Store, so you can get other apps top do other stuff on it as well.

Let you know how it goes.
#australia
https://www.laserco.com.au/MMC-B18-quad-core-android-smart-media-player-with-dvb-t2