ZenSonic

Zensonic was formed by entrepreneur Raaj Menon in early 2004 following his successful launch of the Billion and Minitar brands of computer networking hardware into Australia. Zensonic has many interesting plans and we were able to trial their upcoming Network DVD Media player, the Z500 series.

The player's concept is very interesting, support as many features as it can, starting from:

• High Definition 1080i/720p playback
• WMV9 HD and DivX HD playback
• USB2.0 hard drive support
• Remote with joystick for easy navigation
• Software for Windows, MAC OS and Linux
• 802.11g wireless and Gigabit wired networking
• HDMI technology

We were able to play a while with a beta version of the player, the interface looks very interesting, the player could playback without any glitch WMV9HD, DivX HD and several other Video/Audio formats. The specifications of the Z500 are very competitive against other similar players (IO Data AvelLink Player2) and the developers are open to any customer request. There is a high possibility that a newer model will be based on the Sigma Design chipset...

Hopefully soon, we will be able to test the player and present a report on our website. Zensonic promised to make the player very good, with online firmware updating and at a competive price. Just before leaving the booth, we heard that the player will be able to support both NTSC and PAL formats, with just firmware flashing, very good move we should say :-)