Review: Xitel Moviecentre for iPod peripheral

Xitel Moviecentre for iPod is an innovative way to view photos, watch video or listen to music through a television or stereo.

It’s a simple iPod dock finished in an attractive piano black, with an infrared receiver for the supplied remote control.

It supports video iPods, iPod nano, iPod colour, iPod mini, iPods with a dock connector and the iPod photo. Adaptors are supplied.

Xitel Moviecentre for iPod has composite and S-video out sockets for connecting to a TV, along with standard stereo audio outputs for it to be connected to a home stereo.

Once the video-out option was enabled on our video iPod, we found it pretty straightforward to port contents to a TV. Picture quality was pretty good, even taking into account the low-resolution video encoded for an iPod’s relatively small display, but because iPods have a 4:3 aspect ratio, the picture won't fill a widescreen television.

However, in music mode nothing appears on-screen. Naturally, this is an issue considering that the supplied remote is intended for operating the iPod while sitting back in your chair. Since the iPod’s menu system isn't displayed on the TV - like movie playback - you’re left squinting at the iPod's tiny screen.

The remote’s control layout isn’t particularly intuitive either; it’s a real case of trial and error to work out what buttons operate what functions. This left the remote effectively redundant in our eyes.

It's a shame Xitel didn’t handle this properly; viewing visualisations, album information and other details through the TV screen would have been a real boon. iPods will charge from the dock, though.

The Xitel carries some rather large drawbacks then, and when you consider you can pick up an iPod AV cable for around £15, it seems like a lot to pay.

Despite impressive sound reproduction thanks to the built in audio processing we don’t consider this enough of an advantage to cover the extra cost.

Vista compatible: N/A

See also:

Review: Archos 604 digital music player

A multi-talented, multi-media player for the pouch  24 Jan 2007

Review: Mediaman Multimedia Player HVX-3500

Turn any 3.5in hard drive into a high-definition media player  19 Jul 2006

Apple Ipod AV Connection Kit

Control video, audio and photo playback from the sofa - apparently  10 Feb 2006

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