Dear Rimax,

First off, I’d like to thank you for your Alum Plus 500 GB multimedia player. I had been searching for a way to rid myself of the hundreds and hundreds of CDs and DVDs that make up my video collection for a long time. If I had to reshuffle all those discs one more time to maintain the alphabetical order of all my films and TV episodes, I would have surely gone mad. Mad, I tell you!! I saw your multimedia player in my local computer store and thought, “Sure, it’s kinda pricey, but imagine the convenience of having my entire video collection in one small, sleek looking device that can connect directly to any TV!”. Yes, it’s all about convenience. I was convinced.

Now please allow me to offer some constructive criticism. While both the player itself and even the box it came in are absolutely lovely in their sleek design, would it have killed you to have the same people work on the player’s user interface? Seriously, I plug it in to my TV and it looks like an old 8-bit Nintendo video game reject. I mean, who designed those “icons”?! But I can look past the aesthetics of the menu and setup screens. It’s the usability that is unforgivable. Why can’t it display more than 19 characters of the file name? I’ve got an entire season of episodes all apparently named “Curb Your Enthusias”, each cut off before I can read the episode name. And I guess the preview window seemed like a good idea at the time, but who wants to watch the first few seconds of every file that is bypassed while searching for the film they want? You usually just see the opening titles, anyway. I appreciate the ability to turn off the preview window, but the player doesn’t remember this setting and so I have to turn off the preview every time I use the machine. Annoying! Finally, with a 500 GB hard drive, you know that people are going to be storing about a gazillion files on there. Would a search function be too much to ask?

In all fairness, almost all my videos play perfectly from your player. The video is smooth and the audio is just as good as if it were played from my DVD player. It’s annoying that a few video codecs aren’t recognized, but you covered your ass with the warning on the box. Shame you didn’t plan for upgradeable firmware to future proof this substantial investment. Also, music and photos display with no problems, but I don’t have any need/desire to play these items on my TV.

In summary, I am happy with your product but not nearly as happy as I should be for the money I spent. Cheers to your Marketing Team (for getting my money), and jeers to your Interface Team (for making me question my purchase).