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By Kelly Lu (kellylu@onepc.net) - May 22, 2001

Infobox

What? Kalua Product Page Who? Genica Corp. Home Page How much? $149 USD (Est. Street) Buy Now

Over the last few years, we've seen a complete revolution in our home entertainment. The music that we listen to are not only being pulled from the aging technology of CD's, and the movies that we watch are no longer stored on VHS tapes. Instead, regular consumers are now able to take advantage of digital music coming straight from their personal computers and watch movies with theatre picture and theatre sound right from the comforts of their living room.

On one hand, MP3 technology has revolutionized the music scene by enabling the distribution of music, whether legally or illegally, between everyone who wishes to have them-and whenever they wish to have them. Capable of compressing something that would otherwise take up 50MB in size to about 4MB without noticeable loss in quality, MP3 technology enables music to be stored and distributed by the masses, easily and efficiently. This has allowed it to gain mass acceptance and popularity as it allows everyone to share music easily through mediums such as the Internet. Although many individuals and groups, such as the RIAA, have tried time and time again to suppress this technology, MP3 is here to stay.

On the other hand, DVD technology has brought the theatre home. Gone are the days of flickering screens and distorted music; in are the days of crisp, clear images and powerful surround sound. DVD's use the same optical technology as CD's, but at a much higher density, allowing it to store a whopping 8.5GB of data per side per disc with the same physical size of a CD. By harnessing this extra storage area, movies can be stored digitally at high resolutions along with digital music-with room to spare on the disc.

Applications of these technologies have been around for quite some time now. MP3 players utilizing solid state memory, rotating hard drives and even CD-R's have had some time to establish themselves while DVD's have been around for even longer, but we've only seen it become more and more widely accepted within the past few years. Nobody, however, has taken the chance to combine these two excellent technologies into one of their products-until now.

Enter Genica. They're a company that has traditionally focused on developing products for all areas of computing and consumer electronics; from motherboards to sound cards to even cordless phones. Recently, however, they've taken a different approach to their product lines, shifting more towards the MP3 player market. They have a whole range of MP3 players, from ones which utilize hard drives to their Tavarua, one of the industry's first MP3/CD players. Today, however, we're going to focus more on MP3 players for the home-their Kalua, to be specific. As you might have guessed, the Kalua is a MP3 and DVD player.

Much like the Tavarua, the Kalua is able to play MP3 files that are burned onto CD-R's. Unlike the Tavarua, however, it can also play a whole assortment of other formats, most notably DVD and regular audio CD's, and is designed specifically for use at home with your TV set or, for those of us lucky ones, home theatre systems. What does this have to do with your computer, you ask? Well, the ability to play MP3's that are burned onto CD-R's that come directly from your computer makes this a perfect complement to your CD-burner and MP3 collection-if it works as well as it claims.

MP3/DVD CD Player Playback of MP3, DVD, CD-Audio, VCD on CD, CD-R, CD-RW Media Dolby Digital 5.1 Channel Surrond Sound (AC-3) DTS Audio NTSC and PAL Compatible Full Function Remote Control included Digital Servo Parental Lock Multi-Angle Support Multi-Language Support Built-in Games Karaoke Function with 2 Microphone Inputs and Echo Control

DVD Player Outputs: Component Video Output (RGB) S-Video Output (Y/C) Composite Video Output Coaxial Digital Audio Output (S/PDIF) Optical Digital Audio Output RCA Analog Audio Output (Right/Left) Audio-CD/MP3-CD Player Outputs: RCA Analog Audio Output (Right/Left) or stereo translation through digital audio out

A quick glance at the specs for this thing tells us that the Kalua is truly a home entertainment device on steroids. This thing can handle DVD's, MP3's, audio CD's and even VCD's and can read from every type of CD medium out there-pressed CD's, CD-R's and even CD-RW's! Plus, with support for Dolby Digital surround sound and DTS digital surround, the Kalua can handle any type of DVD you throw at it. At $149 an estimated street price of $149, the Kalua is actually in the same ballpark as most other DVD-only players and can truly be the only disc player that you'll ever need!

All this looks really nice, but how does this thing perform the way it's supposed to? Read on...

The Kalua arrived in a large box that I now recognize as a "typical Genica" look-with its combination of simplistic black and grey patterns on a white background. But, of course, we all know that you're not reading this review for the box...

Inside is a whole assortment of goodies and accessories that come bundled along with the neatly wrapped Kalua unit.

The Kalua is of pretty standard home theatre equipment size and is of a sleek black color. On the front is a wide display window and on the right are some common buttons like Play, Stop and Open tray. What surprised me, however, was the presence of two jacks for microphones. A quick glance back at the spec sheets told me that they were for the Karaoke feature. This thing can support Karaoke! Gee, another bonus!

On the back are some common jacks for plugging in the necessary cables to and from your TV and/or home theatre system. It's got the standard RCA jacks for plugging in RCA cables and also an S-Video jack for those of us who decide to use S-Video. Also present are both coaxial and optical jacks for the Digital output to your receiver (if you have one).

As for the accessories, let me just tell you that Genica has included everything that you'll need to get everything set up. They include the necessary RCA cables for audio and composite video. Unfortunately, they did not include an S-Video cable. Although it'll still work fine with composite video, I, personally, prefer S-Video because I know that I'm getting the best picture possible. Anyways, I had to go out and buy one just to satisfy myself. Also included was a remote control, along with the batteries needed for its operation. I must briefly comment on how ugly the remote control looked like, but it does its job fine.

Finally, the Kalua also includes a CD full of 115 full-length MP3's (most that I've never heard of, unfortunately) and some MP3/music software such as the famous Winamp and the not so famous MGC DJ 2000 (allows you to mix your own music). Although you can get most of the stuff from the 'net, it's nice to have them, especially if you're on a modem connection.

Installation
I tested the Kalua on my home theatre system composed of a Sony receiver and RCA TV; you can also set up the Kalua as a stand-alone player with just a TV. Installation was very smooth as all I had to do was remove my old DVD player and plug this one in its place using the same wires. For most people setting up a home theatre system for the first time, the installation could get very confusing, but the Kalua's installation process in this scenario will be the same as any other DVD player available today.

The manual included some detailed instructions on how to install the Kalua on a few specific installation scenarios such as installation with a TV and an AV power amplifier (i.e. receiver). It didn't, however, go into enough detail on how to install the Kalua with your home theatre system, which some might find to be overwhelming to do with detailed instructions in the first place. Thus, buyers beware! If you don't have any knowledge of how to set up a home theatre system, then I suggest you get someone knowledgeable to help you out! This applies to setting up all home theatre systems, not just the Kalua!

Once everything was set up, I powered up the Kalua and was ready to get started with my testing! Woohoo!

First up for testing... DVD's! So, pulling out and sticking in my Mummy DVD, my home theatre system was booming with the wonderful clear sounds of DVD, courtesy of the Kalua! I can say that it does take slightly longer than my other RCA DVD player to load the DVD, but that shouldn't be a big problem.

Well, what can I say? For those new to DVD, the clarity and cleanness will absolutely astonish you. For us "early adopters," I can simply say that the Kalua handles DVD's just as well as any other DVD player out there on the market. Period.

Before I move onto playing MP3's, I would just like to slip in quickly that regular audio CD's played perfectly, just as was expected out of any machine that has the feature these days.

So, we've heard about how the Kalua handles DVD's and CD's, so what about MP3's? I used my already-made CD-R full of 144 songs (just shows the benefits of MP3 on CD-R) on the Kalua because I couldn't wait for the MP3 test CD-R that I was burning to finish. I stuck in the CD-R and, after waiting for about 15-20 sec. for it to load up all the songs (this extended period of time isn't surprising, since both my portable players also take quite a long time to index all the MP3's from a CD), my home theatre was pumping with MP3-powered music! Very cool! The Kalua handled the MP3 files on the CD without a single skip or hitch.

Pressing the "Display" button on the remote brought up the display on my TV showing me which "track" it was playing and the playing times, etc. But I wanted to see the titles of the songs! So, after briefly checking the manual, I pressed the "Menu" button on the remote and, sure enough, it showed the titles of the songs. Here's where my only complaint about the Kalua comes in-actually, it's a 2-part complaint. See, the Kalua does not read the ID3 tags from the MP3 files; instead, it just displays the filename. Now, some of the MP3 files on there didn't really tell me what song was playing: for example, one of the files on there was simply named "song01.mp3."

The second part of my complaint is to do with how the Kalua displays these filenames. The TV screen is split into two columns when the Menu is displayed, so that there are two columns of filenames on the screen. The problem is that, because it displays everything in large enough text so that people sitting on the couch can see them, it can only display the first 10 or so characters of the file name. From experience, I know that most MP3 files out there have really long file names because they usually include the artist and song title. So, if you've got a bunch of songs by the same artist, for example, chances are that the Kalua will only be able to show you the artist's name (or even only a portion of that) and leave you guessing as to which song each of them actually are. This could get very annoying after a while.

While in the Menu, I took the opportunity to try navigating the directories. Using directories on an MP3 CD can be very helpful in organizing the many songs that you'll have on that CD. You can, for example, organize directories into artists or even albums just so that they'll be bunched together when you're playing them back. From reviewing only two MP3/CD players in the past, I've realized that each MP3 player out there handles directories differently. The Tavarua, for example, will play files in directories first and has a feature to navigate the directories manually, while the D-Link DMP-CD100 plays the directories last and has no feature to navigate them-my third review continues to follow this pattern.

The Kalua plays files that are in the root directory first and then places all files in directories after those. It also allows directory navigation so that users can pick which directories they wish to play from. Out of all the players that I've reviewed, the Kalua's is the best around in this area (probably because it has a whole TV screen to work with, compared to only a small alpha-numeric LCD screen with the other ones). When in the Menu, one can simply move around the entries using the arrow keys on the remote. Pressing "Enter" on the remote on a directory entry will take you down a level to that directory and, from there, you can continue to browse the directories and files in that directory using the arrow keys. Pressing "Enter" on a filename will simply play that file. As you can see, it's very easy to use and everything is displayed neatly in front of you on the TV screen.

As per previous reviews, I tested many different varieties of CD's that can possibly be played on the Kalua and here are the results:

As you can see, it's a good thing that the Kalua can handle any type of CD's that are out there, including 650MB and 700MB CD-R's and CD-RW's. It is, however, a sad fact that the Kalua will simply refuse to play any multi-session CD (it thinks it's a VCD for some reason).

New to this review, however, is a test that I thought would be beneficial to you. Since I've noticed that some MP3 players out there have troubles playing high bit-rate MP3 files (the Tavarua comes to mind here), I created a CD with the same file, but at different bit-rates ranging from the standard 128kbps all the way up to 320kbps, which is what most players claim they can play up to. I decided to exclude anything underneath 128kbps, since, if the player can play at that bit-rate, it's a given that it can handle anything lower than that. I used this new "benchmark," if I may call it, on the Kalua:

I mentioned before about how the Kalua has a Karaoke feature for those of us brave enough to bellow our voices in front of others. I was, however, unable to test this feature since I did not have the necessary hardware to use it. From looking at the manual, it seems like it's pretty easy to use this feature.

Before I conclude with this review, I'd just like to mention about a very neat little feature of the Kalua. Did you know that the Kalua can even act as a gaming console? I bet you didn't know that! What I mean by gaming console is that it's got 2 games, Tetris and another one called "Othello," built in that one can play from the remote. Hey, they're not like playing on a Playstation2, but they're something that you can play with when you run into a boring part of a movie.

So, did the Genical Kalua meet my expectations? Certainly! Did it exceed them? Partially. The Kalua is a very neat device that can act as an all-in-one home theatre system component or as a standalone player for your TV set. It allows for playback of DVD, which is a huge step ahead of the old VHS tapes, can play just about any other type of CD (including audio and video) and, the most appealing feature, is capable of playing MP3 files! Although the feature set for MP3 playback isn't complete, such as its inability to read ID3 tags and display full filenames, it sure can be great for users who already have a home theatre system, but don't have the best computer sound system to fully enjoy their music. All in all, the Genica Kalua can be thought of as a perfect extension to your computer or as a feature-filled DVD player on steroids.

Pros Plays any type of "disc" format out there: DVD, audio CD, VCD, MP3-CD, and more! Plays any MP3 file you can possibly throw at it DVD provides crisp, clear images and powerful sound MP3 directory navigation is very easy to use Cons Set up could get confusing for those who are not familiar with home theatre equipment (-0.5) Unable to read ID3 tags; cannot display full filename sometimes (-0.5) No multi-session support (-0.5)

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