Meedio Essentials 1.15.22.0, Part 1 - A Sleek and Clean HTPC Interface

Meedio Essentials - Getting Started

After every run of the configuration wizard, ME automatically launches.

The UI has a fixed ratio of button size and overall UI size, as increasing the resolution doesn't change the look by adding larger borders to the screen. This is the way it should be for any HTPC's 10 ft. viewing mode. The difference between ME and, say, BeyondTV, SageTV, and MMC is that there only is a 10 ft. viewing mode, as a windowed viewing option is not available.

And while there are multiple skins, which we will get to in a bit, we are using the "meedio default" skin for the purposes of the UI review, particularly since they all follow the same UI principles. The only thing that we didn't like was the fact that all the available functions didn't appear in a single screen (unless you remove a few functions via the skip function in the configuration wizard). It would have been nice to see all of them at once; and if not through a direct line up, it would have been nice to have the menu wrap around (top through bottom) like in MCE. Using the keyboard or remote, the selection will automatically wrap around the scrolling selections, but the selection doesn't wrap around in view. Instead, it is like a typewriter where the original view is reset to the top.

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Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

We found that load times for ME don't really vary that much between systems, as every system that we tested was slightly over one second, but rarely surpassed two seconds, with a straight out-of-the-box configuration.