I recently bought a ViewSonic VMP74, it had great reviews and sounded really good.

However - my impression so far is that it stinks!

Note: I am running the newest firmware as downloaded after setting up and there is an 8Mbps ADSL link and ~ 50Mbps link to the rest of the local network.

Top problems at the moment:

1) iPlayer works but:
a) It only fills about 60% of the screen when selecting programmes!
b) It only fills about 85% of the screen when playing - and pressing "zoom" just brings up an empty white screen (with one black square top-left)
c) THERE IS NO WAY TO PAUSE
d) THERE IS NO WAY TO REWIND OR FAST FORWARD
z) To me, the above items make this "not fit for purpose"

2) YouTube does not work. It goes to the YouTube page and will let me pick a video from there, but it never shows the video - usually it just ends up crashing

3) It is so slow doing almost anything!

4) It keeps locking up

5) Trying to browse to shared folders on a Windows 7 PC - it lets me log in and see the first level of folders, selecting any of those leads to a 1min or more delay where the box is totally unresponsive (with no indication of anything happening and no 'doughnut' spinning). Sometimes it then says 'network communication failed' and sometimes it just comes back to life at the same point as before (not showing any new folders or files)

6) An awful lot of the video files I have tried it with are 'unsupported format' - yet most of the reviews I read claimed that they had yet to find a file it could not play (I wonder how much viewsonic paid for that!)

7) I have a MediaTomb UPnP server running on the network, but it does not show up on the VMP74 - and there is no way to manually configure to get it to appear

8) I have found Live365 and ShoutCast to be totally useless unless I want to experience the worst of American local radio. Hang on though... The American market have their own version of this device, the VMP75 - so why is the non-USA version stuffed full of American radio?

9) Oh, and the advertising material for this device claims "Hot and loud without the heat and noise" - this is not true, you could probably fry an egg on top of mine when it is running!