Is there a substitute for my Micca Spec, which seems to break easily?

April 28, 2023 9:16 AM

I've had two Micca Specs (digital media player) already. They've both stopped working. Is there any other device that does the same thing that might be more reliable? NOTE: the device must have a way of playing subtitle files.
posted by DMelanogaster to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

What exactly failed on it? Do you have any ideas?
posted by kschang at 10:18 AM on April 28, 2023

One commercial-grade alternative would be a Brightsign player, but it's 6x the cost of the Micca. (I presume they can play subtitle files but am not certain).
posted by hovey at 11:19 AM on April 28, 2023

Response by poster: We cannot play USBs on it anymore. It simply won't play them. And we've tried several different ones.
posted by DMelanogaster at 1:43 PM on April 28, 2023

Best answer: I use an Odroid N2 running CoreELEC. It has a full size HDMI connector, USB3 ports for connecting to local hard disks and sticks, and a gigabit Ethernet port for connecting to storage servers. All open source, rock solid reliability, consumes about 5 watts running flat out and I have yet to find anything it won't play. Subtitles work.
posted by flabdablet at 3:56 PM on April 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

So the USB port is mangled, but the player itself seems to be fine?

Sounds like the USB port physically may be damaged, and that's a matter of disassemble, resolder, and reassemble, at any MakerSpace. If that fixes it, you can "mitigate" this by taping a cheap but sturdy USB3 hub to the player and tell everyone to use the hub, not the port on the player itself. Cheaper to replace the hub than the fix the player, IF that was indeed the problem.
posted by kschang at 9:31 AM on April 29, 2023