Enhancing PopCorn Hour and NMT

vectra

Wolff wrote: »

How much is the Istar now ? - I paid about 400 euros for the 6500 but that included a 1gb Harddisk as well

1gb hard disc ?? :eek:

That would not even hold a movie

But
when all is said and done..
Which do I buy now?

MediaTank wrote: »

HDMI 1.3 version $205 (€145). Factor in a 1TB drive and it's around half the price.

That looks like what I will be getting

But still not sure if to go with the Istar
OR
the
Egreat

MediaTank

vectra wrote: »

1gb hard disc ?? :eek:

That would not even hold a movie

But
when all is said and done..
Which do I buy now?

m

LOL, assume he meant a 1TB HD. Here's how I see it:

TVIX 6500: expensive, looks good, big footprint, mature system
NMT boxes: affordable, small footprint, maturing system, great userbase and community support, extensible systems, Web Browser and MSP support

What's important to you?

MediaTank

vectra wrote: »

1gb hard disc ?? :eek:

That would not even hold a movie

But
when all is said and done..
Which do I buy now?



That looks like what I will be getting

But still not sure if to go with the Istar
OR
the
Egreat

Read HiJack's lates news article. The USB slave on the eGreat makes it more attractive IMHO, although I own an iSTAR 1.3 version.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

What's important to you?

1) Play MKV files perfectly

2) Music

3) Play AVI files perfectly

Currently have an xbox Networked and am thrilled with it.
Does exactly what it says on the tin.

EXCEPT... Wont play MKV

I am upgrading my TV this week hopefully and want to do all of this as a job lot and get shut of it.>> POSSIBLY THIS ONE
Is it important to have gigabit networking to stream MKV files??

MediaTank

vectra wrote: »

1) Play MKV files perfectly

2) Music

3) Play AVI files perfectly


Is it important to have gigabit networking to stream MKV files??

Check for all 3 of those. You don't need a gigabit network. All of these boxes only have 100Mb ethernet ports. The important thing is the the H.264 or VC1 encode in the MKV file do not exceed profile High@L4.1 which is the BluRay and 1080P profiles.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

Check for all 3 of those. You don't need a gigabit network. All of these boxes only have 100Mb ethernet ports. The important thing is the the H.264 or VC1 encode in the MKV file do not exceed profile High@L4.1 which is the BluRay and 1080P profiles.

Ah yes,
I forgot the H.264 files. I want thoe to play as well

But are you saying only thr 1080P files will not play?

1080i are fine?

MediaTank

vectra wrote: »

Ah yes,
I forgot the H.264 files. I want thoe to play as well

But are you saying only thr 1080P files will not play?

1080i are fine?

I'm saying that if you use BT to download MKV files or create them yourself then make sure they are profile [EMAIL="High@L4.1"]High@L4.1[/EMAIL] and no higher.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

I'm saying that if you use BT to download MKV files or create them yourself then make sure they are profile [EMAIL="High@L4.1"]High@L4.1[/EMAIL] and no higher.

Wont be using BT at all.
Looks the biz for me
Now to decide to get the Istar OR The Egreat.
Would the extra ram make much of a diffeence in these?

MediaTank

vectra wrote: »

Wont be using BT at all.
Looks the biz for me
Now to decide to get the Istar OR The Egreat.
Would the extra ram make much of a diffeence in these?

Advantage of the eGreat AFAICS is the USB slave funtion, which means you can plug it into a PC and transfer files directly, rather than having to FTP them otherwise.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

Advantage of the eGreat AFAICS is the USB slave funtion, which means you can plug it into a PC and transfer files directly, rather than having to FTP them otherwise.

OK
with you having experience of the Istar.
If you were buying again
would you buy
Istar
or
Egreat
Egreat having usb and extra ram ?

Wolff

Sorry yes 1tb Disk

and the 6500a is only about 7 inches wide by 5 inches deep -
also has the best HD playback mkv files of any player ive seen - up to 1080p
has the usb slave functionality too -

vectra

Wolff wrote: »

Sorry yes 1tb Disk

and the 6500a is only about 7 inches wide by 5 inches deep -
also has the best HD playback mkv files of any player ive seen - up to 1080p
has the usb slave functionality too -

Link ??

vectra

Wolff wrote: »

How much is the Istar now ? - I paid about 400 euros for the 6500 but that included a 1gb Harddisk as well

OK

I was reading a post over on mpcclub

This reply froma 6500 owner

Just to say it in two words, let's say that TVIX is more HD oriented (not an NMT player), and the others (NMTs) are more internet oriented.

This means that with the TVIX you'll have more speed and ease to watch great quality HD movie (better response of the remote, better tools to moving through the movies, etc., but no webserver, torrent, online streaming and so on), and with the NMTs you'll have less comfortable watching of HD movies, but more flexibility to see online contents, plus web server, torrent client, etc.

There are people (like me) that aren't interested to have a machine with hundreds of features of poor quality (for example Youtube -looow quality- videos from a FullHD player is a controsense by my watch), and prefer less but more useful features instead.

Now
what he is saying about the 6500 it fits into my needs more than the egreat

Also
Egreat inc shipping is around €290 +

The 6500 PLUS shipping is around €380

BUT
Is it really worth the extra cost?
All I really want it to do is play HD files { H.264/.MKV }

Wolff

I used to have a p4 3 GHZ dell xps - lovely machine and couldnt play 1080p files to save its life

Then I got a quad core something or other and played the 1080p files very well with the odd stutter

then I fecked both in the bin (dramatic license) and got the 6500a - its plays everything ive thrown at it flawlessly - not to say there arent some dodgy mkv files around that dont play well but 99 % play great

And Im watching these on a 50" kuro and the quality is great

is it worth the extra money - probably not but if you want to watch mkv files and not be worried is it going to stutter at some point then it is - also its a nice little unit - I have a 1 tb installed and another 1tb as a usb so I have 2gbs of movies to choose from - iso's avis and mkv and it plays them great

Another great feature is the goto where you tell the play to skip to 30mins in or 2 hours in - especially on a mkv its great

vectra

Wolff wrote: »

I used to have a p4 3 GHZ dell xps - lovely machine and couldnt play 1080p files to save its life

Then I got a quad core something or other and played the 1080p files very well with the odd stutter

then I fecked both in the bin (dramatic license) and got the 6500a - its plays everything ive thrown at it flawlessly - not to say there arent some dodgy mkv files around that dont play well but 99 % play great

And Im watching these on a 50" kuro and the quality is great

is it worth the extra money - probably not but if you want to watch mkv files and not be worried is it going to stutter at some point then it is - also its a nice little unit - I have a 1 tb installed and another 1tb as a usb so I have 2gbs of movies to choose from - iso's avis and mkv and it plays them great

Another great feature is the goto where you tell the play to skip to 30mins in or 2 hours in - especially on a mkv its great

I wouldnt take any notice of the PC's to be honest
I have an AMD 64 - 4000 San Diego cpu
2 gigs of Mushkin Extreme edition Black DDRram
And a Geforce 7900 GTX Graphic card
Plays everything i throw at it.

Dont know what to buy now as everyone of the media players have their own issues

MediaTank

I use my iSTAR to play exclusively SD and BluRay rips in H.264, MKV, AVI, MP4 and ISO format and do not have any issues. I don't use the music playback or internet features of this unit, just video playback.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

I use my iSTAR to play exclusively SD and BluRay rips in H.264, MKV, AVI, MP4 and ISO format and do not have any issues. I don't use the music playback or internet features of this unit, just video playback.

Sounds good to me.

Now
Egreat
or
Istar

The only thing Egreat has over Istar as I said befoe is
extra Ram ---- { Which I love }
and usb

MediaTank

eGreat

vectra

Well,
went ahead and got the Egreat.

Cant use ut till saturday.. Part of my Birthday pressie :cool:

Also got a Humax HD Freesat receiver.
Will report back on both asap

Static M.e.

Hi Vectra,

How are they going for you?

Im looking to get something very soon but Id love to hear what you think about them.

Thanks

vectra

Static M.e. wrote: »

Hi Vectra,

How are they going for you?

Im looking to get something very soon but Id love to hear what you think about them.

Thanks

Sorry for the late reply
Was busy watching movies from my Egreat

Delighted with it bud.

The only thing I notice to complain about would be intermittent "Jerky picture" {judder}
Now.
I have not investigated this too much but i could almost swear that it is my Hard drive caching.
I am going to try a different one in it soon so will know better after that, as this one is formatted to NTFS I need to format to ext2 i think to use the facilities in full.
What I will do tonight is put a movie on m8 pen drive and see how that goes
All in all
I am 100% over the moon with it.

My reccomendations?
Go get one.
You wont regret it. :cool:

MediaTank

vectra wrote: »

The only thing I notice to complain about would be intermittent "Jerky picture" {judder}
Now.
I have not investigated this too much but i could almost swear that it is my Hard drive caching.
I am going to try a different one in it soon so will know better after that, as this one is formatted to NTFS I need to format to ext2 i think to use the facilities in full.

When you install an internal drive, one of the threee partitions is used as a swap partition. This allows for smoother playback of high bitrate movies.

Glad you like it

MT

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

When you install an internal drive, one of the threee partitions is used as a swap partition. This allows for smoother playback of high bitrate movies.

Glad you like it

MT

Aha...!!
I knew I would make a mess of it



Cheers

Wolff

Do you need an internal disk then to play back non juddery Mkv files ?

Would you get the judder from an external one all the time because its NTS formatted ?

So would all your Highbit rate files have to be on the interanal disk ?

Came across something similar on the popcorn hour - juddery on external disk
smooth on internal

The Divx has no problems on either

MediaTank

It helps to have the internal disk for MKV files with high bit rate, reference frames, DTS sound, etc. However, the latest firmware has improved this area greatly so it should not be necessary as Syabas have changed how MKV is streamed with the latest firmware which (theoretically) will fix the issue. If however the MKV is 1080P and encoded above level 4.1 then all bets are off.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

It helps to have the internal disk for MKV files with high bit rate, reference frames, DTS sound, etc. However, the latest firmware has improved this area greatly so it should not be necessary as Syabas have changed how MKV is streamed with the latest firmware which (theoretically) will fix the issue. If however the MKV is 1080P and encoded above level 4.1 then all bets are off.

Can you fill us in on the format setup?
I know the Egrat will do it but it is what partition etc files are placed after?

Also
What is the latest firmware?
I know there is some talk RE:
0808
then I have seen
080818

Confused

MediaTank

The MKV playback has been completely reworked, and now incorporates the Haali Media Splitter in the latest firmware. Upgrade to it (081008) if available for the eGreat and you should be good to go if the 1080P content ius within specification. This upgarde fixed a lot of issues with very high definition files for me.

See here for details on the specifications: http://networkedmediatank.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#MKV_files_on_the_Popcorn_Hour_and_NMT_players.

Installing an internal disk allows you to run the NMT applications and so is worth doing. The box takes care of formatting the disk for you so you don't need to worry. Three partitions are created - data (the biggest) for your media files, a swap partition (to increase performance) and a partition for the NMT apps. This also makes it easier to install one of the many jukebox applications on the box.

vectra

MediaTank wrote: »

The MKV playback has been completely reworked, and now incorporates the Haali Media Splitter in the latest firmware. Upgrade to it (081008) if available for the eGreat and you should be good to go if the 1080P content ius within specification. This upgarde fixed a lot of issues with very high definition files for me.

See here for details on the specifications: http://networkedmediatank.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#MKV_files_on_the_Popcorn_Hour_and_NMT_players.

Installing an internal disk allows you to run the NMT applications and so is worth doing. The box takes care of formatting the disk for you so you don't need to worry. Three partitions are created - data (the biggest) for your media files, a swap partition (to increase performance) and a partition for the NMT apps. This also makes it easier to install one of the many jukebox applications on the box.

Great stuff.
Looks like the latest firmware for me then is the 080818

Will post back after the weekend as I am busy to then :cool:

slemons

vectra wrote: »

Sorry for the late reply
Was busy watching movies from my Egreat

Delighted with it bud.

The only thing I notice to complain about would be intermittent "Jerky picture" {judder}
Now.
I have not investigated this too much but i could almost swear that it is my Hard drive caching.
I am going to try a different one in it soon so will know better after that, as this one is formatted to NTFS I need to format to ext2 i think to use the facilities in full.
What I will do tonight is put a movie on m8 pen drive and see how that goes
All in all
I am 100% over the moon with it.

My reccomendations?
Go get one.
You wont regret it. :cool:

Congrats on the purchase vectra.
I was wondering how much it cost you in total? Were you caught for customs?
Was it off this site?
I presume you went for the eg-m31b?

Thanks,
John

vectra

slemons wrote: »

Congrats on the purchase vectra.
I was wondering how much it cost you in total? Were you caught for customs?
Was it off this site?
I presume you went for the eg-m31b?

Thanks,
John

Mo bud.
I actually bought it from Ebay >> HERE <<
Actually delivered very fast.
No customs etc.
Cost me around €270 I think
Well spent i say :cool: