The Popcornhour / Networked Media Tank thread

[PD_BARBS]

Thanks

To release only a small number of units, gives the imprssion of being an an amateurish organisation, especially when there will not be any more stock until 16th November at the earliest.

If you can not get the release right, how will they perform for firmware upgrades etc, which are essential for these units.

[dodgyd]

Publicity stunt, amateurish, whatever. I'll post my review when it arrives in about 9 days or so.

Dave.

[PD_BARBS]

Originally Posted by dodgyd

Publicity stunt, amateurish, whatever. I'll post my review when it arrives in about 9 days or so.

Dave.

At the end of the day, that is all that matters. Hi-Jack has published a review on mpc club, if are interested.

http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?n...iewforum&f=179

[JetJockey]

Originally Posted by dodgyd

Publicity stunt, amateurish, whatever. I'll post my review when it arrives in about 9 days or so.

Dave.

I used to have some very high end HiFi kit. It was brilliant, the best. Every piece firmware upgradeable and Ethernet connected

Sold the lot after 1 yr of ownership. The CEO who ran the outfit was a muppet!!

The way he ran the company and the resultant effect on the customers was dire. I predicted their demise and was not wrong. They went down having lost millions as people deserted them.

I'm sure the product will be fine. It's the after sales that we are worried about. That may also turn out to be fine but they have not exactly started off on the right foot.

Now I'm off to read that review and maybe order one!

Regards, Gerald.

[dodgyd]

Well, mine has shipped, might be here for the weekend.

Dave.

[PD_BARBS]

Originally Posted by dodgyd

Well, mine has shipped, might be here for the weekend.

Dave.

Excellent, please let us know how you get on. It would be good to get a user review

[alpine101]

The About us box on the site reveals that this is a brand of Syabas. Syabas are responsible for the middleware on many, if not most, of the current generation of media players, so they are not without firmware experience. I would think this is their first venture into hardware and higher level software and does seem something of a garage exercise. Particularly the cheapo generic aluminium case which is usually used to hold external hard disks!
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/74821/...roduct_gallery
But the case is unimportant, it's the chip set and f/w that count!

[dodgyd]

Yep, my player will be in a cabinet, I'll never see it just like I never see my TiVo, Sky, Roku, Xbox etc.
The only think I leave out is the Wii as I need to feed it with disks

Dave.

[dodgyd]

It arrived yesterday, but I've been on a trip. I've reproduced this posting with the permission of me from another forum:

I haven't done a review yet, but I thought there were a lack of images out there in Internetland so decided to take a few. The thing that shocked me on taking it out of the box is just how small this thing is! It's tiny!. I've included a pen for scale in some of the shots:

Contents of the box, with pen for scale. The included HDMI cable is a nicely braided example, but I'll be using component.



Rear view:



Top view mainly for scale:



Cheers,
Dave.

[zAndy1]

We need some impressions asap please!

[dBrowne]

I am looking forward to your review as well. Mostly keen to know how reliably it streams dvd files from a remote server and how responsive it is. Have fun with your new toy.

[glesgaguyav]

They could do with removing the "cartoon logo" on the top, it makes it look cheap

[dodgyd]

Originally Posted by glesgaguyav

They could do with removing the "cartoon logo" on the top, it makes it look cheap

It's not a problem, you can turn the cover upside down (it's removable without tools to allow the fitment of a HDD) and it's plain grey on the other side.

Dave.

[dodgyd]

Hi all,

Here is my mini review taken from the networkedmediatank site:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't have time for an in depth review, but I'll put some thoughts here. I am going to be completely objective and dispassionate (since I've invested my own money here, it would be easy to say everything is great even when it isn't).

Ordering

We all know, a complete lottery, but at least I got one and it arrived in the UK about as quickly as could be expected. No damage to the box or unit in transit.

Setting up

Some undocumented areas (jumper settings on HDD couldn't be found, so I did some trial and error), I didn't know until reading this site that I wouldn't be able to map a drive to my NAS without a HDD installed. Also, there seems to a bug which makes it tricky to start up when a network cable is plugged in. I still haven't got to the bottom of that one.

Using

Well, it's definitely not 'wife' proof (forgive me if any techie girls are reading this, but you haven't met my wife). I have no trouble using it, and I suppose after a bit of training, my wife will get by.

Compatibility / performance

It plays all my ripped DVDs, I had some initial problems as my old Roku HD1500 (still in use) had the habit of writing a .mplayer file to the folder of any film I'd been watching, I assume to keep track of where in the film I was in case I resumed watching later (fantastic feature). Once I'd worked out that these files were stopping me from watching my films, it got better. But question: would your partner have worked that out for themselves?

I've played the following types of files:

.vob , .ts , xvid (TV shows of 350mb and 700mb roughly), .mp4, .mp3, flac

They all play fine, with the exception of .ts. They play, but motion is jerky on some scenes but not when played with my Roku or my PC (both streaming across the network). To ensure I wasn't seeing network performance issues, I placed a sample .ts file onto the HDD in the A-100. It was still jerky (not massively, but it looks like images are subtly vibrating at the edges, for instance when a car is driving across the screen.

Also, some xvid files (350MB TV shows) showed a massive deal of blockiness, you could actually see areas of the picture with great swathes of small squares. I don't recall seeing that on my TV downstairs (42" Pioneer plasma) with my existing kit, but perhaps that is because I'm testing it in the spare room with a 26" LCD (Sony) until I'm happy for it to take over my other kit. When I tried a 700MB tv show, there was less blockiness. So maybe, just maybe, this is the A-100 showing up bad quality media for what it is. I'll know for sure if and when I try it on the plasma downstairs.

I see a difference in the performance of HDMI compared with Component (I have been sure to use the same TV settings on each input to ensure a fair comparitive view).
HDMI is slightly brighter, but difficult to say which is 'better'. Choose which suits you.

Reliability

I've had to take out the power cable 2 or 3 times in one morning of testing. This is not looking good for me, how is my wife supposed to know that when the screen freezes she has to turn the power off (and there's no power switch on it), unplug the network cable, power up and plug the ethernet back in. Seriously, do I have to write an instruction card for her!
But seriously, this has to be an appliance, like a kettle or a toaster. You don't have to reboot your toaster or kettle do you? My other kit is reliable, XBMC needs a reboot if you meddle with the scripts, but in daily use it just works, ditto for the Roku. My DVD player 'just works', so does my PS3 yadda yadda. Reliability is important!

Perhaps this unreliability is heat build up from the HDD, who knows.

Value

8.5/10 - It really is a good price, but right now I'm having trouble deciding why I need this over my existing XBOX (running XBMC) and my Roku Hd1500. I wanted one unit to consolidate the pieces of hardware in my cabinet with a view to selling the unneeded ones. The last thing I wanted was another device with a HDD in it.

Summary

Absolutely not as good a picture as my XBMC or Roku, but maybe I'll be back to edit this post once I've tried it on my other TV.

Thanks,
Dave.

[zAndy1]

I'm on the list with one reserved at mpcclub but to be honest I'm having 2nd thoughts, initial reviews aren't promising (although to be fair the firmware needs to mature a lot yet). I think perhaps it would be better to sit on the fence for a bit and see how good this becomes once the firmware has bedded down a bit.