My Istar Mini HD NMT media player impressions

[zAndy1]

Hi folks,
Ok so my Istar Mini HD media player arrived today, posted from the US on Tuesday

Took some pics (click on for larger versions) which I'll post here followed by my initial impressions:-

The box:-

Box contents:-

You get a HDMI cable (nice quality), Ethernet Cable (Short!), Coaxial and Optical Digital cable, The power adaptor was supplied with a UK 3-Pin plug (nice surprise).

It really lives up to it's name (Mini!):-

MyiHome Main Menu:-

Internet Video Menu:-

YouTube:-

Yahoo Weather:-

Internet Audio Main Menu:-

Live365 Radio Main Menu:-

Ok, enough photos, what do I think of it....

I'm streaming via a pair of solwise 200mpbs homeplugs and am using the HDMI connection set to 1080i @ 60hz

Initial impressions are very favourable actually, the menus are responsive, the front end looks pleasing enough (ok cover art for music would be nice but I'm sure that's only a matter of time).
Tried streaming some video over SMB but it stuttered badly, via Myihome however it played absolutely fine. Tried a .mkv with AC3 audio and it passed the audio over optical to my amp, same with a .mkv file with DTS audio, passed the raw bitstream to my amp fine as well.
Video quality was superb, good colour saturation, nice sharp picture, just what we've come to expect from hidef material (I'll try some DVD ISOs later).

I couldn't get any of the Youtube videos to work, they all returned a screen with an exclamation mark and 'Could not play', not sure what the problem is there, more investigation needed on that one (fixed in latest beta firmware apparently)!
It played a file ok that was encoded with high profile level 5.1 with 11 reference frames, at least for the 5 or 10 mins I tried it for anyway. That surprised me to be honest.
The remote is as bad as Hi-Jack (MPC Club) said it was in his review. Fortunately that's being replaced free of charge with the redesigned one in a couple of weeks. The one provided with this first batch is 'functional' but some keys are incorrectly marked and not all functions are easily accessed with the current remote. I'm not bothering myself about it as like I said it's being replaced free of charge anyway.

Overall very impressed with it

I'll update this with further impressions as I use it over the weekend and get to grips with what it can do. I hope these initial impressions are of interest

By the way I bought it from www.istarhd.com

Cheers,
Andy

[Nelviticus]

Cheers for the review, it looks great. Two questions though:

- Have you tried streaming anything from UPnP or DLNA NAS boxes or do you just use server software on your PC?
- How did you avoid the customs/parcelforce charges?

I will probably be returning my Zyxel DMA-1000 to the place I bought it since it doesn't seem to want to stream anything, and the Istar looks like the perfect replacement.

Regards

[zAndy1]

Originally Posted by Nelviticus

Cheers for the review, it looks great. Two questions though:

- Have you tried streaming anything from UPnP or DLNA NAS boxes or do you just use server software on your PC?
- How did you avoid the customs/parcelforce charges?

I will probably be returning my Zyxel DMA-1000 to the place I bought it since it doesn't seem to want to stream anything, and the Istar looks like the perfect replacement.

Regards

I'm just using server software on my PC (don't have a NAS at the mo)

As for avoiding the charges, well I guess I was just lucky

[Beowulf1]

nice one andy.

it looks good sofar, roll on when customs decide to release mine.

Did it come loaded wihe the latest firmware or did you have to upgrade it?


Nelviticus customs charges it the luck of the draw if you get picked to be charged or not. I am fully expecting to be charged though as its been sitting in customs gathering dust since 8pm last night.

[mesajoe]

I'm using mine with my ReadyNAS NV+ NAS, it works a treat. The remote is totally rubbish, so good job they are replacing it as it drives me mad.

I couldn't get it to play FLAC audio files, so I presume support for FLAC files isn't there yet.

Video playback seems good, but only just started to play with it so may have more observations later this weekend...

Mark

[jriihi]

Originally Posted by mesajoe

I couldn't get it to play FLAC audio files, so I presume support for FLAC files isn't there yet.

Firmware posted in http://www.istarhd.com/downloads.html should support flac.

[zAndy1]

Originally Posted by Beowulf1

nice one andy.

it looks good sofar, roll on when customs decide to release mine.

Did it come loaded wihe the latest firmware or did you have to upgrade it?


Nelviticus customs charges it the luck of the draw if you get picked to be charged or not. I am fully expecting to be charged though as its been sitting in customs gathering dust since 8pm last night.

Seems to be loaded with the latest firmware.

Had more of a play, SMB streaming is very odd, I streamed a dvd .iso for about half an hour, no problems at all. Can't stream a 720p .mkv file using SMB though it just starts stuttering after a minute or so. Don't understand why DVD .iso is ok but 720p .mkv isn't , bitrates should be pretty similar I would have thought. Tried to view a photo using Myihome and it just returned a black screen and I had to use the on/off switch to reboot it. Music seemed to stream ok using Myihome, can't see me using that facility since it just puts up a screen showing the format, artist and title (boring!) but hey at least it works ok.

Will have more of a play over the weekend, I'm off to bed...

[chris57]

You need myihome and NFS for the best transfer rates. NFS will give you the iso playback that myihome doesnt support. If you still get stuttering after moving away from SMB then you will have to look at moving to a wired network, particularily if you want to play 1080p.

Try hijacks guide on NFS setup for the NMT where it shows you how to setup HaneWIN NFS on your windows PC.

[zAndy1]

Do you need a USB keyboard to change the SMB shares to NFS or can you edit the name using the remote?

[mesajoe]

Originally Posted by jriihi

Firmware posted in http://www.istarhd.com/downloads.html should support flac.

The Istar is on the latest firmware, just to be sure I downloaded it and updated the player. It still doesn't play FLAC files.

Also, the aspect ratio doesn't reliably work between the Istar and my iScan VP50 processor - 95% of the time I get a picture with black bars and I have to press 'Zoom' to fix this. This could be the DVDO reporting the aspect ratio to the Istar incorrectly, I guess..

That said, it has played faultlessly most of the files I have tried, except BBC HD, which gave me a blank screen.

The remote only works about 6 foot from the Istar.. perhaps my remote is particularly useless...

Mark

[chris57]

The Istar will support FLAC music files but not via myihome unless you edit the following files adding the FLAC extension:-
C:\Program Files\myiHome\webapps\ROOT\xml\video.xml
C:\Program Files\myiHome\webapps\ROOT\application\video\xml\e xtension.xml
C:\Program Files\myiHome\webapps\ROOT\xml\music.xml
C:\Program Files\myiHome\webapps\ROOT\application\music\xml\a udioext.xml

NFS shares can be added using the remote, assuming its similar to PH, make sure you add an extra ':'after the share ip. Here's the guide:-
http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?n...wtopic&t=14561

[zAndy1]

Yeah followed the guide, installed Hanewin and edited my shares to NFS on the Istar. When I go into them though it just says 'No content found'. I have a folder called 'Media' on my C: drive and within that folders called 'dvd_rips', 'hidef' and 'music'. I am sharing the 'Media' folder which presumably shares the folders within it. The NFS mapping is to the 'Media' folder which doesn't actually have any files in it, just the folders mentioned above and within them are the media files. Is this why it says 'No content found'? Please tell me I don't have to share each folder seperately and add that as an NFS share, thought you could only have 5 shares and if I have to map each folder I'm quickly gonna run out!

[mesajoe]

Originally Posted by chris57

The Istar will support FLAC music files but not via myihome

I'm using TwonkyMedia uPNP AV2.0 not myiHome, I'll try NFS and see if that works...

Mark

[zAndy1]

mmmm I can't get NFS working, just says 'No content found', don't think I've done anything wrong so I'm at a bit of a loss what to do next to be honest. I followed the guide linked to above but no joy. Might just stick to Myihome and SMB for DVD rips if I can't get this working...

[mesajoe]

Originally Posted by zAndy1

mmmm I can't get NFS working, just says 'No content found', don't think I've done anything wrong so I'm at a bit of a loss what to do next to be honest. I followed the guide linked to above but no joy. Might just stick to Myihome and SMB for DVD rips if I can't get this working...

Andy,

I've just had the same problem with my NAS, it was down to the permissions, although NFS was up, I hadn't set permissions to Read only for the directory, I fixed this and it worked fine.

FLAC files play fine over NFS BTW...

Mark