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HelpFirmware: 
A-400 [13 May 2013] | C-300 [30 Nov. 2012] | A-300 [30 Nov. 2012] | C-200 [21 Jan. 2013] | A-200/A-210 [10 Aug. 2012]
| Thread Review (Newest First) |
| Posted by keyser - 08-28-2011 12:28 AM |
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same here : bought a zotac ion2, and this box is definately unable to play DTS-HD like my good old C-200 can. hardware related : looks like ION2 cannot bitstream the signal, whatever the codec you use. my HTPC has been turned into a funny computer for abandonware and ScummVM, but all of my movies and shows stuff are to be played by a TRUE media player, like my C-200 or my Netgear NTV550. and the most important point to me : Popcorn C-200 and Netgear NTV550 are completely fanless, meaning no noise at all when playing a movie (NAS located in another room). playing a 720p mkv from the Zbox HD-ID33 means quickly heating and little fan starting to spin and being very annoying... |
| Posted by halfelite - 08-27-2011 11:44 PM |
(08-27-2011 07:08 PM)micaradu Wrote: You should give the new atom dual core / ion2 platform a try. You might be surprised. As for xtreamer, they are no more crappy than syabas. they are both intersted in the profit alone and the customer service departments suck for both. It's just that the ultra is a htpc so much more flexible. The zotac and revo (the dual core model) are also cool. Dont push something that doesnt work. I have a zotac ion2 and its crap when it comes to 1080p playback even more so if you throw in stylized subtitles into the mix its hit or miss if it will playback the content. No HD audio support besides running windows7 and powerdvd for dts-hd. So to put it bluntly you bought the wrong product for you if an htpc does everything you wanted it to do. Dont blame companies for your own mistake. And why are we bumping up month old threads for this crap |
| Posted by chris57 - 08-27-2011 11:13 PM |
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Dont talk about what you know nothing about. Xtreamer are the scum of the media player word. Just because you have been fooled dont come here and start pushing your poor decision making down our necks. Xtreamer steal. They are thieves. They tried to steal YAMJ from Omertron and put it on their players. They steal copyright images and post them on their websites, they steal whole NMT WIKI articles and even at one time stole our forum rules/policy. They do this because they are a tin-pot poorly resourced company that have zero back room stafff. That's why they use Realtek chips in their media players, Realtek chips are turn-key and you just rebadge to make it appear that it is your player/firmware. Syabas are a proper company, resourced to develop media players middleware ( firmware and apps). Syabas and HDi/Dune are the two companies that experienced users migrate to. As far as using a HTPC we have all been their and done that, not again thank you! |
| Posted by micaradu - 08-27-2011 07:08 PM |
(04-11-2011 02:21 PM)chris57 Wrote:(04-11-2011 11:55 AM)choochoo7777 Wrote: I still dont understand why they didn't include a gbit nic in the c200 ...what would it have added to the total price? 10 bucks? You should give the new atom dual core / ion2 platform a try. You might be surprised. As for xtreamer, they are no more crappy than syabas. they are both intersted in the profit alone and the customer service departments suck for both. It's just that the ultra is a htpc so much more flexible. The zotac and revo (the dual core model) are also cool. |
| Posted by Temujin - 04-12-2011 03:17 PM |
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Wow, not to stir the pot but Sony settled... http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/ Quote:Sony dropped its jailbreaking lawsuit against PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz on Monday in exchange for promises the New Jersey hacker would never again tinker with the game console or any Sony product, records show. |
| Posted by jj666 - 04-12-2011 11:16 AM |
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Introducing Cinavia would probably be a pre-requisite for a "new" BD player from licensing point of view? As we see with the C-200 we have separate player applications for BD and file playback. I wouldn't see any necessity for such DRM to be introduced in the file player. But you're totally right, the decision I guess would be made by Sigma. Cheers, -jj- |
| Posted by Willem53 - 04-12-2011 11:09 AM |
| The only fear I have for the future of NMT's is DRM schemes being forced upon us were a device decides if I can or cannot watch whatever I put into my box... based on whatever the content owners decides should be put in the next FW release. |
| Posted by jj666 - 04-12-2011 10:47 AM |
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choochoo7777, it's seems like you need to justify your decision to move away from the C-200 somewhat (which is the usual story behind the "I had this, now I have this" comments in threads). Whilst I do agree with a lot of your points, I can tell you that the C-200 is streaming full Blu-ray's over the network and untouched Blu-ray/HDDVD remuxes perfectly fine here. My principle streaming devices are two Unraid servers (hooked together via NFS), but I've also tested from the Vista box (download PC) and Windoze 7 box (main PC). As you can imagine I have a rather peculiar network setup at home and everything works fine. Files range from untouched DVD -> MKV, my own SD and HD captures from SkyUK, various HD caps from Japanese and US HDTV, and of course original HD-DVD and Blu-ray remuxes to .TS container. So far I'm at 99.9% success rate on playback since probably mid-last-year. No, I'm neither a shill, nor a tech guru (changing anything on the Lunix servers scares me to death :-)). I generally create my own files and have a system for processing each file type/source and stick to it. Main problem I see with "bug reports" on the C-200 is people's preference to be downloading some useless re-encode (I cringe when I see people still actually still using Xvid+MP3 in 2011) and sheer laziness regarding fixing, or post-processing the files. Having seen a Boxee in action, I would say it's a perfect solution for general person wanting to stream internet content (I set one up for a colleague at work a little while ago), however I didn't try any local file playback. Personally, I'm not using any such "apps" built into the player (and have no interest in torrents or usenet downloading as I have a specific PC for that), so can't comment on the quality of the ones supported in the C-200. I can imagine Joe Public who would be happy with shoddy quality from internet streaming would like a nice UI with bells and whistles etc. Future of PCH? I don't really know, certainly I agree that Sigma is having a very good video processor and for my playback needs is working well. My personal needs would certainly fall into the "niche" market segment, as I know the usual movie pirate rather than home theatre user forms the majority of business. Personally, if there was no YAMJ, it would certainly be a different story - for me, that's really what's differentiating C-200 from other players (with an extremely large video collection it's also extremely useful and faster to maintain YAMJ directly on the Linux server)... We do now see the option with Dune/MyMovies combination to actually have a movie list on an Ipad/Iphone to play movies directly from there, would hope a similar controlability (without installing anything on the PCH side) would be implemented in the future. Of course, with the newer Sigma chip having built in XMBC and higher speed, this will of course also be interesting. Would be nice also to have an option to use the higher quality Sigma scaler with the new model, or an option to bypass any scaling and let our external scalers do the necessary conversions. Regarding a HTPC - with the relatively new LAV splitter/audio and CUDA video decoder combination, I can imagine it would be relatively painless nowadays (I think there is also a DirectShow version of XBMC these days also). With the previously bug-ridden Haali splitter installed, would have been (for me) no possibility to use a HTPC and get the same playback quality I do from the C-200. I can imagine rather than buying some integrated solution, it would be better (albeit more expensive) to build a HTPC from separate components. Cheers, -jj- |
| Posted by halfelite - 04-12-2011 02:04 AM |
| Atom D510 NM10 Chipset 1 x 200Pin Next-Gen NVIDIA ION |
| Posted by defected07 - 04-12-2011 02:01 AM |
(04-12-2011 12:05 AM)halfelite Wrote: The box was a disappointment when it came to 1080p content more often then not it would struggle What were the specs on yours? |
| Posted by Nodak - 04-12-2011 01:27 AM |
(04-12-2011 12:57 AM)Steve.Young Wrote: I dunno, I went into our boxee box the other day and it had bang bros and youporn with no parental checks before you could launch the application. Unless you're okay with that sort of thing *shrugs* I haven't found the parental setting yet but I'm just letting you know ahead of time Settings: Adult: check hide adult: set password. Boxee Box is great for online stuff but its no Popcorn hour when it comes to local play back. |
| Posted by Steve.Young - 04-12-2011 12:57 AM |
(04-11-2011 11:21 PM)halfelite Wrote:(04-11-2011 11:06 PM)choochoo7777 Wrote: You guys are so caught up on fanboying the popcorn hour you totally missed the point and the much bigger picture. I myself like the popcorn hour for what it is... a hacked, over-engineered, non-mainstream tinkering gadget that does much stuff ...and pretty much was the first on the market to do what it does. First doesn't make you best though ..especially when there are much more powerful machines less than 300 dollars that can do what any pch can do ... only better. They opened up the market ... there will always be someone nipping at your heals making something better I dunno, I went into our boxee box the other day and it had bang bros and youporn with no parental checks before you could launch the application. Unless you're okay with that sort of thing *shrugs* I haven't found the parental setting yet but I'm just letting you know ahead of time |
| Posted by halfelite - 04-12-2011 12:05 AM |
(04-11-2011 11:59 PM)defected07 Wrote: halfelite: how do you like the Zotac ZBOX? If I were to step outside the Popcorn Hour circle, I'd check out the Zotac ZBOX--seems great on paper. Is it possible to stack say a B110 chip with an Intel? Build a device that's great for streaming/widget content, and also for HD media playback? The box was a disappointment when it came to 1080p content more often then not it would struggle |
| Posted by defected07 - 04-11-2011 11:59 PM |
| halfelite: how do you like the Zotac ZBOX? If I were to step outside the Popcorn Hour circle, I'd check out the Zotac ZBOX--seems great on paper. Is it possible to stack say a B110 chip with an Intel? Build a device that's great for streaming/widget content, and also for HD media playback? |
| Posted by halfelite - 04-11-2011 11:21 PM |
(04-11-2011 11:06 PM)choochoo7777 Wrote: You guys are so caught up on fanboying the popcorn hour you totally missed the point and the much bigger picture. I myself like the popcorn hour for what it is... a hacked, over-engineered, non-mainstream tinkering gadget that does much stuff ...and pretty much was the first on the market to do what it does. First doesn't make you best though ..especially when there are much more powerful machines less than 300 dollars that can do what any pch can do ... only better. They opened up the market ... there will always be someone nipping at your heals making something better This is the statement that gets me. There is no machine yet that can do what the pch can do except for other like players dune,xtreamer. Take the ps3 in all its hacked glory cannot bitstream dts-hd and even true-hd is hit or miss using the ffmpeg lib that xbmc uses. Yes it can do these natively from the ps3 os on a bluray disk but that is it. This is one of the pitfalls for most machines there is no support for DTS-HD outside of real disc's. And that hardware and software needed to support this costs more then the PCH. If you build in htpc it has to run windows 7 has to have one of the newer atom boards Which might not handle high bitrate 1080p all the well at times and if you dont run an atom the sound cards that do support dts-hd and truehd bitstream cost around 125$ then add the cost of windows 7 as linux cant do the bitstream work that is another 120$ we are already up to $245 on two pieces of alone and Last i checked powerdvd was only software to support bitstream and thats retail disc's alone. and stealing the copies of windows is not an option as that defeats comparing prices for any hardware then. Yes the Media stream market is changing no one is saying otherwise but there is still no one company has built a fit all mediaplayer for everyones needs. The boxeebox tried to step into the market with the UI and online content a lot of the US folk have been craving and it was a hit for the purpose, it did not go so well for the strictly media playing people as they did not need all that nor people outside the US. This is a tough market no matter how you put it. The people from each country want there own stuff. People in the US crave netflix, while people in china crave rmvb support other countries call for IPTV support. There is to many variables to go into a single player. While some may come close like running an htpc with xbmc/boxee/plex with all its plugins its still a long task of installing and setting up everything you want. This debate can go on forever. What media player that fits your needs might not fit my needs. and calling people fanboys on an popcorn hour forum seems funny. we all own a popcorn hour here so of course we like it. and will defend our purchase that we made. Just like you coming here not owning a pch anymore trying to defend the route that you took. If you stop and really look around here you will have seen the most of us have went through double digit media players, building htpc, to this day I still buy new media players so far the c200 and a200 have fit my needs the best, I still bought a zotac zbox for the purpose of checking it out as an htpc, Im still debating picking up a boxee box to see if its easy for my kid to use. |
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