A-210 Specs - clarifications needed

[cutter]

I'm thinking of purchasing the A210, but I am a bit confused about what the box officially supports.

Looking at the official product comparison matrix (accessible from the "buy now" link), I can see that full BD navigation is not supported. Browsing through the forum, I got the impression that this feature has now been implemented but is still somewhat buggy. Is this correct? I don't care about the bugs; I'm sure that over time, they will be ironed out as long as this feature is officially supported. If, on the other hand, this feature was introduced as a side-effect of a new F/W but will never be officially supported by PCH/Syabas, I would like to know in order to turn to the C200.

Thank you for your time.

[zy2238]

I have an A-201 on order and also was wondering about full menu blu-ray support. I found a recent post claiming that the last firmware update provided full menu support.

http://tinyurl.com/3ogwpg5
"A210/200 Owners: When I bought A210 I was little worried that it doesn't support full BD menu only BD lite. I remember having a chat with George regarding this. But in their latest firmware update they have give full BD support to A210 and 200. I ripped my Matix collection to full BD folder structure and not only PCH played beautifully i was able to access complete BD menu !!!!! PCH rocks :-)"

However, without verification from Popcorn Hour tech support, or a few A-210 current owners I am somewhat doubtful of the above report.

[accident]

It does do it for unprotected content however it's a suddenly appeared feature and nobody knows if it will always do this.

[chris57]

The A210 does not have a bluray license unlike the C200.

So it will only play unencrypted content.

In theory if that content has a menu then it will play all of the disc including the menu, Full Navigation. BD authoring is not set yet we are seeing all sorts of different ways with submenus for languages, main menus, and direct playback as three that come quickly to mind. Whether all three types will play I don't know, which is why I say in theory. The submenu ones don't play even on the C200 yet.

Full Navigation was what was recently implemented in the A2x0 firmware, before that you had SimpleBD as the playback option. SimpleBD is what the vast majority of players use to play BD, basically it reads the playlist and plays only the movie no menu. Only the C200 and some Dune models have BD licenses. SimpleBd is known also as BDLite on some players. The 200 also has AVCHD for those that like to create their own files with their own menus etc.

Whether the BD license guys could mussle Syabas to withdraw the Full Navigation from the non licensed player is an impossible question to answer. I would imagine a lot of very unhappy C200 owners if it became a problem.

[Dave_D]

For the meantime call it an undocumented feature.

However, if your sole reason for choosing the A-210 is for this specific feature, go for the C200 so there's no false expectations from Syabas nor it's support channel.

[cutter]

It looks like the C200 is a much safer choice. Pity cause I liked the size and design of the A210 way better than that of the C200.
Thank you all for your answers.

[Pain]

(07-26-2011 10:45 AM)cutter Wrote:  It looks like the C200 is a much safer choice. Pity cause I liked the size and design of the A210 way better than that of the C200.
Thank you all for your answers.

Even though having full menu support seems like a must have, ask yourself how much you are going to use it.
Personally I quickly grew tired of having to wait for menus to load, choose soundtrack, subtitles etc. Now I only rip the main movie, with one soundtrack and one subtitle.
Much better, the movie starts immediately when I click play.

[cutter]

(07-27-2011 12:04 AM)Pain Wrote:  

(07-26-2011 10:45 AM)cutter Wrote:  It looks like the C200 is a much safer choice. Pity cause I liked the size and design of the A210 way better than that of the C200.
Thank you all for your answers.

Even though having full menu support seems like a must have, ask yourself how much you are going to use it.
Personally I quickly grew tired of having to wait for menus to load, choose soundtrack, subtitles etc. Now I only rip the main movie, with one soundtrack and one subtitle.
Much better, the movie starts immediately when I click play.

You are absolutely right about this. Menus can be a real pain. On the other hand, if you decide to forego full BD functionality, you practically lose the ability to watch the extras. Now, on 90% of the cases I wouldn't mind that, but on some truly classic films the extras are a pleasure to watch and are very nice to have.