Another A-210 vs A-300 thread

[Vaughan]

Hi,

I'm looking to replace my WD TV Live with a new device.
I've always wanted a Popcorn Hour, so I'm seriously thinking about getting a A-210.
My local supplier sells the A-210 @ 180€ and the A-300 @ 250€
Is there any compelling reason for me to consider spending the extra 70€ on the A-300?
The main usage will be MKV via SMB.

Any assistance would be appreacited

Regards
V

[accident]

the 200 is older meaning it's just a matter of time until sigma stops supporting the chipset.. once that happens, while syabas can continue to support it to some degree, there will be things they can never be fixed because certain code is locked down for licensing reasons.. this is what happened to the 100 series essentially..

Also the 300 chips can do more, even though syabas has not made them do more yet it's just a matter of time that new features will not be available to a 200 owner..

With that said, the 200 is excellent and I personally wouldn't update a 200 to a 300 for no other reason.. It's a harder question to answer when your looking at first purchase or own an older model. It may meet your needs and save a little money. can you get more specific on what you'd like to do with it. right now just about any modern tv can do what you want.

[Vaughan]

Thanks for the reply accident. I hear what you are saying about the new chipset and I will definitely keep that in mind.

What I would like to do with it:
Setup: 100Mbit wired connection to a Win7 server hosting content via SMB. HDMI to entry Yamaha AVR (5.1) which via HDMI to a 1080P Plasma.
Content: MKV files in 720P and 1080P. Mainly movies and series.
Nice-to-have: trakt integration and the ability to see what content I have watched and what content I am currently busy with.

I'm looking for a reliable and responsive device that can access the content on my network.
The WD TV Live that I currently use serves fine as a USB player, but the network discovery is horrible.

I will shop around a bit more to see if I can't find a better price on the A-300.

[Vaughan]

Update:
Well I've managed to source a A-300 with a wireless dongle for a reasonable price (215€ shipped) so I've gone ahead and ordered that. With a bit of luck I will have a new toy for the weekend
In the meantime I'll read through the wiki and forum to get an idea of what I'm in for.

Regards
V

[accident]

welcome.. if it's a little quirky just hang in there because in the next couple weeks a big firmware update is coming out.. it's already out for the larger c300 model.

[Vaughan]

Thanks for the welcome and the heads up. I'm looking forward to my experience with the device and my stay here on the forum.

[tuig]

question. having a A-210 that runs most of the time ok, but when i use nzbget, it is not doing more than 4 mb/s. So, i want to move to the A-300, since i get the impression it is a bit faster on the LAN side, correct ?
I use it with int HD ( 3 GB ) only, and hardly use the subtitle part.

Now, can i put the HD from the a-210 into the A-300 , and keep my movies ? Or does that give some serious anomaly's ...
I assume most ( or all ) homebrew apps ( like NZBget and Oversight ) will not work on the A-300 ?

Thanxs !

[chris57]

Changing players will not solve any problems with nzbget etc. nzbgtet is part of the standard NMT Apps.

If you mean can I use the CSI to install later versions then yes you can. You can also use oversight i believe, dont use it so ask in the Oversight section of the forum.

Personally I would wait for the 200 series and the long awaited update to flash and NMJv2. There is extra LAN and cpu power but its not enough to justify the expense if you already have a 200 series in my opinion.

You will have to reformat your HDD via a Fresh format. So you'd need to move your content and then move it back after the NMT Apps install.

[tuig]

Ah, ok. Is the A300 using a different ext on the HD .. I thought it was ext3 ? Is that different on the new model ? No problem to pump it from A to B,it only takes some hours, if not days on 11 mbs FTP.

The reason i want to upgrade is also the fact that the A210 is getting a bit wonky lately. Needs more and more reboots, and the cpu is very slow, also on the unrar part of the NZB process.
I also did not know that nzbget is standard ?

Anyway, thanxs for the reply. After searching for a few weeks for a HTPC alternative, i always came back to this brand model..therefore i ordered it today, including a new 3 TB 5400 HD.
I'm sure i can make a relative happy with the old A210

best

[accident]

(07-22-2012 05:09 PM)tuig Wrote:  Ah, ok. Is the A300 using a different ext on the HD .. I thought it was ext3 ? Is that different on the new model ? No problem to pump it from A to B,it only takes some hours, if not days on 11 mbs FTP.

In theory it should work but i don't think anyone really tried to see what would happen or if there is any way to easily do this. It would be all guesses and theory and with tb's of media files that's not normally a good way to find out it doesn't.

Quote:The reason i want to upgrade is also the fact that the A210 is getting a bit wonky lately. Needs more and more reboots, and the cpu is very slow, also on the unrar part of the NZB process.
I also did not know that nzbget is standard ?

If it's decreased in stability and performance over time and your usenet has functioned exactly the same then it's time for a factory reset. You might want to go as far as firmware recovery then factory reset then upgrade to current firmware. It sounds like that shouldn't help but the whole retesting and mapping of bad sectors on the nand storage, putting a new copy of the firmware and then clearing out any settings that are screwed up from various bugs over the years really makes a difference. Some bugs are fixed literally by changing the default setting for something so not factory resetting doesn't get those changes.

Another possibility is if this is a 3tb or larger drive is it could be misaligned, it would slow down as it fills up more.

And then you are maxing out the unit with usenet, so everything else is borrowing from usenet to do it's thing. It's the catch22, the player can do it all, but that can change how it performs.

[buzzbuzz]

(07-10-2012 04:08 PM)accident Wrote:  Also the 300 chips can do more, even though syabas has not made them do more yet it's just a matter of time that new features will not be available to a 200 owner..

It's interesting to see that the TunIn Radio app is one thing where Werner says it can't be done on the x200 series since most of the streaming protocols aren't supported by the processor.