Author Topic: NMT / Media Player Comparisons (Read 151787 times)

leomar · « **Reply #30 on:** Jul 07, 2008 at 12:03 PM »

Quote from: gren on Jul 04, 2008 at 02:38 PM

hey, it worked!

i shared drive d (my bd drive), and it showed video_ts and audio_ts. pressing ENTER (on the remote) played the disc.

mind you, this is a pirated dvd (un-encrypted, or backup dvd). will try to see if it works with original drives (though i doubt it).

so i think, bd playback is also possible since PCH supports VC1 and H264... i guess we have a very promising player, all around network player

mrm · « **Reply #31 on:** Jul 12, 2008 at 11:59 AM »

hi,
I just got my Egreat today. Paid 460 dollars for both items and 60 dollars shipping via DHL. I was tax 2003 pesos for my items by DHL.
All in all I spent 520 dollars and 2003 pesos tax. FYI, my items were under-valued at 160 dollars a piece and labeled as Hard disk sample.
If not for that, I'm sure I would have been taxed more. Will post feedback after I test them. Thanks

Weng! · « **Reply #32 on:** Jul 12, 2008 at 12:04 PM »

Quote from: mrm on Jul 12, 2008 at 11:59 AM

hi,
I just got my Egreat today. Paid 460 dollars for both items and 60 dollars shipping via DHL. I was tax 2003 pesos for my items by DHL.
All in all I spent 520 dollars and 2003 pesos tax. FYI, my items were under-valued at 160 dollars a piece and labeled as Hard disk sample.
If not for that, I'm sure I would have been taxed more. Will post feedback after I test them. Thanks

good for you sir. i was taxed 3000 pesos on my pch + 750gb hdd (labelled as computer parts) with a purchase cost of $304 excluding shipping, arghhhh!!! dunno why the tax was higher than yours.

write your feedback sa e-great thread na binuksan ko para dun na lahat sulat ang mga future e-great owners.

iiinas · « **Reply #33 on:** Jul 13, 2008 at 10:42 PM »

Quote from: leomar on Jul 01, 2008 at 03:26 PM

I haven't researched the egreat, but on the other two i choose (just ordered online) PCH.

TViX 7000a, based on the reviews, is the most stable media player in the market now. For its price, you have usb slave, HDMI 1.3, sata connection. HDMI 1.3 is the best selling point here for DD TrueHD and DTS MA. But it can't bitstream the signals yet, which made the early adopters disappointed. Of course in the future, FWs might be released but no definite time yet.

I choose PCH because of the price/performance ratio. All mkv files in my collection doesn't contain HD sound files, i think the coax will do just fine. I'll just throw in 750gb IDE HDD and enjoy the mkvs.

totally agree with this, i really like the tvix but at almost twice to twice as expensive as the pch, no contest, popcorn rules. as for egreat, it has the same firmware as popcorn + usb slave (that's a great feature to have), does it justify the additional 50$, well, only time can tell. magkakatalo nalang sa build quality yan and reliability. we will just have to wait and see.

btw, popcorn is owned by syabas (the developer of nmt) while egreat just uses the syabas middleware for their product.

gren · « **Reply #34 on:** Jul 14, 2008 at 11:17 PM »

got robbed, er, taxed for 16xx pesos. to think we undervalued it at 50, haha. didn't work. to think that it worked for pch

ah well, thems the breaks.

Quote from: mrm on Jul 12, 2008 at 11:59 AM

hi,
I just got my Egreat today. Paid 460 dollars for both items and 60 dollars shipping via DHL. I was tax 2003 pesos for my items by DHL.
All in all I spent 520 dollars and 2003 pesos tax. FYI, my items were under-valued at 160 dollars a piece and labeled as Hard disk sample.
If not for that, I'm sure I would have been taxed more. Will post feedback after I test them. Thanks

STRIKER · « **Reply #35 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 02:44 PM »

im thinking of getting either the popcorn hour or the novatron in the near future, and i hope to get feedback from my fellow PDVD citizens.

thanks in advance!!!

iiinas · « **Reply #36 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 03:05 PM »

i think with popcorn you can see a lot of feedback on the popcorn hour thread, as a lot of pdvd members have this unit already (myself included). but for novatron, i think this is still quite a new hd media player. first and foremost is how much this novatron cost.

ert · « **Reply #37 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 03:26 PM »

Quote from: iiinaslao on Sep 18, 2008 at 03:05 PM

i think with popcorn you can see a lot of feedback on the popcorn hour thread, as a lot of pdvd members have this unit already (myself included). but for novatron, i think this is still quite a new hd media player. first and foremost is how much this novatron cost.

yup and the most imporatant is firmware update

pinakaokay ang support ng popcorn hour and malaki na kasi yung community niya

iiinas · « **Reply #38 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 04:02 PM »

Quote from: ert on Sep 18, 2008 at 03:26 PM

yup and the most imporatant is firmware update pinakaokay ang support ng popcorn hour and malaki na kasi yung community niya

very true sir ert!

STRIKER · « **Reply #39 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 04:50 PM »

thanks for the inputs guys....
with all due respects... kayo kasi seller ng popcorn hour and syempre love your own.

pero mas interested ako sa inputs ng regular users.

thanks ulit.

iiinas · « **Reply #40 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 04:57 PM »

Quote from: STRIKER on Sep 18, 2008 at 04:50 PM

thanks for the inputs guys....
with all due respects... kayo kasi seller ng popcorn hour and syempre love your own.

pero mas interested ako sa inputs ng regular users.

thanks ulit.

hindi ako seller sir striker. just a regular very satisfied customer of popcorn a-100. you can look at my set-up and some screen shots of the popcorn in action. and if you go to the popcorn thread, daming positive feedback sa mga users doon.

mahirap lang mag comment with novatron kasi wala talaga akong experience with this media player.

http://pinoydvd.com/board/index.php?topic=79172.0

STRIKER · « **Reply #41 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 05:06 PM »

Quote from: iiinaslao on Sep 18, 2008 at 04:57 PM

hindi ako seller sir striker. just a regular very satisfied customer of popcorn a-100. you can look at my set-up and some screen shots of the popcorn in action. and if you go to the popcorn thread, daming positive feedback sa mga users doon.

mahirap lang mag comment with novatron kasi wala talaga akong experience with this media player.

http://pinoydvd.com/board/index.php?topic=79172.0

my mistake bro. sorry.

cheers!!!

iiinas · « **Reply #42 on:** Sep 18, 2008 at 05:10 PM »

Quote from: STRIKER on Sep 18, 2008 at 05:06 PM

my mistake bro. sorry.

cheers!!!

no problem bro, its just funny kasi after i bought this media player, my dv600 and hd-a3 seems to be gathering a little bit of dust so to speak. its that good for me.

Weng! · « **Reply #43 on:** Sep 19, 2008 at 03:45 AM »

Quote from: STRIKER on Sep 18, 2008 at 04:50 PM

thanks for the inputs guys....
with all due respects... kayo kasi seller ng popcorn hour and syempre love your own.

pero mas interested ako sa inputs ng regular users.

thanks ulit.

sir,

kindly check www.mpcclub.com for the latest and popular mkv media players currently sold in the market.

i have not seen novatron brand there.

tama sila sa support, malaki ang community ng popcorn. kahit tvix talo sa costumer support ng popcorn

check www.networkmediatank.com

[joms] · « **Reply #44 on:** Sep 19, 2008 at 06:49 AM »

mga pre, im a noob in this so pasensya na...

... what does popcorn hour do? can you just download content sa internet then have it play ? pwede kahit HD format?

can you link sites where you can download? madami ba and mabilis? around how long does it take to download 1 HD film? (mga 30gb+ right?)

iiinas · « **Reply #45 on:** Sep 19, 2008 at 07:09 AM »

Quote from: [joms] on Sep 19, 2008 at 06:49 AM

mga pre, im a noob in this so pasensya na...

... what does popcorn hour do? can you just download content sa internet then have it play ? pwede kahit HD format?

can you link sites where you can download? madami ba and mabilis? around how long does it take to download 1 HD film? (mga 30gb+ right?)

plays hd content through .mkv file containers, 1 hd movie is around 4-8 gb big, with 1 mbps dsl you can download a movie from 18-24 hours. besides this file format it can also play other formats as well, mpeg, avi, divx plays mp3, wma and others pa.

lithium_deuteride · « **Reply #46 on:** Sep 19, 2008 at 07:33 AM »

Is he new version of the popcorn hour, a-110 ba yon, does it have WLAN or wired lang sya like the a-100?

iiinas · « **Reply #47 on:** Sep 19, 2008 at 10:14 AM »

Quote from: lithium_deuteride on Sep 19, 2008 at 07:33 AM

Is he new version of the popcorn hour, a-110 ba yon, does it have WLAN or wired lang sya like the a-100?

both a-100 and a-110 have no wlan, but the developers are developing a usb wlan stick which will work for both models, it wireless n protocol. i think the connection is still spotty at best. future firmware upgrades will hopefully improve the performance.

ericag_ph · « **Reply #48 on:** Sep 19, 2008 at 01:40 PM »

You have 5 questions:

1. popcorn? - you can use this instead of a PC to play movies. What is nice about it is that it is smaller than a PC, and will probably be cheaper in terms of maintenance and power consumption. It is basically a hard-disc player.
Problem with a lot of hard disc players, is that they don't support .mkv file playback (HD). Popcorn does. However, you can use a PC instead of popcorn. Look under HTPC in using a PC as a player. Advantage of a PC - you can basically play any video format (.mkv,divx,xvid,mp3,DVD,mpeg,VCD, bin,avi,qt, etc..etc..), future and present as long as you have the codec. I use K-lite codec. You will of course be limited by your hard disc capacity. I have about 2TB on a PC for this purpose.

2. HD content? - yes, in the form of .mkv files. It can also play Divx/.AVI files

3. Download? - need a torrent client like uTorrent. Google it to download and setup the client. Check www.mininova.org for the torrent files which you can download. Downloading will slow down your internet connection (so don't do this at work

) Once you have the file, load it into popcorn to play it.

4. madami? Yes, under Prison Break alone, there are 500 torrents I believe. Do a search on 720, 1080 or HD, might give you all the HD torrent listings at minnova.org

5.1 mabilis? - depends on number of seeders and peers downloading the same file. Few seeders (like 1 or 2), will mean it will take a looooong time to download even a small 50MB file. 0 seeders mean you can't download it until someone seeds it.

5.2 how long? - depends on your DSL connection bandwidth, and the number of seeders and peers downloading the same file. A single HD-720p 350MB .mkv (22 minutes running time) torrent file with about 100 seeders and a hundred peers, takes me less than an hour on a 1100kbps (about 140KBps) line. In contrast, 5 seasons of Futurama took me about 2 months to download non-stop. My mistake was to download everything at the same time. Should have been a few episodes (4-7) at a time.

Quote from: [joms] on Sep 19, 2008 at 06:49 AM

mga pre, im a noob in this so pasensya na...

... what does popcorn hour do? can you just download content sa internet then have it play ? pwede kahit HD format?

can you link sites where you can download? madami ba and mabilis? around how long does it take to download 1 HD film? (mga 30gb+ right?)

lithium_deuteride · « **Reply #49 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 02:34 AM »

So you need a PC to download the files that you can later transfer to the NMT? Hindi sya like a PS3 which can download files by itself?

penguin230 · « **Reply #50 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 06:44 AM »

not necessarily, nmt's have their own torrent application, as long as it is connected to the internet. however, if the torrent you downloaded is in rar form, you need the pc to un-rar it

and for me, if the audio is in dts, i still need o convert it to ac3, so pc padin. not an issue at all because i still connect my egreat to the pc to copy files over and arrange my mkvs (rename, etc)

jackryan · « **Reply #51 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 08:08 AM »

you may also want to consider the EGreat models, which I think has more built-in features rather the the Popcorns... but Novatron seems more promising too. (disclosure: i own the egreat and the novatron and used to have a popcorn)

Javoy · « **Reply #52 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 08:15 AM »

Quote from: penguin230 on Sep 21, 2008 at 06:44 AM

not necessarily, nmt's have their own torrent application, as long as it is connected to the internet. however, if the torrent you downloaded is in rar form, you need the pc to un-rar it

and for me, if the audio is in dts, i still need o convert it to ac3, so pc padin. not an issue at all because i still connect my egreat to the pc to copy files over and arrange my mkvs (rename, etc)

If you are willing to tinker around with your PCH, you can actually setup telnet and also install the unrar software on the device itself. I have set these up on my PCH and when I download files in rar form, I just simply telnet to the device and unrar from there. No need to transfer it back to the PC or Mac.

lithium_deuteride · « **Reply #53 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 08:46 AM »

I see. Thats good then. Its just that I don't want to leave my PC on overnight or while I am at work to download gigabytes of stuff.

lithium_deuteride · « **Reply #54 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 08:54 AM »

jackryan, your disclosure makes you this board's undisputed nmt guru

. So Novatron is best. Can you explain the advantages of Egreat over PCH and Novatron over Egreat.

penguin230 · « **Reply #55 on:** Sep 21, 2008 at 10:17 AM »

Quote from: Javoy on Sep 21, 2008 at 08:15 AM

If you are willing to tinker around with your PCH, you can actually setup telnet and also install the unrar software on the device itself. I have set these up on my PCH and when I download files in rar form, I just simply telnet to the device and unrar from there. No need to transfer it back to the PC or Mac.

ahh ok, i thought downloading rar'd files would be a problem for the pch. btw, i dont have the pch, i have the egreat m31a which i can just connect to the pc, so no problem for me.

lithium: currently i think there are 2 models for the pch (a100 and a110) and 2 for the egreat (m31a and m31b) available locally. im not sure about the novatron. nmts are pretty much the same, when i bought my m31a, here are the differences considered:

100 - no usb slave, no dts decoding, pass through lang
m31a - usb slave, no dts decoding, pass through lang ( for files with dts audio, i just convert from dts to ac3)

110 - usb slave narin ata, hdmi 1.3, with optional dts decoding (converted to pcm stereo)
m31b - usb slave, hdmi 1.3, with optional dts decoding (converted to pcm stereo)

i suggest you check out these threads for more info on the pch and egreat

PCH - http://pinoydvd.com/board/index.php?topic=79099.0
e-great - http://pinoydvd.com/board/index.php?topic=80632.90

you may also want to consider the hdx1000.
hdx - http://www.hdx1080.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=3&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=115&vmcchk=1&Itemid=115

regarding firmware updates, nauuna pch. then egreat release comes around 1-2 weeks after.

- jb

popoyextreme · « **Reply #56 on:** Sep 23, 2008 at 06:55 PM »

post deleted

ravencreed · « **Reply #57 on:** Sep 24, 2008 at 01:43 PM »

is there a local seller ba ng hdx brand?

[joms] · « **Reply #58 on:** Sep 24, 2008 at 02:06 PM »

While researching for my NMT, i wrote down some stuff which might be usefull for you guys. I haven't been able to verify other info though so i just left it blank.

Price (manufacturer)
Shipping (to pinas)
Price (via Intl) exc. Tax
Price (via local seller)

Chipset
Firmware
Memory

HDMI

USB

Network

Hard Drive Connection

Hard Drive Format

Cooling

S/PDIF Optical Output

Coax Optical Output

DTS Decoding

eSATA

Warranty

Card Reader
(SD/MMC/Memstick)

Wifi

Case

Power On/Off Switch
Power On/Off via Remote
Max HD tested

Available locally

Local authorized seller:

Popcorn Hour A-110
www.popcornhour.com.ph

USD $215
USD $49
P12,672 at P48/$1
P13,500 (promo)

Sigma Designs 8635 Rev C.
same
256MB

1.3a

2x Host
1x Slave

Ethernet 10/100

SATA

NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3

Passive

1

0

Yes

0

1month replacement
1 year service

0

Optional (Dongle)

Steel

No
Yes
1TB

Yes

pinoydvd handle = "ert"
Ert Cell# 09175302988

EG-M31B
www.egreathd.com

USD $249

P14,000

Sigma Designs 8635 Rev C.
same
512MB

1.3a

2x Host
1x Slave

Ethernet 10/100

SATA

NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3

Fan

1

0

Yes

1

16months

0

Optional (Dongle)

Plastic

Yes
Yes
1TB

Yes

pinoydvd handle = "gren"
Ehome Tel No. 7445923

HDX1000
www.hdx1080.com

USD $219
USD $50
P12,912 at P48/$1
no local seller

Sigma Designs 8635 Rev C.
same
512MB

1.3a

1x Host/1x for Card Reader
1x Slave

Ethernet 10/100

SATA

NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3

Passive

1

1

Yes

0

no local warranty

1

Optional (Dongle)

Solid Aluminum Alloy

Yes

1TB

No

FYI:

a) eSATA is not usefull because the transfer speed is CAPPED to be somewhere near the range of USB due to the limitation of the chipset
b) eSATA/USB Host is used to connect an external Hard Disk to your PCH/EG/HX1000 to read/write
c) eSATA/USB slave is used to connect your PCH/EG/HX1000 to a PCs Sata/USB for the PC to control the HD inside your PCH/EG/HX1000
d) NMT are cheaper than HTPC but can do much less (video editing/word/excel/etc) but it does what it's supposed to (play all types of video).
e) Main advantage of NMT over HTPC is that it only consumes less watts (around 36W) as against an HTPC (around 200W+)
f) File size of movies: 720P .mkv = 4GB / 1080p .mkv = 8GB
g) Sample HD pics = http://myhdworld.multiply.com/photos/album/7/New_Screenshots_by_user_Munskie_Check_out_the_quality_Must_see#
h) For your ext2/ext3 formatted HD to be recognized by Windows, you first need to install Ext2IFS_1_11.exe to your windows system. Download it here http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html

milken · « **Reply #59 on:** Sep 24, 2008 at 04:29 PM »

I own Egreat M31b. You may want to update your comparison re egreat.

Introductory Price: P15,000.00 with 500gb SATA HDD (I heard the price is going to increase bec. of the exchange rate)
Local seller: eHome http://pinoydvd.com/board/index.php?topic=81230.0
HDMI 1.3a
DTS internal decoding: yes; via (1) add-on board OR (2) next firmware update. [all the 3 nmt can't decode dts internally yet but will do in the next firmware update. in the meantime, egreat allows the option to add a dts board so that you'll get a dts sound. (I prefer to have my receiver decode dts though). No available add-on option exists in popcorn hour and hdx at the present]
Warranty: 1 year

I don't think the chipset limitation applies to transferring contents from PC to egreat and vice versa via eSATA (egreat connected as slave). I was able to transfer 4.3gb file in less than 2 mins (1 min 45 sec).

Both Egreat and HDX received the Editor's Choice in mpcclub.com. Aside from the three above, there's Elektron EHP-606 and the new Kaiboer K100. Check out this thread: http://mpcclub.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=672 You can click "NMT clash file" to download MPC's comparison.