Finally gave in yesterday and bought my 4th personal NMT unit. (Before this I've bought an egreat 31b, egreat r1, hdmc player).
I figured a lot of people are in the same boat as me. Early adaptors of the NMT craze and now looking to upgrade from their 1st gen players.
Why the upgrade? Frustration. It's quite frustrating to be watching a movie and halfway into it you'll get stutters or the clip will just stop. Speed is also another factor. I don't want to wait 4 minutes anymore to play a movie! Also if you're like me who has a 2tb external HD you'll need to wait forever to be able to browse it.
I've always been quite disorganized with my NMT's. You know... I have movies everywhere. External HD, internal, PC, other NMT's etc. I never really got around to fully organize everything. This time around I want to be able to organize my stuff properly.
So on with the contenders for this upgrade.
1. Popcorn Hour A-200
2. Mede8er
3. HDPro
4. Eaget
5. Xtreamer
6. Xtreamer Pro
First one eliminated from the list is the Xtreamer. Sure it's currently the most popular one out there but I've heard some bad stories about it as well. Also I'm not that happy with the remote.
One major requirement for me is ease of scanning through a movie. With my Egreat I can just type any number and it will go to the corresponding percentage of the clip.
Also it doesn't support 3.5"HD's. I checked out the Xtreamer Pro. This one supports 3.5" HD's BUT it still has the same remote!
Next was Eaget and HDPro. I've browsed this forum so many times on these two items. I figured it's just like the Mede8er. Only cheaper. I'm correct of course. It doesn't have the same support userbase as that of the Mede8er. Firmware updates are not common on these things although they did release a new one recently.
Another requirement I had right now was that this new NMT that I'm going to buy needs to have the bells and whistles. YES it needs to be faster than my old one. That's a given on all these 2nd gen NMT's. This time around it needs to be flashy! It's UI needs to be a knockout! I should be able to impress people who'd want to watch and scan through my files! YAMJ or YAMJ like UI would be GREAT!
Eaget and HDPro probably could handle this. However I did not see that much movement in their community. Google these two NMT's and you're not going to get a lot of results. What if I run into some problems in the future? Who do I ask? What if I want to try out new things? There's no active community (except here in PDVD) for these two NMT's. If there was any it would have probably been in Chinese.
The Popcorn Hour A-200 UI is perfect I thought. It has the BEST remote out there. Still has the same scanning functionality I loved in my Egreat unit. The price is quite expensive. I dont' think I can pay double considering the Eaget and HDPRo were 5k and 5.8k respectively. But still it was quite enticing. The community support is phenomenal on this thing. The popcorn hour community is the biggest one out there! It's got YAMJ! It's got everything! Backlit remote rocks!
Next was the Mede8er. It was more expensive than the Eaget and HDPro but they're basically the same damn thing. Save for the user base. The Mede8er community is also flourishing. It's a best seller in Europe. There are a ton of firmware updates and there's huge potential for UI to match the popcorn hour. However it was more expensive. I hated this. It's the same damn thing! Only 50% more expensive. The 2 year warranty was enticing.
I had to eliminate majority of my choices.
I went to eHome to check out the three remaining units that I wanted to give a shot to.
1. Popcorn Hour A-200
2. Xtreamer PRO (i must admit it was a longshot)
3. Mede8er
I took out HDPro and Eaget mainly for their lack of support. Yes I know this is not the most important thing. But I was thinking it was an upgrade for me and I wanted all the bells and whistles even if there's a chance I won't use these too much.
First one I looked at was the Xtreamer Pro. MAN! This thing is so small!!! You'll wonder where the "NMT" circuitry is! The mainboard I think is in the backpart of the xtreamer pro. Basically I felt that this thing had "overheat" written all over it. Imagine it has one tiny fan supporting the NMT board and 2 big Hard drives. It doesn't have good air flow as the whole thing is pretty much sealed save for the exhaust fan. For about 8k this offered nothing in terms of advantage I needed against the regular Xtreamer (which I didn't really like). Scrapped Xtreamer Pro.
Next was the Mede8er. I knew it. It was basically the same as the HDPro. I checked the Remote... it uses a similar way of scanning as the Egreat except this one you typed in the minutes. A little more work (if you can call it that). If you wanted to go at the 10 minute mark you pressed 1 and 0... and so on. It had a 2 year warranty. I checked the UI and you can customize it using a YAMJ converter. It has pretty good tweaking capabilities. I was also shown the latest preview features of the new Firmware. 3.5" hd support was nice.
Next was my best bet... the Popcorn Hour A-200. WTF?!!? This thing looks like a Tupperware container. Yes, this thing is as flimsy as it can get. It's made of plastic. Like lock and lock! It really did feel cheap. I can't believe I'm paying for twice as much as the EAGET and XTreamer for this. I couldn't muster paying for this given it's bad aesthetic design. It had everything I wanted... the remote, the community, the reputation, YAMJ, 3.5"hd. However it didn't feel worth it. It honestly felt cheap.
At the end of the day I realized that the PCH's advantage in terms of community exposure over the Mede8er is something I can live with. Yes more people have PCH's and their community is more active. I felt that the Mede8er community was enough for my needs.
... and thus my decision.
I left EHome with the Mede8er. Upgraded the firmware to the latest one which came out only 2 weeks prior 3. something.
I must say I'm pretty satisfied with my purchase. I took my time on this decision. Months literally. Up until the last minute I had 2 NMT's in contention.
So now it's time to organize my files and create this new fancy "about.jpg" to keep my new NMT cool.
Sorry for the long read.
Sana makatulong to sa mga hanggang ngayon nagdedecide parin
BTW I didn't mean to badmouth all the others that I didn't choose. I did try to look for the advantages of all these players.
thanks
