detail information

The limitations expected began to reveal themselves when looking at the abilities of network streaming where at first the player could not handle SMB/NFS. An updated firmware resolved this limitation and added network streaming where the player now detects all shares automatically which can be browsed like on a PC.

The software that comes with the player for PC streaming is basic and simple. You install it on the PC and then add shares to the software, have it scanned and indexed after which they are available on the player using the “MyMedia” options. Options in the software allow some settings for having the server software start on boot and a tab for Internet media which can be added (Audio and Video) using “links”.

On the player itself, you can select some basic filters that separate the internet content from local content by selecting “All Videos”, “Internet Videos” or simply “My Folders” which allows browsing the folders as they are created by you.

I'm not impressed with the software given, we usually measure these against full blown UPnP media servers that include numerous filters, options and then some. The software seems far too underdeveloped to go thru live as a “media server application” and reminds me of the simple approach with old KiSS-Technology players and the poor PC-Link application.

A positive is that Conceptronic acknowledged the importance of SMB and NFS and this saves the player from flunking in the network section but it seems there are still some problematic issues.

Browsing the “MyMedia” option our NAS server is detected immediately. Our media is stored on the “media” share and while we can access the NAS and browse to the media folder, somehow the player fails entering this folder to reach the media while the folder has full Public access/Guest access - incompatible with the Synology DS-508 system.

I can see there is a lot of activity on the NAS server so, the player is accessing it, but somehow gets stuck as opening the folder seems impossible. This is likely incompatibility between certain NAS servers and the CFULLHDMA, but enforces limitations upon users using the Auto SMB function only.

If the issues would relate to Guest and Public access, we should have the option entering a network password and user. If the CFULLHDMA sees the access is not allowed (access denied) it will prompt with such password fields (we could not make it work yet to connect with user/pass either).

But if the player sees the folder is accessible, like in my case, it never prompts and gets stuck for 10 minutes trying after the unit locks up completely. This is a risk falling upon the users. I must add, only 2 of the 16 players so far has this issue/ incompatibility and both use Auto SMB. It seems the mounting codes used might be the cause of this and Conceptronic is investigating the issue…

My comments on this:

• The player should not keep attempting to access the drive for a full 10 minutes and longer! (It should know it is failing sooner than that and definitely not lock up on me, prompting for a user/password)
• To avoid incompatibility and offer a solution to many custom situations, Auto SMB browsing should co-exist with an option to enter fixed network paths and credentials from the Setup menu.

We tested with ReadyNAS DUO and the PC, and there things seems to work well using Guest and Public access. NFS was also detected automatically. We also noticed in some efforts to connect, the player would not detect the servers and shares but just keeps “searching”…

These issues happen once in a while so mostly the detection is fine.

Digging deeper into the network issues, we also found the internet options (iMedia) not working when the player failed to find the servers. This indicates once in a while that it might not be using the DHCP details offered by the router. We checked the settings and each time the DHCP settings given to the player have been correct.

When connecting a USB device (I left my USB stick used to downgrade the FW in the player), going to the MyMedia menu only showed the USB stick and there seems no way to have the network devices scanned if the player fails initially on boot to detect these. Another reboot revealed both the USB stick and the network servers.

In the end, few issues have been detected but overall the network was functioning except for some scanning and incompatibility with the Synology DS-508. According to Conceptronic, other Synology servers work fine but we did not verify this.

Completing our first impression

Media playback