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| Posted by | Ron Trippaers |
| Posted on | 12/06/08 19:38 |
| Review type | Guide |
„He pauses, reflects and smiles to himself……‟
Hope you enjoyed this article and welcome to the world of Media Players.
I‟m very aware that I have either cleared some things up for you or confused your decision even more. It was an attempt to outline the pit falls, difficulties and tricks of selecting a media player and selecting the right one for your needs. Trust me when I say it could have been made much more difficult by discussing HTPC, Media Centres, Extenders, Gaming consoles with media functionality and all kinds of "mods" available… We could have additionally discussed all the enhancements we‟d like to see along with integration of album art, Web radio functions, Blu-ray drives and then some…
We Europeans tend to wish for the ultimate "hybrid" player, a small box that does it all, costs no more than €500, is future proof and that includes the following features: SMB, NFS, UPnP, Blu-ray support, extender capabilities, online features, music and picture support all together at a "mature" level all combined with a nice attractive interface to work with and if remotely possible, we‟d like to check our email and read up on the latest stories online on the side too. Now that‟s not a lot to ask for is it?
I‟m aware a lot of ground has been left uncovered in this article but as stated, I could write a book on this subject so if there is anything you would like to know or want to have my opinion on, just make a comment and I will respond to the best of my ability. There‟s a lot of room for progress on these players, all of them, no exceptions, and if anything I believe that possibly we have seen a regression in services offered. So don‟t expect the perfect little player, accept it as a fun little toy to play with that either makes your life easier or brings plain horror into your home if you have made the wrong choice.
Did I scare you?
Good…at least you‟l be asking advice before making a purchase in the future huh? Consider these products as a bridge towards times where more mature and more robust products will come. It‟ still a fledgling market, a sort of work in progress across the board. That‟ my 2 cents in a nutshell…
Enjoy Hi-Jack @ www.mpcclub.com
Deciding on the right player
The fact remains all of the MPC devices are buggy as hell and can't beat having a good HTPC..
Some like to fly with Boeing, others prefer helicopters...
Both can fly but are pretty different, same with HTPC and DMA comparissons. They are two total different things.
Anyway, any discussion with you is too much for me. It took only few words of yours to see how short sided you are and incapable of making a point rather than do some cheap response like this, making any discussion with you uninteresting for me.
PS: Don't blame CDFreaks for this reaction. I am not attached to this site...
Enjoy
Earlier when there were fewer articles being read by more people, this sort of hard work could be justified but now when there are more articles being read by fewer people, I can understand the reasons for a text only format.
Another propblem is that most of the products sold today are a work in progress. We no longer get finished products as it used to be but serve as beta testers paying the full price while the brands created a habit of delivering upon everything later on with firmware upgrades. How long would such articles be valid...?
The article made now targeted 3 key points:
- Players are not that different as many would expect
- Players don't live up to their hype and usage of "labels"
- Players are not completed products and work in progress
As far as people can make the link with HTPC (meaning some don;t understand the purpose of the article) and make claims how unstable these are (even when the article already stated that), i would mainly ask to remove the illegal content making the HTPC work (off the shelf comparison) and off course ask since when they have a stable windows that not needs patching every week either with anti virus soft, Spyware, Spam or Windows patches... (unless using linux but that is a very limited amount of people)
Another problem, I wouldn't even know where to start making such solutions available. I can write about opinions and what i see but i'm not as good a reporter to make such articles which indeed would be better.
Remains time available as well... Sites often are communities so spending days on articles for sitres with no income is impossible. I would expect such articles from sites like ZDNet and PCMagazine... (but they spend even less time on tests than us community freaks...)
Enjoy
The point is that anyone that wants to buy a MPC should be informed but ultimately should decide for him or herself.
The article provides good, clean and simple information and thats what is important.
I have a TVIX and i am very happy with my choice. Its a bit expensive but it does everything i want.
Thanx for the article.
I particularly liked the info on the chips. I had no idea. Very useful.
What I would like to have seen more of would have been splitting the players by usage: the ones where you stick a usb flasf drive and press play, the ones that have an HDD networked etc. Note that you didn't have the info, it was just spread too much.
Also, i would have liked if you had included peculiarities of the players (not being able to handle types of xvid, etc.)
The players with USB slave have benefits (when shopping for one you can check if they have one) as you can connect these to PC and trasnfer data. This is important as transferring data over the network is killingly slow due to the limitd I/O abilities of the chips.
Players with HDMI 1.3 will be able to handle HD Audio (TViX already does in the M-6500A now in a recent update) but there are other players with HDMI 1.3 that will play catch up now. This with HDMI 1.3 will never be able to support these...
Anyway... Everyone is welcome to post questions. We prefer giving up to data information at the right time instead of maybe leaving an outdated schematics online we might not be able to keep up to date...
HDMI 1.1 will never be able to handle HD Audio.
This message was edited at: 11-09-2008 02:59
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