Hi, I had a quick question regarding the capabilities of the Realtek chipsets used in these boxes. I am not absolutely sure what is meant by UPnP and do these boxes appear as networked drives to computers if they have an external hard drive attached to them (or internet in the case of the Patriot Box Office)?

And also, are they capable of handing h.264 encoded videos in .mkv containers with a large number of reference frames? The old WDTV started to choke when the reference frame count started going above 8 or so on 1080p video but I hear the new WDTV Live does fine with 16ref 1080p video.

Box Office will show up as a network drive when connected to your home network. The included transcode software will also share and manage your desktop PC contents; enabling Box Office to view/play them.

UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is a set of networking protocols widely used to allow devices to connect seamlessly and to simplify the implementation of networks in the home. This is frequently used on UPnP or DLNA certified consumer electronics such as PS3, XBOX 360, DLNA certified TV and etc. You will be able to share and view/play the contents from these devices on Box Office using UPnP.

Yes. Box Office is fully capable of handling h.264 encoded videos in .mkv containers ... even with 'a large number of reference frames'.

New sigma chips (8655 in WD Live, 8642/3 in Dune3 and popcornhour C-200) are superior to the Realtek ones (1073/1283). They support more reframes, higher bitrates (e.g. you can make a 1:1 bluray rip in .MKV format and it will play it fine) and are faster when booting the player, when navigating GUI menus and when reading the contents of hard drives.

realtek is 400MHz

sigma 8655 is 500+333 MHz (2 "processors")
sigma 8642/3 is 667+333 MHz

New sigma chips (8655 in WD Live, 8642/3 in Dune3 and popcornhour C-200) are superior to the Realtek ones (1073/1283). They support more reframes, higher bitrates (e.g. you can make a 1:1 bluray rip in .MKV format and it will play it fine) and are faster when booting the player, when navigating GUI menus and when reading the contents of hard drives.

realtek is 400MHz

sigma 8655 is 500+333 MHz (2 "processors")
sigma 8642/3 is 667+333 MHz

I'm not going to argue which is better .. but I would like to add that higher MHz does not mean better. Especially since we aren't even comparing the same thing here.

From what I have seen.. both chipsets are extremely capable. It's more a matter of feature support at this point. And I don't think there is a definitive answer for that yet.

There are many things that can NEVER be solved by firmware. Some of them are the ones I referred to in my post above. Realtek chips are one generation behind in processing power, they were designed to compete with sigma 8635. But Realtek are turnkey, low cost solutions, and that's why so many Realtek players are coming out every week, even from companies that never had any media player in their product line before.

There are many things that can NEVER be solved by firmware....

Maybe in theory but not in practice of the current and previous line of media players,of which I have bought many of each chipset. Firmware is everything with these babies, and Divco 6500 which uses the older and much slower Sigma chipset will play many things the newest Patriot box office and WD Live cannot. The PH A110 with play higher bit/frame/ref rates as well but the GUI is panfully slow. And the C200 has the "superior" chip and cannot play diddle outside of strictly encoded High@4.1. The inferior Patriot (still new chip to the 6500 though) is the fastest booting and gui navigation (horrible gui though).

Maybe in an ideal world with ideal firmware, the Sigma will out perform, but no one is even close to a even a great firmw2are, and Posh is right, for now, the best firmware wins out over any chipset.

Personally, I would wait until the Intel offering comes out next year. Supposed to be years ahead of anything out now. Though, obviously, I did not wait.