To keep all of the info on this receiver in one place, I went ahead and changed the thread title to better reflect what my original review has become...


I know there is much interest among readers here about the Kenwood VRS-N8100. I mainly am writing about the networking features that set it apart from it's sibling, the VRS-7100. Most of the reviews on the sound quality and features of the VRS-7100 echo my feelings on the VRS-N8100. Behind the scenes, they are very similar receivers. The main separation between the 7100 and the N8100 are the networking features, the rear connectors (still crappy on the 8100) and quite a few more inputs and outputs on the N8100. Here are the side by side comparisons, if you are interested:

N8100 (http://www.kenwoodusa.com/product/product.jsp?productTypeId=147&sortBy=price&productId=2608)

7100 (http://www.kenwoodusa.com/product/product.jsp?productTypeId=147&sortBy=price&productId=2607)

The networking system is really slick once running, and should have been more painless to set up than I made it. It took me some time to get it going and I had to call Kenwood support, but the reason it didn’t work out of the box is because my Trend Internet Security 2004 firewall was not allowing it to connect to the PC through my D-Link DI-514 wireless Router. The tech support team at Kenwood got considerably better as I worked my way up the ranks. When I called for support, they immediately transferred me to level 2 support due to the nature of this beast. I eventually made it to level 3, where the guy on the other end of the phone was more than competent and in about 10-15 minutes of troubleshooting, had me up and running. I now have my receiver connecting via a NetGear wireless bridge to my WiFi router. The PC Server software takes some getting used to, but once you use it a little, it’s quite simple to use. The receiver easily plays WMA, MP3, JPEG and many other formats. The sound from an MP3 is flawless, and the images are fabulous on my LG 52 inch DLP TV in both still 4 megapixel camera shots and high quality windows media videos. While my initial woes setting this up that were caused by my firewall had me really second guessing my purchase, I am actually thrilled with it now and am so excited about easily being able to access my entire music collection via the remote. I can’t speak highly enough about the sound quality, which is a little better, in my opinion, than the xr25 it replaced. The PLIIx output sounds awesome, and the features in general blow me away. I purchased it from buyriteelectronics.com for a great price, and was very pleased with their service. Please let me know if I can answer any questions about this receiver.

I'm a bit surprised this dropped down so fast - I thought more folks would be interested.

Is there an exhaustive list of what formats and sampling rates/resolutions the 8100 supports over the network? eg does it handle 24/96 WAV files? Also, do you know if there is any way to play uncompressed multi-channel sources back over the network - eg via multichannel wav files or possibly via mpeg files?

I am surprised too about the lack of interest. It seems that many are interested in this receiver. The more I use it, the more I love it. It really is an amazing device. I've ripped 150 CD's in MP3 format since setting it up and the software is reasonably flexible in organization techniques.
I will look into your questions. I am almost sure it handles 24/96 wav files, but most of my efforts have been forcused on 192 kbit/s Mp3's, which it plays marvelously. As for your question re uncompressed multi channel sources, I once again think the receiver is able to play them in either wav or mpeg format, but not positive. If you want, you can send me a test file and I can see how it does. Just reply or PM and I can get you set up on my FTP account.
In my opinion, the $180 premium (street price) you pay to step up to the N8100 is far worth it. This is a receiver that will change the way I listen to music forever on the same scale as how Tivo changed the way I watch TV.

A couple people asked for pictures. Plenty of pictures of the front out there, but here is one of the back in case you were interested.

http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/products/2004/113/x113VRSN810-b.jpeg

Wow, this thing is really small. Is it one of those new "digital" amps like the Panasonic receivers? I've noticed the digital amps are really tiny because they don't need the massive heatsinks found on analog amps.

Anyways, I had some questions regarding your receiver.

Can you go into more detail regarding the "user experience" when playing back audio?

For example,

-does the receiver READ and INDEX music by ID3 tags

-if so, i assume you can SEARCH by all common tags (ie, artist, album, genre, song name, etc...)

-can it play WMA Lossless files

-can it Shuffle play by current playlist/artist/album/genre/etc..

-can you QUEUE up additional songs WHILE something is playing WITHOUT INTERUPTING the current song. Sounds stupid I know... this is like basic functionality but it's suprising how many audio players can't do this.

-can you play music while displaying pictures in a slideshow?

-does the server software automatically index new music after it's added or does it require user intervention everytime new files are added?

-does the server software support pulling music from multiple locations like different HDDs, remote shares, etc... or do all the files have to be in 1 location? I'm assuming it's also smart enough to traverse multiple subdirectories because most ppl organize their music into sub-directories like Genre\Artist\Album Name\

-after the receiver loses power, does it "forget" its network settings settings? For instance, does it forget where the server software is, it's IP address and subnet? Having to "reprogram" the receiver after each power failure would be a drag.

-Does it support both DHCP and static network assigned values?

-It's supposed to play MPEG2 video. Will it play DD 5.1 encoded MPEG2 video files like you'd get from a ripped DVD? Media streamers like the Hauppauge MVP will only play mono or 2-channel MPEG2 video. It chokes on video files containing multi-channel audio so you have to down convert the audio. Also, is there a bit rate limit to MPEG2 files that it'll play?

-can it read *.vob files in a VIDEO_TS directories correctly or will it only "see" *.mpg files.

- is the onscreen GUI nice? Do you HAVE to turn on the TV if you wanna queue up some music or can you get by with only looking at the front panel of the unit?

-are there any totally stupid, moronic or bone-headed things Kenwood left out. You know, you hear about dumb things all the time... like no FF, no RW, no skip next track/skip back, can't play VBR, can't play MP3's over a certain bit-rate, won't read BOTH of the common ID3 tag versions (i think they are called v2.1 & v2.2)

I know... lots of questions... Don't feel like you need to answer all of them. I guess in a nutshell, I'm asking if this thing is a real replacement for a standalone media player or is it just another half-baked, so-so, kinda-functional-but-not-really music/photo/video player like 99% of the stuff being sold today.

It'd be a real pain in the arse to have to re-rip my CD collection in MP3 format if it won't recognize the Apple audio format for iTunes (which I'm guessing it won't).

-- Dave

Keep in mind, I am happy with this unit, but it may be that it is because I don't have much experience with standalone digital music devices. I have answered your questions below.

Wow, this thing is really small. Is it one of those new "digital" amps like the Panasonic receivers? I've noticed the digital amps are really tiny because they don't need the massive heatsinks found on analog amps.

* Yes, this is a digital amp, which utilizes the same chipset as the Panasonic digital receivers

Anyways, I had some questions regarding your receiver.

Can you go into more detail regarding the "user experience" when playing back audio?

For example,

-does the receiver READ and INDEX music by ID3 tags -

*Not sure on this one.

-if so, i assume you can SEARCH by all common tags (ie, artist, album, genre, song name, etc...)

*Yes, you can search by anything you want

-can it play WMA Lossless files
*Not Sure, but my gut feeling is that it can play any WMA file

-can it Shuffle play by current playlist/artist/album/genre/etc..
* I haven't seen a shuffle feature because I never use random / shuffle on my CD players. I can look.

-can you QUEUE up additional songs WHILE something is playing WITHOUT INTERUPTING the current song. Sounds stupid I know... this is like basic functionality but it's suprising how many audio players can't do this.

*No

-can you play music while displaying pictures in a slideshow?
* Yes, you can choose any background music you wish for a slideshow

-does the server software automatically index new music after it's added or does it require user intervention everytime new files are added?

* I think you need to notify the server of the new file. However if the file is in a previously indexed directory, I believe this may be automatic.

-does the server software support pulling music from multiple locations like different HDDs, remote shares, etc... or do all the files have to be in 1 location? I'm assuming it's also smart enough to traverse multiple subdirectories because most ppl organize their music into sub-directories like Genre\Artist\Album Name\
* Yes, the receiver can pull music from anywhere on the network as long as the server can access the location. You are also able to have up to 16 separate servers on your network and you can select which server you wish to use at the first screen. Additionally, you can name the server whatever you want, and this is the name you get on the receiver GUI displayed on the TV / Receiver Display.

-after the receiver loses power, does it "forget" its network settings settings? For instance, does it forget where the server software is, it's IP address and subnet? Having to "reprogram" the receiver after each power failure would be a drag.

* No... Once it is set up, it remains in memory.

-Does it support both DHCP and static network assigned values?
* Yes

-It's supposed to play MPEG2 video. Will it play DD 5.1 encoded MPEG2 video files like you'd get from a ripped DVD? Media streamers like the Hauppauge MVP will only play mono or 2-channel MPEG2 video. It chokes on video files containing multi-channel audio so you have to down convert the audio. Also, is there a bit rate limit to MPEG2 files that it'll play?
* Not Sure

-can it read *.vob files in a VIDEO_TS directories correctly or will it only "see" *.mpg files.
* Again, not sure.

- is the onscreen GUI nice? Do you HAVE to turn on the TV if you wanna queue up some music or can you get by with only looking at the front panel of the unit?
* I prefer the GUI, but everything you see on the TV screen is displayed on the front display of the receiver and is easily usable.

-are there any totally stupid, moronic or bone-headed things Kenwood left out. You know, you hear about dumb things all the time... like no FF, no RW, no skip next track/skip back, can't play VBR, can't play MP3's over a certain bit-rate, won't read BOTH of the common ID3 tag versions (i think they are called v2.1 & v2.2)
* The only one I have trouble with is the shuffle option, as well as the lack of AAC file compatibility (Itunes). Additionally, I haven't investigated yet how well it does on playlists.


I know... lots of questions... Don't feel like you need to answer all of them. I guess in a nutshell, I'm asking if this thing is a real replacement for a standalone media player or is it just another half-baked, so-so, kinda-functional-but-not-really music/photo/video player like 99% of the stuff being sold today.

* These are great questions, and ones I was hoping people would ask when I started this thread. I don't know if this is as good as a standalone media player. It suits me just fine, and I suspect many people would feel the same way. I like that it is all in one small and very sexy package.

Additionally, there is a new release of the server software and firmware forthcoming, which may add some new functions. I don't know that there are many people out there with this receiver yet.

The speaker connectors for the surrounds and center look interesting? Is there some kind of adapter to use with them?

are the pictures in HD format and what can you expect to pay for this on the street?

Yes, you attach an adpater to the speaker wires and plug it in. They seem better than spring clips.

This reciever can be found on the street for a shade under $500.

If you are talking about HD Pictures as in the digital pics it displays, it depends upon the resolution of your camera i would think. My 52 inch DLP displays 4 MegaPixel shots quite well through this receiver.

It depends on the resolution of the camera, but I think one megapixel is enough for HD resolution.

But it also depends on the video chip on the recevier. The new Tivos have component outputs, but can only display photos at 480p.

As far as I knew, the only product that was displaying photos in HD was the Roku, but there is a new Sigma chip out there that does HD. Wondering which one this is using.

If you can confirm HD, that will be great. Thanks.

Are Mac users out of luck with this one? Or does it use a particular stream protocol (perhaps supported by Mac shareware)?

How tightly integrated is the streaming software?

FYi, according to the manual, the Network server feature can output up to 1080i resolution.

There is not a Mac version of the software and I don't think it would work via mac shareware. The sofware and streaming seems to be proprietary to the receiver.

sgroer,

Thank you for your review. I've been waiting to see one for a very long time. I'm happy to hear that you don't have to turn on the TV to play music. That would have been a deal killer for me.

Probably a dumb question, but is the server software installed on a PC or does it reside on the receiver, and exactly what does it do? Right now, I have all my music in WMA 192k files and use MS Media Player for playback (as simple as I could make it), but I also use my computer for work, and I'm not sure I want to put on it some software written by Kenwood. Thanks again.

Doug

Yes, you need to install the Kenwood software on your PC, then connect your receiver to the same router that the PC with the software is connected to.

I messed around last night wiht the server software to answer a few of the questions from yesterday. First, there is no shuffle feature, either by disk, genre, or otherwise. Additionally the only way I could figure out how to do a playlist was on the PC side. One thing I would complain about is that the directions are realtively poor, in typical Kenwood fashion.

no shuffle/random... It figures. When will any company get it right? Features you find on a $15 Brocksonic CD player you'd also expect to find on a $500 A/V networked multimedia receiver. Does anyone know how good Kenwood is with releasing bios updates? Did they ever come out with fixes/enhancements for their first round of networked receivers they released like 1-2 yrs ago?

It's wierd, because it has a repeat by track, genre, or album, but no shuffle as I can tell. It is odd.

Well you never use that feature so at least it doesn't affect you. And I'm guessing that Shuffle Play should be something relatively easy for Kenwood to impliment later through a software update of either the server app or the receiver's firmware. I'm guessing they'd only need to fix the server app since that is what is really in control of what's currently being played and what's going to be played next. I just don't understand why basic functionality never seems to make it into v1 of any multimedia product released over the past 5 years?

It's funny... since I never use it, I didn't notice it. But now that I know it's not there, it bothers me.. LOL. I was actually on the Kenwood Japan site and through translation via babelfish, I think it was telling me that the next release of the software will have a random feature. It was updated on 10/26 and the site says that a release is coming in the next few days. Kenwood supports their products so much better in Japan.

Does this Kenwood plays apple itunes, AAC encoded files?

Two more questions:

1. I think I read somewhere that the server software requires Windows XP?

2. If so, does the computer where the music files are stored have to be logged on to allow the reciever to access those files (assuming the music files are stored on the same computer as the server software)?

I suspect it does need to be logged on, given the server software, but it would be nice if the computer simply needed to be turned on.

With my current setup, using Win XP Pro and Media Player 9, my computer (where the music is stored) only has to be turned on and at the log-in screen for the music files to be accessible to all the computers in our home.

- Streaming Audio Decoding: MP3, WMA, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, via Ethernet

I didn't realize there was a Windows decoder for Ogg Vorbis (but after searching, I see Winamp does it.) Any chance there's any Linux support for the receiver? The Kenwood site doesn't seem to have a manual listed, can we download that anywhere?

Thanks

I'll try to answer some of these questions:

No Itunes (AAC) compatibility

No Linux support

I can leave my XP computer turned on, with no software running and the receiver is able to access the files. As I understand it, when you install the software, it sets up a service that starts when the computer starts.

I don't know if ths software can run under NT or Win98. I do think it can run under Windows 2000 but you might want to verify that.

Originally posted by sgroer
It's funny... since I never use it, I didn't notice it. But now that I know it's not there, it bothers me.. LOL.

Heheh. I know what you mean. I'm the same way. But to tell you the truth, the lack of Shuffle would bother me a lot less than NOT being able to queue up music without interrupting the currently playing song. God that would drive me stark raving mad! I mean one of the major advantages of having your entire music library ripped to a HDD is having the ability to sit there for hours searching through your music collection for forgotten songs WHILE YOU'RE ENJOYING MUSIC. If you have to "plan out" ahead of time all the songs you wanna hear and queue everything up ahead of time, that would be annoying. Plus when I have parties, my friends like to skim my collection and add new tunes to the queue like you would with a jukebox. In this case, adding new songs stops whatever is currently playing, a major buzz kill during a party, and I'm guessing it also deletes everything that was already queued up previously. For me, this is a showing stopping flaw. Hopefully Kenwood will also fix this in the next update.

Aside from those 2 things, this receiver sounds really cool and full of potential. I'm really suprised it has built-in video playback capability and 1080i photo support. That is huge!!! Thanks for all your answers. I'll be keeping an eye on this unit. If it improves, I just might be replacing my Yamaha with a Kenwood.

I know what you are saying. I took a risk buying the receiver because I thought it looked like it had major potential. It just so happens that it fits my listneing style very well. I can see how it definitely wouldn't fit others styles (i.e. shuffle, queues, etc.) If I were to do it all over again, i would still likely buy this. But for those on the fence, l'd suggest waiting to see how well Kenwood supports this device. Hopefully we will see some improvements in the software as time passes.

I see by all of the posts and your review & answers that this receiver is a great solution for multimedia interface.

Does it do video up-converting...specifically up to component?

I believe this would be answered by the owner's manual, which I couldn't seem to find access to through the Kenny website.:confused:

Unfortunately I don't think the receiver upconverts. The manual is not clear, but I tried to upconvert an S-video source to component and it didn't seem to work .

Have you gotten a chance to play around with streaming video like mpeg2 or Xvid.. that would be the deal breaker for me to buy this!!

Thanks

Not yet... I made a couple of MPEG's of a fishing trip from last year that I've been meaning to try. Hopefully before the weekend is up I will have more info.

I just installed this receiver and am still getting used to it. Bought it from Costco.com for a good price.

One tip - if you have XP Service Pack 2 on your media server the firewall in XP blocks access to the Kenwood server software - so you have to specifically exclude the Kenwood service from the firewall. Kenwood doesn't include the ports their server listens on in the manual so you need to do it by enabling the application itself.

One more tip - the only way to tell the unit to output its on screen display via the component outputs is via the OSD itself. So you need to temorarilly hook up a S-Video or Composite cable up, then set the thing to component., and then you can unhook things again.

The server software needs a lot of work. It is split into two pieces - a java based application that is the user interface and background service that talks to the clients. The Java app has a non-standard look and feel with cryptic buttons with labels like "BGM" It is also not apparent or documented in the manual, but the background program does install itself as a service so it starts automatically when windows starts.

Instead of scanning the hard drive, the Java app requires you to point it at directories, and by default it will only find files directly below the directory you point it at. The workaround for this is to use the "select all" button when clicking on a set of directories - apparently Kenwood uses Select All differently than the rest of the universe - in other words to Kenwood it means select these directories and everything below these directories, instead of the usual "select everything in this list"

Video playback works surprisingly well. I was able to play mpeg 2 files (actually decrypted VOB's renamed to .mpg, as well as avi / divx files with no problems. This does have the same directory limitation however on the server.

Photo quality is ok but not great - everything is downconverted to 640x480 - so the quality not as good as Roku which can display high-resolution images.

The user interface on the client is fairly Japanese - ie cartoon-like, a wierd mix of vertical and horizonal boxes that probable work better in Kanjii than they do in english, and too many icons and colors. It is much faster than the Roku, but is a bit inconsistent and not intuitive to navigate.

What is very different than I expected is that there is an on-screen display for setting up the receiver and for interacting with the network, but there is no on-screen display for anything else - like what input it is looking at, what the volume level is, etc. My Denon home theater receiver does have this. My guess is the unit can create its own component signal, but can't overlay an OSD on another component signal.

The unit does not upconvert.

The net is I would say it is overall a step up from the Roku and the Onkyo networked receivers - but will be a much bigger step up if they can improve file management of their server software. They also need to improve the client user interface and add things like shuffle that have been discussed here already.

The unit does support upgrading it's firmware over the net, so I will keep my fingers crossed.

Hi Dan,

Is your network wireless also? If i get this i have to move my router to where my Tv is connected to the Kenwood and get a wireless Pci card for desktop my laptop has wireless already..Is this correct?

I'm a bit confused.

In the initial post you said this was a 7.1 receiver, yet there are only six speaker connections (i.e. only a single back speaker). True 7.1 playback includes stereo L&R back speakers. What gives?

I'm sorry but MP3 just dosen't cut it, and I'm afraid if it's using WMA and Winamp for lossless playback, then the PC is probably degrading the source signal by converting the original 44.1kHz CD signal stored on the hard disk or played from the CD-ROM drive to a 48kHz playback signal (definately not desirable). I could be wrong though.

I have the unit connected to the wired part of my network. But you can use an wireless adapter according to the directions that come with the unit.

Let's just say that software has never been Kenwood's strong suit.

That is a good price at Costco. Hopefully they fix the directory structure problem. That is a big one.

This silver fad is killing me. By the time I switch over to silver on all my components, they will be back to black.

Originally posted by BruceD
I'm a bit confused.

In the initial post you said this was a 7.1 receiver, yet there are only six speaker connections (i.e. only a single back speaker). True 7.1 playback includes stereo L&R back speakers. What gives? It has 6 built-in amps, but it has a 7.1 setting and Left and Right back surround preamp outputs allowing you to connect an external stereo amplifier for 7.1 speaker playback using DPL2x.

Thanks Daryl. I'm a dunce for not looking at the RCA connectors for preouts.

No problem. I have my VRS-7100 setup with an external amp for 7.1 playback also.

A couple of more observations.

This unit is not compatible with the two different in-wall source selectors I have tried. In my setup I have one set of speakers that can be driven by either my whole house audio system or by this unit. This unit shorts out when connected to two different A/B selector switches I tried. I presume this has something to do with the digital amp not using one of the legs to the speakers as ground. The Onkyo receiver I replaced had no problems with this same setup. I just ordered a new Russound source selector on-line which is supposed to completely isolate both amps from each other - I presume my other two source selectors assumed a common ground between receivers.

The manual talks about RDS - radio data service - the idea being that station names, song names and genre's come over the air via the FM signal. I presume this doesn't work in the USA as I can find no way to even turn the function on in the unit itself. Must be a bad manual.

One more software bad - the server software wants to convert all of your images to some intermediate format in batch when you register them on the server. It hasn't finished yet after running for an hour - It appears to be downconverting my 10,000+ photos into 640x480 jpg files - wasting lots of time and disc space by doing them all in advance vs transcoding on the fly when they are requested. It does not try to do this to video or audio.

This also implies the unit only supports 640x480 display of images which is a bit disappointing for HDTV monitors that can support 1024x768 at a minimum. Roku is clearly better here in terms of on-screen image quality and screen resolution.

More feedback from more playing with the unit.

I think I understand the UI design now. You just make the following assumption - the UI design folks at Kenwood had a small list of movie files, picture files and songs each stored in a single directory in their test environment. Each of these files has a very simple name - just the name of the movie/picture/track.

If this matches your environment then things are designed well.

However if for instance you have more than a handful of songs or nested directories then it all starts to fall apart. And god forbid you name your songs like I do - artist-album-song-track_number.mp3. The unit sorts songs by directory name, and then by full file name. It does not appear to decipher mp3 tags. So for just about all of my files I can tell what the album is (from the directory) but not what the song is - the name is long enough that the UI truncates it.

This is a classic case of engineering screwing up and not having a real world use case. Product works fine in the most simplistic use case - but they never thought of doing boundary testing or real world use cases.

So folks I am sorry to say that this is a basically unusable system in its current state if you have more than a handful of files on your media server.

I will call Kenwood on Monday and ask them what the deal is before boxing it up and taking back to Costco.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Keep us posted on your conversation with Kenwood. I started ripping my music collection after I got this receiver, so my naming conventions and directory structure are built around the software. Maybe that's why I am feeling better about it than you are.

I am using the unit on an 802.11b network. high quality Mpegs don't make it over the wireless so well, basically not smooth. Just to make sure, I did a wired connection to the reciever and it was fine. An 802.11g network is a necessity if you plan on streaming videos via wifi.

I just found this thread, so I guess I'll just jump in with both feet.

I work for Kenwood as a Home Audio Product Trainer. I will attempt to answer any questions you might have, and correct any incorrect info I see.

DDRucker - The server software will drill down as deep in the directories as you'd like to take it. If you were to select the My Music folder on your PC, click it, click select all, click import, it will register the entire folder (all levels) at once, although into a single genre folder. To import the various genres, click the genre in the Music Library, then select the albums in that genre using the control key with your mouse click. Once you've selected all the albums of that genre, click Import.
It does list each folder on the GUI. When you select that folder, it shows the titles in that folder. However, as you name your tracks, it does make it difficult (impossible?) to use the GUI.

The RDS capability is for Europe only, and is noted in the manual as such.

sgroer - You're right - 802.11G is best for high quality video.

Slocko - Sorry about the silver. The Kenwood FineLine series is designed to fit into today's lifestyle. With the major trend to flat-panel monitors and TVs, this system is designed to blend in with that look, without sacrificing HT performance.

Tgaut - thanks for that feedback. I already did a big control-select on my 1000 or so directories and got it to import that way. Didn't think of "select all" as that does not usually imply selection of subdirectories of a single parent in the world of standard software UI.

Question - what is the best mechanism to provide feedback to Kenwood on enhancement requests for this unit? Through you or through the tech support department. Do you have a sense of whether they are actively developing the software and firmware for the unit to improve it and what the release plan is?

I think we could easily come up with a top 10 list of bugs and enhancements here, but I wouldn't waste the time to do so if I didn't know there was a path to Kenwood engineering.

If I knew obvious features like MP3 ID tag support were coming it would make me more interested in being an advocate for the unit.

Nice to have Tgaut on this thread..hopefully he can provide more insights to 8100..I would like to pick this up but if more people report problems it will be down to 7100, panny xr70 and Denon 3805 before x-mas. So keep the reviews coming!! thanks all...

Tgaut, maybe you can answer a question with regards to my 7100 (i posted this ? on the 7100 thread but no responses) anyways I have had my 7100 for about 2 months and within the first week the unit would not respond usining the remote on one instance until I unplugged the unit then everything was fine once i plugged it back in. It happened again a couple of weeks ago as well and the other day my father in law called me with the same problem, it also happened to another members unit when i borrowed it a few months ago to demo it


any thoughts?


thanks, bob

Originally posted by ultra 150 pilot
Tgaut, maybe you can answer a question with regards to my 7100 (i posted this ? on the 7100 thread but no responses) anyways I have had my 7100 for about 2 months and within the first week the unit would not respond usining the remote on one instance until I unplugged the unit then everything was fine once i plugged it back in. It happened again a couple of weeks ago as well and the other day my father in law called me with the same problem, it also happened to another members unit when i borrowed it a few months ago to demo it


any thoughts?


thanks, bob

I haven't heard of that issue. I do most of my "playing" on the 8100, which is identical to the 7100 except for the networking capability. Can you give me more details? What input? No functions working or specific functions? Controls on the front working?

I have an 8100 at my desk, and find it easier to punch the buttons on the front of the unit. I would occasionally find the up and down buttons wouldn't work on the remote while the left and right buttons worked. I was getting frustrated until I realized that I hadn't pushed the Network Server button on the REMOTE. Pressed the button, everything worked fine. Duh.

Post any requests/complaints on the unit. I am 15 feet away from the Product Development Manager and am happy to dump it on his desk. Know that we are aware of some issues and welcome any feedback. We're excited about this product and want that excitement to be reflected out there.

OK TGAUT:

My Top 10+ N8100 Enhancement List Request:
---------------------------------------------------------
1) Publish a list of known things you are working on and known enhancements you are working on (a statement of direction) plus your best guess at a schedule. This gives us all hope and prevents us from spinning our wheels. This is where Roku is getting killed by their users - for providing no visibility.
2) Server: Read the metadata already present in files (such as MP3 ID Tags) and use this to populate fields in the client. For instance for music Track Name, Artist, Genre, Year, etc. Drive the UI off this metadata as the default and fallback to filenames if the metadata doesn't exist.
3) Server: Turn the thing into a service or a windows Tray item - never a foreground application. Make the default for the thing to be to run at system startup.
4) Server: Make the default behaviour when you choose a default directory to automatically include all files at or below this directory, not just one level down.
5) Server: Transcode images on the fly- Currently you downconvert and store every image in advance to 640x480 jpgs. This is a huge waste of space- in my case something like 20,000 new files on my hard drive, 99% of which I will never look at. It is also not clear you provide a way for the user to control where these go =- most people will not want them in their /program files directory.
6) Server: Automatically scan the hard drive for changes and update the libraries automatically
7) Client: Allow for higher photo resolutions if your chipset can handle it - 640x480 does not shine on an HDTV monitor that can handle 1024x768 or better. Roku looks a lot better here.
8) Client: Music: Allow for sorting by artist, album, genre, title, etc.
9) Client: Music: Render the metadata from MP3 ID tags first,filenames second
10 Client: Music: Allow the user to search for new tracks, queue up new tracks etc while a song is playing
11) Client: Overall: Work on UI consistency. Right now the UI is a wierd mix of radio buttons which are used as menu items, horizonal as well as vertical boxes, etc
12) Client: Photo: Get rid of the hokey split screen transition in the slideshow or make this a user preference.
13) Client: Music / Photo: Allow slideshows while playing music and make it easy to go back and forth between photos and music.
14) Client: Music: Support Winamp Playlists and have a separate category in the UI for these
15) Client: Wierd UI: Why the heck is the main setup underneath network setup?

That's a start.... Look to the more recent Tivo's for the cleanest, easiest client user interface and most consistent / robust set of features for this kind of stuff.

I would also suggest you check out the Roku forum at Roku labs - there are lots of lists of enhancements for media players there.

If I could choose one thing on this list to ask your product manager to focus on - it would be item number one. Communicate your plans with your enthusiast community...

ddruker -
Great list, and I think you have echoed my sentiments. I am not displeased with this product, but I think there are a few places for improvement. FYI, I am using Windows XP and the software runs as a background service. I don't have to even start the server software for the recevier to access the files... I love this feature.

Tgaut -
I couldn't agree with ddruker more about publishing a support page and schedule. It's amazing to me that I had to go to www.kenwood.jp and translate the page using babelfish to get support for this receiver over the web. There's a clear disconnect between the national sites, and there is absolutely nothing specific on the US support page specific to this receiver. In addition to DDruker's comment, a FAQ similar to the Japan site, as well as a place to download the most recent firmware and software would be great.

The random / shuffle feature seems to be very concerning to many on this board. I never use it anyways, but many see this as a dealbreaker.

I would love an itntuitive way to make playlist using the remote. I must say, this was something I assumed the receiver could do before purchase, and it can't.

The ability of the receiver to read MP3 ID tags is also on my short list of things I think would greatly benefit this receiver.


The fact that you showed up on this thread soliciting input from us, as well as the very high quality of support I received over the phone is a good sign that you are commited to supporting this device and making it successful.

Originally posted by ddruker
OK TGAUT:
*** Wow! What happened to the top ten? Oh well, that'll teach me!

My Top 10+ N8100 Enhancement List Request:
---------------------------------------------------------
1) Publish a list of known things you are working on and known enhancements you are working on (a statement of direction) plus your best guess at a schedule. This gives us all hope and prevents us from spinning our wheels. This is where Roku is getting killed by their users - for providing no visibility.
*** In the next two weeks, we'll be releasing the first upgrade. It will be downloaded off the Kenwood site, and will update the Kenwood Server software to allow firmware updates to the 8100. This will be housekeeping, no changes to the functionality.

2) Server: Read the metadata already present in files (such as MP3 ID Tags) and use this to populate fields in the client. For instance for music Track Name, Artist, Genre, Year, etc. Drive the UI off this metadata as the default and fallback to filenames if the metadata doesn't exist.
*** See below

3) Server: Turn the thing into a service or a windows Tray item - never a foreground application. Make the default for the thing to be to run at system startup.
*** The server automatically loads on boot, but doesn't appear in the tray.If you CTL-ALT-DEL, select Task Manager, and click on the Processes tab, you should find "kwdservice" running.

4) Server: Make the default behaviour when you choose a default directory to automatically include all files at or below this directory, not just one level down.
*** Using the Select All button does that.

5) Server: Transcode images on the fly- Currently you downconvert and store every image in advance to 640x480 jpgs. This is a huge waste of space- in my case something like 20,000 new files on my hard drive, 99% of which I will never look at. It is also not clear you provide a way for the user to control where these go =- most people will not want them in their /program files directory.
*** See Below

6) Server: Automatically scan the hard drive for changes and update the libraries automatically
*** I have no idea if this entered into the decision to not scan the drive automatically, but I have had many people comment in training sessions that it's preferable to not scan. Apparently, there are some people who have video or photo files on their computers that they would prefer not show up automatically. Compound this by having it scan all computers on the network, and there could be some discord generated in families. The current Home Media software on Tivo operates the same way. You must select the files you want streamed.

7) Client: Allow for higher photo resolutions if your chipset can handle it - 640x480 does not shine on an HDTV monitor that can handle 1024x768 or better. Roku looks a lot better here.
*** See below

8) Client: Music: Allow for sorting by artist, album, genre, title, etc.
9) Client: Music: Render the metadata from MP3 ID tags first,filenames second
*** See below

10 Client: Music: Allow the user to search for new tracks, queue up new tracks etc while a song is playing
*** See below

11) Client: Overall: Work on UI consistency. Right now the UI is a wierd mix of radio buttons which are used as menu items, horizonal as well as vertical boxes, etc
*** See below

12) Client: Photo: Get rid of the hokey split screen transition in the slideshow or make this a user preference.
*** See below

13) Client: Music / Photo: Allow slideshows while playing music and make it easy to go back and forth between photos and music.
*** Ah! One I can answer! The Background Music buttom (BGM) in the server software allows you to select specific audio files to play while viewing a slide show. Easy to go between is another story, so See Below.

14) Client: Music: Support Winamp Playlists and have a separate category in the UI for these
*** See below

15) Client: Wierd UI: Why the heck is the main setup underneath network setup?
*** Good point.

That's a start.... Look to the more recent Tivo's for the cleanest, easiest client user interface and most consistent / robust set of features for this kind of stuff.
*** I agree that Tivo has a smooth user interface, but they didn't perfect it on their first time out. They've taken customer feedback and worked to come up with their current interface, and that's what we're working on. The 8100 is the first, and still only, Home Theater receiver on the market with the ability to stream music, photos, and videos. We think it's a breakout product, and this segment of the Home Audio market is poised for tremendous change and growth.

I would also suggest you check out the Roku forum at Roku labs - there are lots of lists of enhancements for media players there.

If I could choose one thing on this list to ask your product manager to focus on - it would be item number one. Communicate your plans with your enthusiast community...

*** Consider it dumped on his desk. I'll communicate any and all information that I *CAN*. As this dialog continues, please understand that I cannot talk about any future products that haven't been annouced to the general public.

****** Below******
All of these suggestions will be passed on, and looked at seriously.

Sgroer - Not only do you not have to run the server software, you don't have to be logged in. You only must have the computer powered on.

Sometime between January 11th-14th Kenwood would like to visit the home of an 8100 owner. The visitors will be engineers from Japan, and are wanting to see how the 8100 is being used and to solicit feedback and ask questions. There is no $$ involved, but is an opportunity to be involved in the evolution of this product line.

If anyone is interested, please PM me with your location.

Tgaut,

Add to the wish list a Mac OSX client. If it had one, I'd have bought it. ;)

Cheers,
JnC

TGAUT - I updated my earlier comments to reflect your clarifications - especially the bits about directory selections and the background server process. Thanks for your participation in the forum.

If your engineers are going to be in Palo Alto I suppose they could come by - but I don't think I am probably an average user... The Kenwood box is in our master bedroom connected to a Panasonic Plasma more as an experiment in how network receivers are coming along (I replaced the Onkyo NR-801 network receiver with it if anyone wants to buy a slightly used Onkyo) and not in our primary viewing area which has a Roku-HD1000, a Denon receiver and an HD-Tivo. I have a server out in our garage with about 1/2 terabyte of storage, connected to a wired gigabit network that runs throughout the house. The catalyst for me for purchasing the Kenwood unit to replace the Onkyo was primarily form factor first, and second because I made a mistake and should have bought the NR-901 (I hated that the GUI on the NR-801 didn't work over the component outputs)

This is what happens when an former engineer goes on leave from work for a year to work on building his new house.... Many miles of cat 6 and coax later we are extremely wired compared to your average consumer.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by tgaut
[B]I haven't heard of that issue. I do most of my "playing" on the 8100, which is identical to the 7100 except for the networking capability. Can you give me more details? What input? No functions working or specific functions? Controls on the front working?

What I found is the remote works fine with every function and on a few occasions then I try to change the volume and no response then I try to play with all the buttons and no response until I unplug the unit and everything works fine.

Its not a huge deal to me! Btw this piece is amazing for the money I had a B&k ref 50 and rotel 1075 amp until my buddy brought his 7100 over and we were all blown away at the sound. I ended up selling my gear and buying the kenwood and had enough money left over to buy a niles whole house system and upgraded my ht at the same time:D

pass that on to your associates that should make them feel good about what they are doing;)



thanks for contributing to the forum, bob

Ultra 150 Pilot,

I talked to our tech support manager, and he said he hadn't heard of that problem with the 7100. He asked if you had noticed the range on the remote getting shorter before it happens, possibly indicating a problem with the sensor.

When you unplug it, you are performing a "soft" reset of the processor. If you'd like to hard reset, unplug it, then hold down the power button while plugging it back in. This will clear any settings you have, taking it back to factory defaults. Don't know if it'll help, but it can't hurt.

You've indicated that it isn't a big problem, but he suggested you contact customer service (1-800-kenwood) to log the problem. That way if it should become a bigger problem in the future, there will be a record of it.

BTW, thanks for the good words! I'm always happy to pass on something that might make someone's day.

what about adding a web browser interface?

that way we can queue up music or photos from any wireless computer in the house without having to install a client on every computer.

slocko,
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking for, but let me take a shot.

You can have up to 16 PCs on the network and be able to stream from any one of the sixteen. When you select network server on the 8100 it will display all computers on the network that are currently up. You select the computer that you'd like to stream from and start enjoying the entertainment.

You can have up to eight 8100s on the network. Depending on the number of 8100s/PCs on the network, you can run up on network limitations as to bandwidth and throughput. Unfortunately, most of us won't have the opportunity to push the network limits.

What I mean is to make the server accessible via a web browser so I configure, create playsists, play music from any computer on the nework.

Just imagine that you are sitting on your computer doing some work, let's say paying bills, and you decide you want to listen to some music. You fire up your browser, plug in the address, and voila you can create a playlist and say play.

That will fire up the receiver so it begins streaming the music. Now if it could automatically switch to the right input, that would be icing on the cake. But if I have to get up and use my universal remote, that's okay.

The people you are targeting have computer networks with several computers. So offering another way to control the unit would make it more attractive. It solves the problem of having to be close up to see the display on the receiver.

OK Got it.

I'm not an engineer, but I suspect that would be beyond the capabilities of the hardware as it currently exists.

I will pass it on. Maybe it could be implemented in a future product.

Tgaut... PM sent... I am in Atlanta.

It would also be great to have a SAMBA share so that we can link up to non-windows based directories. That way I could access the 300gigs of files on my XBOX Media Center. I'm sure unix/linux/mac users might want the same, although I suspect the mac network access is already covered somehow.

Some of you may have noticed that all configuration performed by the Kenwood PC Server is stored in a collection of XML files stored in the "C:\Program Files\Kenwood\kenwood_library" folder.

This has me thinking that I'll design my own program to maintain these XML files (I'm a .NET programmer)...This may allow us to add functionality on our own that we are not happy about in the Kenwood software.

I'm already considering a way to add a "Shuffle" feature to the playlists that are stored in these XML files. The "C:\Program Files\Kenwood\kenwood_library\contents_db\music\music_collec tions.xml" file contains the entire music collection. A simple program run as a Windows Service could randomize the contents of this list and give the appearance of being "Shuffled".

I'm sure other people can think of other features we as the user base could add...

Another feature I would like to see added is support for "streaming" audio (Realaudio/streaming mp3, etc).

I wish I could help you out mcowher... those are great ideas. All I can do is cheerlead because I am definitely not a .net programmer.

I'll be getting my 8100 this Friday from Costco.com and I have to say I'm really looking forward to it after reading all the comments on this thread. I do have some questions though. Does the 8100 output the OSD on the Component Video? In other words, can I have only a component video cable connected from the receiver to the TV/monitor and still see the OSD? If I have my old ReplayTV connected to the receiver via S-Video, do I still need to connect an S-Video cable from the receiver to the monitor in order for me to watch via the Replay or does the 8100 send the signals through the component video cables as well? How is the video when routing an HD receiver to the 8100. Is there any degradation that's noticable?

Melencio,

At the outset, you must use a composite cable to set up the receiver. From the first OSD select Network Setup (I don't know why it's in that menu). Select Main, then choose your video output preference. Now you can use the component output for the OSD.


<edit> You can also scroll through the video output options by pressing the Video Out (look at the pause button) button. This eliminates the need to hook it up with the composite cable. <end edit>


This unit doesn't up-convert video signals, so the s-video cable would be necessary for your ReplayTV.

The component switching exceeds the requirements for HD, so you should see no degradation.


Have fun![COLOR=royalblue]

Thanks for the quick update tgaut... any indications of a new firmware or software update from kenwood?

Yes, the first will be in a week or two.

First you'll update your Kenwood Server software, which will give it the capability to upgrade the firmware in the 8100. There is a firmware update that will be ready when the software upgrade is ready.

As I understand it, this will be housekeeping, with no obvious changes to either the server software, or 8100 functionality.

Thanks again tgaut! The news about the update sure gives me hope that Kenwood is actively working on improving the N8100.
I've heard a lot of encouraging reviews from users of this receiver, especially owners who've done blind tests and mini shootouts with other (more expensive) receivers. Can't wait! Is anyone out there using the N8100 with the HD Tivo from DirecTV?

Purchased an N8100 from Costco. Cannot get On Screen Display of menus. I understand I need to start w/ composite in order to tell it to output component. Well I've had no luck on either TV or my projector. Tried multiple cables, composite/S-Video/Component. My PC server files are visible via the receivers limited front display. Any suggestions other than returning this unit? Will call customer support in the morning...

can you posts some links to these reviews? thanks.

Originally posted by kevo
Purchased an N8100 from Costco. Cannot get On Screen Display of menus. I understand I need to start w/ composite in order to tell it to output component. Well I've had no luck on either TV or my projector. Tried multiple cables, composite/S-Video/Component. My PC server files are visible via the receivers limited front display. Any suggestions other than returning this unit? Will call customer support in the morning...

kevo,

You can rotate through the video output modes by pressing the pause button on the remote. If you get out your magnifying glass, you'll see it is marked Video Out below the Pause button.

If that doesn't have any effect, check the hookups to your monitor. Sometimes if two devices get plugged into the same input (say s-video and composite inputs for video one) one will overide the other, shutting the other down. Of course this is a long shot since you've tried your TV and projector.

slocko,
most of the head-to-heads I've seen are for the VRS-7100. It is the twin to the 8100 in all respects other than the networking capability , PCMCIA slot, s-video inputs, and banana connectors for the front L&R speakers.

Here's one thread.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=419342&perpage=20&highlight=7100&pagenumber=1

hey thanks for the thread.

wow. did i miss an audio revolution?????? how can that little thing compete with those high end receivers????? i feel like rip van winkle.

what is a digital audio receiver? what makes it different?

tgaut, I'm really leaning toward getting the N8100 over the Panasonic XR70 because the price differential isn't that much and it has the networking capabilities....but, I'm just a little hesitant because of not being able to shuffle/randomize or queue up music with the N8100.

I could just build a low cost HTPC and run it to the XR70 for all the multi-media uses I want, but it would clutter up the room a little.

Is there any word that Kenwood can/will ever implement those features? If you say there is....then it's a no brainer for me to shell out another $100 for the N8100.

slocko,

Both receivers use a TI Pure Path digital amplifier. What makes it different are the additional steps taken to produce a more realistic sound.
1) Using a sensing pulsed power supply, resulting in less distortion.
2) Large feed line bus bar on both feed and GND side.
3) Position the power supply near the MOSFET, increasing power supply stability.
4) Separate GND based on function, resulting in cleaner power.
5) Stiffer chassis based on vibration analysis, reducing vibration in circuits.
6) Shielding resulting in better channel separation.
7) High resolution digital volume control.

hsindogg,
I've taken all feedback from this forum and passed it to the product manager. We've certainly seen the desire for it. Will it be added? I don't know and can't speculate. We are on the leading edge of an incredible digital convergence that will affect how we all access our digital media, so we're considering everything.

Called Support 1-800-Kenwood which is quite good. After phone tree (5-2-1-2) got a live level one voice quite quickly (< 1 min) who passed me to level two. Here they instructed me to reset the receiver (hold down power switch for 5+ seconds and unplug while held. Replug in while power switch down). This re-initialized the unit and voila - OSD works! Set my output to component and moved on to the original task.

On to digital streaming through the PC Server - would prefer Serverless, but hey the alternatives (Roku, others?) are too expensive. My imported files (would rather skip this step of course) DVDs show up just fine on the screen menu. Sometimes it takes a power cycle of the receiver to get these to show.

My first PC Server DVD just froze immediately. Yet, the still picture had that component goodness. Deleted the files on the PC, renamed them to .mpg and the first part of the DVD played just fine through 480p component. Note that both .VOB and .mpeg do not work. Starting to get excited, I could skip running a VGA cable on the livving room floor from my PC to the stereo ! The support person had mentioned that HDTV support was coming (6 months ?).

Well, not sure if got through the VTS_01_1.mpg or what, but the whole thing froze after about 5 minutes. Currently will not play VTS_01_2.mpg and will call support again.

Did I mention I actually tried the digital amp receiver section with Rocket speakers and was quite pleased with the sound. I hear they will be releasing a new firmware (coming soon). I'm hopeful Kenwood will stay ahead of the alligators.

Tgaut, appreciate all your updates and support. This receiver rocks when everything is working!

(to be continued)

Can someone please explain how the surround/center channel speaker connections work?

I think someone mentioned that you use an adapted to connnect to the speaker terminals. Is this correct and, if so, does the adapter accept banana plus and/or is of sufficient size to take 11/12 gauge speaker wire?

buddyhinton,

The receiver comes with special connectors for those speakers.

No banana plugs, no 11/12 gauge wire.

This is a trim receiver, and one result of that is a shortage of real estate on the back. So-- small connectors.

See post #4 at the beginning of this thread, the connections on the far right.

The Kenwood N8100 plays the first .mpg just fine - that is the good news.
The bad news is, none of the other chapters play. Neither by manually starting nor by continuing from the first mentioned above. If anyone is succeeds in getting a full DVD to play, please tell me the details. Otherwise it's a great receiver!

Kevo,

Be aware that there is a 2 Gb file size limit for video files.

If you have any video files that are an incompatible format, download the 14 day free trial of Dr. Divx. It will convert them to divx format.

Tgaut,
I am aware of the 2Gig limit, but why am I only able to play the first chapter in a 4-5 chapter DVD? Shouldn't I be able to manually start the continuing 2nd chapter?
Thanks for the response,
Kevo

The fact that the first chapter is playing tells me the 8100 is operating properly.

Did you download the movie or rip it?
Are you aware of any flags that might be set that would "confuse" the receiver?
Have you tried it in a Divx format?

I'm so proud of the thread I started. :-) I changed the title of the thread to better reflect what it has become... a great deailogue between meany members. I guess it's okay to call it the "official" thread. If not, let me know.

This receiver looks like a really nice setup. It is too bad that it doesn't have DVD-A type inputs so I can connect the analog outputs from my sound card to the receiver and use the whole system for gaming on my Samsung DLP.

I know I can use the digital out from my sound card for DVDs and such, but I want 5 channel audio for games that are not encoded with DD.

Am I missing something about this situation and in doing so causing myself to miss out on a great receiver?

-Nathan

Couldn't you just use PLIIx for your non DD games?

Some games have true 5.1 sound even if they are not DD games. Pro logic seems like a step in the wrong direction for games like Doom3. I'd also like to be able to get DVD audio and the full effect from WMVHD movies. From what I’ve researched, none of these things can happen over the Spdif out.

-Nathan

I've been out of the gaming world for a long time... Last game I really got into was Mechwarrior 2! I was not aware of the advances they have made in the sound arena.

I've had the 8100 for about a week now and have been unsuccessful in getting the OSD to display for the Network Server. I finally resorted to disconnecting everything except the speakers and plugged in just the composite cable from the monitor out to the TV and still can't get anything to display. When I've connected other components (DVD, Playstation) via component or composite cables the monitor out works fine for both, but the Network Server OSD refuses to display. I think I've just got a bad unit here, but can anyone think of anything else I should try? I've contacted Kenwood via email, but I'm still waiting on a response.

BBills,
See my post on page 4, about 2/3 down:

Called Support 1-800-Kenwood which is quite good. After phone tree (5-2-1-2) got a live level one voice quite quickly (< 1 min) who passed me to level two. Here they instructed me to reset the receiver (hold down power switch for 5+ seconds and unplug while held. Replug in while power switch down). This re-initialized the unit and voila - OSD works! Set my output to component and moved on to the original task.

Hope this helps,
Kevo

Also, you'll only get a display signal out when the 8100 is set to Net server.

I had tried to re-initialize the unit earlier. When I powered up after holding down the power and unpluging/repluging the word "initialize" showed on the display. I didn't know how long to leave it powered on like this so after a few seconds I powered the unit down, waited a few seconds, then powered on again. I still only saw "initialize" on the screen, so I unplugged after I powered it off and then plugged it in again. It was back to normal so I switched over to Network Server and still wasn't getting the OSD. I tried it with composite, then S-Video cables. I feel like I'm missing something simple to get this to work. Thanks for the suggestions so far though.

BBills,
It sounds like you did everything proper to reset. One item the support folks told me (sorry if this sounds redundant) is that during power up, even when the word Initailize appears in the display, continue to hold down the power button for a long time (10s). Very different than boxes like Replay which only require holding power switch down during power down. This worked for me. Clearly, yours may be different and may require talking to support and/or returning.

-Kevo

how does the functionality of this unit compare to the Integra units with netunes, etc.?

some questions/comments:

1. Can someone tell me what we can do with the GNU GPL/LGPL application software released by kenwood?
(kenwoodeurope.com/support/downsoft/gnu.aspx?)
Would be great if we can change the firmware that way.

2. There is a great community for some Kiss dvd players using the same sigma chip for multimedia playback. Server replacement software is out there too for those players. I think we will see this for kenwood too. Its not a big deal to analyze the sends and responses from the existing server software.

3. New server software and firmware has been released for the 8100. What are your impressions?

Originally posted by hotspot
some questions/comments:


3. New server software and firmware has been released for the 8100. What are your impressions?


Is this on the web somewhere? Thanks!

You can use the link i posted above.
I had to remove the "h**p://" in front of the url because I'm not allowed to post urls in my first 5 posts ;)
Just click on the PC Server button on the left.
You will need your mac adress for this.

Anyone knows if there are any discrete codes available for the power on and power off on the remote? Been trying to program my Pronto to control these functions separately to no avail.

Thanks!

Originally posted by hotspot
some questions/comments:

1. Can someone tell me what we can do with the GNU GPL/LGPL application software released by kenwood?
(kenwoodeurope.com/support/downsoft/gnu.aspx?)
Would be great if we can change the firmware that way.

2. There is a great community for some Kiss dvd players using the same sigma chip for multimedia playback. Server replacement software is out there too for those players. I think we will see this for kenwood too. Its not a big deal to analyze the sends and responses from the existing server software.

3. New server software and firmware has been released for the 8100. What are your impressions?

The site seems to be European. Is the firmware code that's available here applicable to us Yankees too?

I'm pretty sure that there is only one version of the kenwood server software both for europe and USA.
But maybe tgaut can tell us more.

The firmware is downloaded by the server software to your PC.
After that, you have to tell your 8100 which server to use for an update of the firmware.
So, if there is only one server software, there has to be only one firmware.

Maybe sgroer has tryed this yet?
I'm not sure why the american support site didn't released any info yet.
But on the other hand, look at how much more info you can find on the german support site for example (including FAQs):
(kenwood-electronics.de/netzwerk_frmset.htm).

You're right. It is the same version of the software. What we were sent to post on the US site had one dialog box still in Japanese. It should be posted very soon. However, feel free to download it off the European site.

You guys are good! Here I was going to come on here and say "It's available for download", but you stole my thunder. Have to get up pretty early to sneak one past you guys!

tgaut,

Think you could find out what the officia bass X-over frequency is on the 7100/N8100 for us? One person tested and said his test revealed that it was 80hz.

I'm not in the office today, but I'll check in the morning.

I'll be upgrading my software and firmware this evening. If I find anything to be different, I'll certainly post it.

Originally posted by tgaut
I'm not in the office today, but I'll check in the morning. Thanks. No rush though. Just curiosity.

How do you get the wireless networking going with this receiver? I assume you install a PCMCIA wireless card but I haven'e seen anything on which cards it works with or how it installs drivers.

How do you get the wireless networking going with this receiver? I assume you install a PCMCIA wireless card but I haven'e seen anything on which cards it works with or how it installs drivers.
You will need an ethernet bridge. PCMCIA-slot only supports an adapter for memory cards like compact flash.

Originally posted by hotspot
You will need an ethernet bridge. PCMCIA-slot only supports an adapter for memory cards like compact flash.

That stinks. The place I want to put this unit I don't have much space for concealing extra equipment. This will require an external W-Fi adapter and since it's not USB, a power supply for it.

I really wish they had built Wi-Fi into it right from the start, or made a slot in back for a PCMCIA card to insert to support it. I know this adds cost, but almost everyone putting in a new home network now is using wireless.

Nice unit though. I will definitely be getting a networkable receiver in the future, but I will wait for Wi-Fi within the enclosure.

~Dominic

Originally posted by Daryl L
tgaut,

Think you could find out what the officia bass X-over frequency is on the 7100/N8100 for us? One person tested and said his test revealed that it was 80hz.

Officially it is 100Hz.

Thanks for the info tgaut. ;)

Attached is a plot of the measurements I took between the Kenwood 7100 and the Sherwood Newcastle R-865 with Xover at 80hz. Ideally, this should be done in an anechoic chamber or at least in a quasi-anechoic area. Meaning outside in an open area away 50+ feet away from any objects. I do have an area I can do that but wasn't that motivated to lug everything outside. Or at least not the Sherwood. So the measurments are taken in my room for convenience. That is why I used the Sherwood with X-over set at 80Hz for comparison.

A couple notes:
Any X-over should start above the X-over point and be a about 3 db down at the crossover point. This can vary of course but a guideline. The highest reading here is at 80Hz. The room is the cause of this as I have a peak at 81Hz.

I tried to level match each piece within +/- .1 db of each other. So minor differences in graph might be because of that. The RTA is rounding to the nearest db. That is why much of the graph is just overlapped. But, it does give you an idea of how close each of the electronics are.

This was done late at night so the levels were not set that high. But, really doesn't effect the graph. With my HVAC system off my room is less than 25db. HVAC is my next big project for isolating this room. The HVAC system was off for the tests.

Hope this helps.

Bob

Hi-

A few things...
Crutchfield list this item as "discontinued". Is there a replacement model in the near future?

How is the fan noise on this?

* Firmware request: variable crossover points (80 min.)

Bob, you need to put the picture part of the HTML in the zip folder, please.

Here is another one in Word format. The data comes out in Excel and I was trying to convert it to something that everyone would have. Just in case somebody doesn't have MS Office. I don't know how to convert an excel or word file into a JPEG. I guess I could print it and scan it back in. Is there any other way to convert it. I have a laser printer so I'd have to print it at work for color.

Bob

BTW, I downloaded the first one and it worked fine on my machine. Is anyone else having problems?

Bob

BobL,
I bow to your technical expertise.

Tweakophyte,
I have one at my desk, playing at a low level to avoid audio wars, and can say I've never heard the fan. Obviously when it's cranked the fan might put out some noise, but who could hear it. Maybe someone can try running one hard for a bit, then turn it full down and listen for any noise.
The VRS-N8100 was released in August, so it is not discontinued. Looking at Crutchfields site, they have a "New" tag AND a "Clearance" tag on two different Kenwood receivers. Perhaps they are confused, what with the holiday season and all! I think I'll check with them.

Clearance doesn't necessarily mean discontinued does it?

It could be they have more stock than they want to carry.

Let me second the idea that I believe Kenwood should consider taking the server and client applications as open source as possible.

Kenwood is a hardware company, not a software company. Take a look at what Slimdevices has been able to accomplish with their audio server.

Kenwood should maintain a development team to take submissions and integrate the efforts into the official release package and focus their efforts on parts of the code that can not be released.

If Kenwood wants to get out in front, this is the way. There a many examples out there. This may be a hard concept for a japanese company, but I believe the winner will be the first company that brings high quality hardware and develops a strong community to gradually work the software into a must have application.

Those are my 2cents, for what they are worth.

- Wes

Your 2 cents becomes 4 cents. because I agree with you totally!

Originally posted by sgroer
I'll be upgrading my software and firmware this evening. If I find anything to be different, I'll certainly post it.

Sgroer
How did the upgrade go?

Originally posted by tgaut
Sgroer
How did the upgrade go?

Work has been getting in the way of my life this week... I'll do it this weekend and post. Probably Saturday AM.

I got the upgrade done...
I didn't follow the instructions fully and did not unistall the old PC Server version before installing the new one. The firmware update bombed, so I went back, unistalled PC Server, reninstalled it and everything worked perfectly. I don't see any new functionalities so far. If I discover anything or think something might be slightly different, I will update the group. I am consindering developing an excel applet to easliy manage music on the PC side using the xml format that the PC software understands. It's going to take some time, so more on that at a much later date. I have done very little web development, but looking at the xml files pointed out earlier in this thread, it's very simple. Among other things, I'd like to design a randomizer of sorts.

On another note, after investigating the xml files, it seems that the best way to make playlists for now is to create a new Genre called "playlists" or something similar and import the files from your music directories. It's actually quite convenient to do it this way, and inside each Genre, you can have an album name representative of the list. For instance, we had a Christmas Party on Friday night and I created a playlist called "Christmas Party 2004" as an album in the playlist genre. It had about 30 songs on it. Using the genre repeat mode, the playlist repeated once during the party. Worked perfectly!

Hello- this is my first post on these boards

I need to buy my brother a HTR for a wedding gift and have read this and other thread completely.

This reciever looks like a top choice, except it is not compatible with the AAC/itunes(also not crazy about no 5.1 input, but my brother should not miss it like I would) I am not very familiar with itunes/or ipod, but this is very important to him. If he can not stream this source then the streaming capability is useless to him. I may as well save the cash and go with the 7100 or the panny. Am I missing something? Is everybody converting this format to something different? If so which format via which software? Or is no one using itunes. I personaly buy cd's myself and have never messed with itunes so pardon my ignorance.



Thanks,
Josh Huls

Yes, I don't mess with Itunes either... I buy cd's or download MP3's (legally). I think the only way to stream an AAC is to convert it... and the little I know about AAC files would not be enough to advise you on how to do that. I don't know of any receivers that can stream protected AAC's... You could buy the 7100 or the panny and an airport express which will do the streaming of itunes AAC's for you.

Yes-that's the conclusion I came to after hours more of reading forums. I found a way to convert, but I have to wonder what is so great about itunes if it is such a pita to work with.

Thanks for the reply

Josh Huls

For those of you not up to speed on Roku - Roku just released an update for their HD1000. While not a lot is new other than they now finally are starting to support video, it looks to me like the most interesting new feature will be support for UPnP A/V - Universal Plug and Play Audio / Video - which seems to be a multi-vendor standard for media streaming on home networks - Audio, video and Photographs.

Which brings us to the proprietary Kenwood server software.

This may be asking way way to much - but hey Tgaut - how about asking your product manager to stop all development and kill off the Kenwood server, and instead update the client itself to support UPnp A/V? There are at least 10 UPnP servers available on the internet - including one that comes for free in MS Windows. UpNP servers support a lot more than the enhancements requested in this forum, from just a short read - including scanning and transcoding many types and formats of files, handling metadata, providing robust services for fast forward, rewind, skip, etc.

So if you did this your development costs would go down, the richness of your server software would go up, and you could focus all of your development on making the client a great user experience

Any thoughts? I haven't done a deep dive into this, but it sure looks like most of the dedicated media players and other consumer devices are rapidly moving down this path...

You can learn more about UPnP by googling it, and looking for results at Microsoft, Intel and Nero.

ddrucker,

Have a look at www.dlna.org

This is an alliance of major CE companies that are putting forth interoperability standards for electronic devices. If you look at the FAQ's it addresses UPnP. Check out the promoting members, and you'll see many big CE names.

At CES, we will have a demonstration of this capability.

(I can't believe you don't like the fine Kenwood Server software.)

it seems they are working on it:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<scpd xmlns="urn:schemas-upnp-org:service-1-0" >
...

found this in a xml file for the server software.

after playing around with some of the intel upnp tools, i found out that the vrs-n8100 itself is using some sort of upnp requests to look for the server software on startup. But it isnt working till now for third party media servers.

hopefully the firmware update comes soon, i really like the idea of upnp.

Btw, just got my VRS-N8100 a few days ago and i really like it so far.

FYI...I have completed about 80% of the Randomizer program for the Kenwood server software. I have two programs:

- A random playlist chooser that allows you to choose which playlists you wish to "randomize", and stores these choices in a new XML file.

- A playlist randomizer program that will read these choices and randomize the playlists, storing them in a new Genre I create called "Random". The playlist titles in the new Random genre will be renamed "Original Genre Name - Playlist Name".

I haven't decided whether I will have the second program be a standalone program that you can manually run as needed, or whether it will run as a hidden, background "service" that will run on a predifined time interval.

I welcome any feedback on the second program.

Ok, I've decided to do both...You will be able to randomize immediately from the playlist chooser program, and that is all someone needs if they want to randomize on demand.

For those that want to randomize on a periodic basis, I will be creating a windows service that you can install that will do this as well that will randomize the Random playlist every hour.

Nice to see someone programming some tools for the VRS-N8100.
Keep up the work!

Mcowher... you rock!! Keep up the good work. I am anxious to try out your handywork. When do you think this will be complete?

I've completed about 99% of the playlist chooser...Everything is done, except that I'm trying to find out if there is an alternative to stopping and restarting the Kenwood service in order for the changes to the XML files to be updated to the client.

I'm hoping to wrap things up over the weekend.

I have this receiver and love it in every way, except for the fact that it is causing totally unacceptable color artifacting on the component output. Here is the situation;

I have a Panny 50 inch plasma, New this Christmas, and the N8100 and a DVD and HD TIVO unit. All are hooked up through my N8100. When I have any video, whether it be a Menu, a Movie, the HD TIVO feed or OTA antenna feed through HD TIVO, I get a purple-ish artifact after ANY and ALL bright areas on the screen. For example, if you bring up a THX video optimizer in a DVD movie, with all the white boxes, the purple streams to the right from the white boxes to the edge of the screen.

Beating my head for a few days, I tried everything, from upgraded cabling, filters on the line, trying to setup my color in the Panny, all for nothing. I never considered the N8100 as the problem, yet it was the least common denominator.

I connected up the DVD directly to the TV and Viola no purple anymore. I tested all the other components and the purple is gone with them. just in case I hooked one at a time back into the N8100 and regardless of the order, the purple appears. So it IS the N8100. I called and need to wait till tomorrow to talk to a second level tech, but this baby needs to be replaced I believe.

Has anyone else experienced this with the unit or am I alone in this?

Nacman

I was working on updating the firmware on my NR8100 today - In the network setup menu there is a section that implies you are supposed to be able to register the receiver at www.divx.com to be able to download and play DIVX movies. It includes a link to www.divx.com/vod and includes a registration code for the receiver.

However when you go to DIVX to set this up, Kenwood is not listed as a supported vendor. For kicks I tried to register the unit using the password that is baked into my unit as a JVC player, but it failed on the DIVX site.

Has anyone tried this or found a workaround ?

Originally posted by Nacman

Has anyone else experienced this with the unit or am I alone in this?

Nacman

I checked out the Finding NEMO THX tests and I see no purple via component out. I havea 52 inch LG DLP an upconverting DVD player, and a motorola 6412 HD DVR on digital cable.

Originally posted by ddruker
I was working on updating the firmware on my NR8100 today - In the network setup menu there is a section that implies you are supposed to be able to register the receiver at www.divx.com to be able to download and play DIVX movies. It includes a link to www.divx.com/vod and includes a registration code for the receiver.

However when you go to DIVX to set this up, Kenwood is not listed as a supported vendor. For kicks I tried to register the unit using the password that is baked into my unit as a JVC player, but it failed on the DIVX site.

Has anyone tried this or found a workaround ?


You're right... DIVX has not registered the N8100 on their site. I think this is something new in the firmaware update, so hopefully they will update the site soon. Tgaut... your thoughts? I have submitted a support request on the divx site. I'll post if I hear back.

It was actually in the original firmware - so it's been in there since Kenwood released this receiver...

Originally posted by ddruker
It was actually in the original firmware - so it's been in there since Kenwood released this receiver...

I submitted an email to DIVX... I'll post if I hear anything.

I have no issues with video quality on my unit either - my is hooked up to a 42 inch panasonic plasma via a home-made RG6 component cable, and sources are a Hughes e86 HD Directv receiver and a Zenith DBV318 upconverting DVD player.

It sounds like you may have a bad receiver.

I too submitted a request to Divx.

Kinda strange.

The good news is the online retailer I bought it from, gave me no hassle, and is sending a return label for free shipping and has shipped a replacement unit to me, so hats of to JR for that. I believe this must be just a very random occurence, and will chalk it up to bad luck. I will report back to everyone one the new unit.

Thanks to everybody who tried there video out test and reported back.

Nacman

Good luck with the new unit... let us know how it turns out!

Someone wrote that the thought Lenwood should release the server softare are open source. Well It is open source. I found it on one of kenwoods European sites. The code is on Java which is one of the reasons its so cludgy.

here is the url but because I an new I will need to leave out the the stuff up the the w's

kenwood-europe.com/support/downsoft/downsoft.aspx?M1=2&M2=20

Can't find the source code you are talking about.
The GNU GPL/LGPL open source files have nothing to do with the server software. They have something to do with the Receiver itself.
I asked some time ago what we can do with those files, there has been no answer till now.

But on the other hand you are talking about java source code (The source code above is in C).
So, where exactly did you find it? Has it been removed from the site?

Few people here mentioned this unit doesn't upconvert from composite or s-video to component. My question is - does it downconvert from component to composite?
I'm asking because I would be interested to feed composite out from 8100 to modulator and feed to the rest of the house while component is connected to main HDTV. I'm hoping to see video and OSD menus on modulated channel as well as main HDTV.

Is this possible?

Also, when you play MPEG video files streaming from server, which video out is active? Same one as set for OSD menus? All of them?

Please let me know, thanks.

tgaut, I could use your help in completing the Randomizer utility...Everything I'm doing works fine, except that I have found that after editing the XML files, I need to Stop and Restart the Windows Service in order for the changes to take affect.

If I don't do this, the changes to the XML files are not showing up in the receiver itself.

I notice that when the the user does a Save in the Kenwood PC Server java program, that this is not necessary...I've spent a couple of days trying to track down the Java call that is taking place during the Save that is refreshing what appears on the receiver, but am unable to find it.

If I have to, I can do the Stop/Restart in my VB.net program, but I would rather make a call to a Java class file if I can...

If I had the source code .java files that go into the kwdpcserver.jar file, I could probably figure it out for myself. I'm looking at all the public methods that are in the GuiMain.class file, and tried exitSave, but that doesn't seem to do the trick.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I'm also wondering if the kwdStart and kwdEnd methods in the NTServiceManager.class file would do the refresh for me as well...

I have a number of video files that play fine on my PC, but don't run on the Kenwood unit. The behavior is that I select one from the movies menu, I get a purple screen and a short pause, and then I get put back into the movies menu again. I am trying to figure out the pattern of what works and what doesn't so I can re-encode the files that don't work.

I know that the unit handles mpeg 2 video saved as .mpg, and Divx and Xvid saved as AVI - but are there any additional details or restrictions on this - certain codecs or versions of codecs will or will not work / certain types of audio streams will / will not work, constant or variable bitrates, etc? Or is there something else that others have run into?

I know this will all be fixed if and when the unit supports a transcoding UPnP server, but until then I am stuck....

So does anyone have a list of exactly what is and is not supported in the current release?

ddruker,

There are LOTS of AVI cedecs, but the 8100 supports only DivX and Xvid currently. Any files you have that will not play can be converted to DivX with Dr. DivX at divx.com.

They have a 14 day free trail of the full program.

Ok guys....The randomizer program is ready to go!

I will probably make improvements to it when I get some more info from tgaut, and I would like a few people to try it out before I make it available for wholesale download.

PM me or give me an email address if you want to try it out.

Originally posted by tgaut


At CES, we will have a demonstration of this capability.

(I can't believe you don't like the fine Kenwood Server software.)


Are you saying you will have a demonstration of this for another piece of hardware or for te N8100? (Please say it's the 8100... I would LOVE to see it use the Upnp stuff out there)

FYI...Kenwood is having a Press Event today at the CES at 2pm (local time):

http://www.cesweb.org/press/events/rd_press_event_detail.asp?ID=315

Originally posted by butvinik
Few people here mentioned this unit doesn't upconvert from composite or s-video to component. My question is - does it downconvert from component to composite?
I'm asking because I would be interested to feed composite out from 8100 to modulator and feed to the rest of the house while component is connected to main HDTV. I'm hoping to see video and OSD menus on modulated channel as well as main HDTV.

Is this possible?

Also, when you play MPEG video files streaming from server, which video out is active? Same one as set for OSD menus? All of them?

Please let me know, thanks.


as far as I can tell, the OSD can only go through one output or the other. In the OSD menu, you have to tell it which output the OSD passes through, so multiple outputs doesn't seem to be an option. I agree that for whole house audio, this would be pretty slick. Maybe you could feed the component signal into another device (such as a cable box with multiple outputs) that then converts it into the necessary format.

Did any of you hear back from either Kenwood or DivX yet on the DivX on-demand support for the unit discussed above? My support inquiries to both have gone unanswered....

I haven't heard anything from DIVX... very disappointing.

I have not heard from DivX either. Our product development manager is meeting with them today. Hopefully we can get an answer.

tgaut,
can you elaborate on what went on at the Kenwood Press Event at CES?

Originally posted by Nacman
The good news is the online retailer I bought it from, gave me no hassle, and is sending a return label for free shipping and has shipped a replacement unit to me, so hats of to JR for that. I believe this must be just a very random occurence, and will chalk it up to bad luck. I will report back to everyone one the new unit.

Thanks to everybody who tried there video out test and reported back.

Nacman

Hey Nacman... I've been observing this on my 8100 too. Please let me know if it goes away on your replacement unit. If glad I got this from Costco online as I can have it replaced easily.

Originally posted by sgroer
tgaut,
can you elaborate on what went on at the Kenwood Press Event at CES?

Most of the press conference was devoted to car audio and company direction. The primary home items were the new higher end Kenwood product, and DLNA.

As to the issue with DivX, the people in the meeting were not the people who would take care of it. They are taking the issue back with them. I'm sorry I can't give you an answer yet.

Originally posted by Melencio
Hey Nacman... I've been observing this on my 8100 too. Please let me know if it goes away on your replacement unit. If glad I got this from Costco online as I can have it replaced easily.

Hey everyone,

I received my new N8100 and I am getting the same type of output from the component on it. As previously stated both units have been filtered, isolated and individually connected, but regardless, they both produce this purple-ish looking color bloom from white or bright objects. When I connect my HD-TIVO via HDMI directly to Plasma, viola, no problems. When I connect my DVD to TV's Component in, viola, no problem. When I route either through my N8100 and go component out to Plasma, problems.

tgaut:
Can you run this by the engineers and find out what the deal is. I don't feel like exchanging it again, but I would like the ability to use the N8100 as intended.

Saga continues.

Nac:mad:

I've got to say that the customer support at DivX is HORRIBLE...

How can they ever expect to succeed in business if they neglect to respond to all of these emails? If they can't respond to simple questions, what kind of service can we expect when we start using their product?

I'm baffled...

I worked in customer service years ago, and this is inexuseable!

Originally posted by mcowher
I've got to say that the customer support at DivX is HORRIBLE...

How can they ever expect to succeed in business if they neglect to respond to all of these emails? If they can't respond to simple questions, what kind of service can we expect when we start using their product?

I'm baffled...

I worked in customer service years ago, and this is inexuseable!

Hi Mark,
I sent a couple more emails. Keep them on their toes. Kind of pisses me off when companies blatantly do not respond to their customers... where would they be without us?

Well, folks I have been testing out the Mcowher special randomization utility and it' just awesome. Works like a charm. I think he's got a few more tricks up his sleeve before the official release, but he has patched a big hole present in the original Kenwood software. Tgaut, you should take his handywork to your engineers if mark agrees to it.

I finally found a contact at DivX to correct the registration issue.

You can now go to www.divx.com/vod and register your receiver for VOD. Currently, Kenwood is not listed alphabetically, but is at the very bottom of the list.

David

Cool , thanks Tgaut. I'll give it a try.

I'm having a random video freeze problem during playback of large avi files. I have a wireless G ethernet bridge connected. It happens once or twice during a 750mb avi. The picture and movie playback just freeze. At that point it's like the whole OS of the receiver just locks up. I can click on the Return button and eventually it returns to the movie genre menu but the title buttons are all blank and everything moves really slow if you try to move up and down through the titles. I can click to the left and logout and back in but it's still slow. Only rebooting fixes this. Then, I have to restart the file and FF to the part I was watching.

The playback is perfectly fine the rest of the movie though except for one or two of these instances throughout. It doesn't seem like it's a wireless network or avi problem since it has happened to different AVIs and the OS seems to lock up.

Anybody seen this happen? I really like having the video playback option. I did notice an audio file quit once also but I had chalked that up to a wireless issue. Might have been the same symptom though.

I had the same type of issues during music on my wireless b network. Seemed like it was totally locked up. I dumped wireless altogether and it's perfect now. I'd recommend temporarily running a network cable to the receiver from your router and playing one of those same files to see if maybe it's wireless related. I find that since going with a wired set up, everything from the menus to file access is much faster and smoother.

I was able to register my receiver on DivX, but haven't experimented with actually downloading any movies yet...

I have a 802.11G so with the 54mbps it should be fine maybe you're right. I could definitely see a problem with 802.11B because you only get about 4 or 5 true mbps.

There's not really a way to run a cable to my location and the wireless capability was the main reason I purchased this unit. I did notice on the PC server software that there's a selection for HIGH,FAST, & NORMAL. I'll try watching on fast to see if that changes it. Does anybody know what those settings actually do?

I also registered mine with DIVX. I'm not sure what good movies are out there for it though.

Originally posted by sgroer
In my opinion, the $180 premium (street price) you pay to step up to the N8100 is far worth it.

What did this mean?

NEVERMIND!!! After i read my post it made sense!!! Too fast on the clicker!!

Staggarlee,

I suspect that the problem is in your network throughput. None of the information on the buttons, such as genre, is stored in the receiver, so anytime you see blank buttons it has lost contact with the computer.

Was anyone using the network, downloading or transferring large files?

As to high, fast, and normal that only applies to the photos that you register. When you register photos it creates copies of them on the hard drive in the selected resolution.

David

Nobody was intentionally using my network but with always connected computers you never know what might have used some bandwidth. I need to find a QOS program that guarantees my ethernet bridge priority. Thanks for the response, I'll have to investigate further.

Is anybody out there using this heavily with wireless G?

Make sure you are running encryption and MAC filtering as well... could have been your neighbors clogging up your throughput.

Well,
I registered my player at DIVx and downloaded the activation video. Unfortunately, the extension of the file *.tix is not recognized by the server software as a video file. I can't import the file, so the DIVx features seem like they are not up to snuff yet. Anyone else figure out how to play the video? As a longshot, I changed the extension to mpg and imported the file. Tried to play it and as expected, it didn't work.

Anyone heard anything about any new software or firmware updates scheduled? The number one thing on my top 10 list was "share your plans with your users..." remember ?

sgroer,
I can't get the video to play either. I get a message on the screen telling me that my player isn't authorized.

I am expecting a call today from their support department to see if we can figure it out.

ddruker,

There is a software upgrade for the Kenwood PC Server, and a firmware upgrade for the receiver posted online. You upgrade the PC Server software first, then you have the ability to upgrade the firmware. They are both on kenwoodusa.com.

David

TGaut, I went to the software update page at:

http://kenwoodusa.com/register/software-firmware.jsp

but when I try to download the PC server software at:

http://www-test.kenwood.com/j/download/avcc/download/pc_server/index.html

I get an error message:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /j/download/avcc/download/pc_server/index.html on this server.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.29 Ben-SSL/1.53 Server at www-test.kenwood.com Port 80

remove the "-test" from the url.

Just thought I should share my experiences with the Kenwood N815DVF (home theater package) System. Here is a random list of facts, thoughts and personal opinions:

- I've owned the system since just before X-Mas

- equipment/gear:

Kenwood N8100 Receiver (new 2.1.14 Firmware)
Kenwood DVF8100 DVD/VCD/CD Player
Kenwood 7.1 Speakers
Time Warner Digital Cable and Roadrunner Cable Modem Service
TIVO Series 2
Linksys USB/Ethernet Adapter
Toshiba DLP Projector
Compaq TFT-5000 LCD Monitor
Avermedia Composite Video to VGA converter
Marantz RC3200 LCD remote control (fully programmed for the Video/Audio/Data setup)
Lingo VOIP
D-Link DI-774 802.11 a/b/g Router
Acer 7100 Pentium 4 3.2GHz Server Windows XP Pro SP2 running Kenwood PC Server 1.1.11
3COM 802.11 a/b/g PCI Card

- All MP3 and Video files are digitized and stored on the Acer server

- the set-up is a follows:

RR Cable Modem wired to Lingo VOIP WAN port and Cable Box (DHCP)
Cable Box S-Video / Audio to TIVO and N8100 Video-1
TIVO to N8100 Video-2 S-Video/Audio
TIVO Composite Video to Avermedia Adapter to LCD Monitor
DVD to N8100 DVD S-Video and Coax Audio

Lingo Ethernet to WAN of D-Link Router (DHCP)
Router Wireless is protected via WPA
Router wired to TIVO, N8100
Acer PC Server to Router over 3COM 11g Wireless WiFi (50+ Mps) Encrypted

PROs
- set-up was a no brainier
- easy configuration data, audio, video via OSD
- ample connectivity options including Ethernet, Component, S-Video, Composite, Coax, Digital , etc. etc. etc.
- impressive power
- digital video/audio material reproduction technology
- incredible MP3 reproduction
- 7.1 Audio
- was able to complete THX compliant set-up for Toshiba DLP
- modern and stylish design look and feel
- package has everything one needs for HT

CONs (most related to network server firmware of the N8100 unit)
- NOT UPnP compliant and thus unusable with 3-rd party software (verified with Intel and Siemens toolkits) -- really a huge disappointment particularly given Kenwood is a member of both standards groups
- Network Server options and menus are just too basic -- If UPnP was implemented could have been easily compensated with PC Server software like J.River Media Center 11 (see MC11 TIVO capability)
- N8100 connectivity to PC Server over Wireless 11g at 50+MPS is unstable -- okay if taking wireless in consideration BUT not okay if the server DOES not retry to re-establish the connection and resume from last known media processing step. Buffer on N8100 might be too small to make connection restart transparent to the user/listener (Onkay does this)

Will post more comments as I go along!

Regards...Jerry

Thanks for the info Jerry, and welcome to the thread!

ok - I upgraded my receiver from 02.02 to the new version 02.14

It is not obvious what is changed. Are there any release notes?

New version: 2.14.
There is also a new firmware update available for your VRS-N8100 and/or DVF-N7080(S). This update fixes problems when playing DivX3.11 files. Also various other minor bugs have been fixed.
so nothing really new till now. still waiting for the upnp-update.

Agreed UPnP support would be a number one feature request, but also it needs to be combined with user interface updates to make the unit usable with a UPnP back-end.

I just bought this receiver over the weekend after reading through this forum. I'm embarrased to admit that I primarily purchased it for the Dolby Headphones capability. The Dolby Virtual Speaker is helpful as well because I'm currently on the losing end of a debate with my wife over speaker placement in my new home. Fight the power!

I was going to buy the Pioneer SE-DIR800 wireless Dolby 5.1 headphones when I stumbled upon this receiver. It didn't cost me much more than the Pioneer setup would have with an extra pair of headphones. I like the slim form factor and the fact that it doesn't produce as much heat as my prior amp. I love the Dolby Headphones output and I hope it's just as good the SE-DIR800s would have been (I never got a chance to test them both).

But I miss a few things too. I had a Pioneer VSX-912K and I miss the auto speaker calibration, the banana plugs (goes without saying), virtual surround back (matrixed the rear center to the two surrounds), and the user selectable subwoofer crossover. I can't believe that I paid more for this than my Pioneer and I can't adjust the crossover.

That leads me to my point (yes, there is one). Oddly, it seems like they marketed this to the mass consumer and our niche at the same time. Your mass market consumer might actually still play their games with s-video and use the jacks in the front. They might not be able to figure out how to configure the crossover or even care (especially if they bought the Kenwood speakers). But then, what are the odds of them figuring out how to use the networking features? And if you're aiming this at the mass consumer how do you leave out iTunes compatibility when it dominates the market?

I've only had it for a couple of days so I'm sure to find more things to like and a few more things I don't like but this thread is great and I hope it continues to stay updated.

P.S. I haven't had any component issues with my Zenith 318 DVD player or HD DirecTivo. The image is as crystal clear on my Hitachi 51S715 as it was through my Pioneer receiver.

Missed this option altogether since that wasn't my primary reason for buying. As far as collaboration and virtual speakers, did u check the set-up menu cause I used it to config the speakers and pretty sure there is a virtual speaker simulation in one of the DSP modes.

Sorry couldn't be more specific.

Regards!

Anyone get the movie to play (.tix)? I tried everything. I even tried to send for help on the divx site with the following:

HELP! I am trying to activate my Kenwood VRS-N8100. I downloaded the "Divx Activation Video.TIX" file. The instruction say to burn it and put it in my DVD player...but the VRS-N8100 is a networked receiver. I did try it in the DVD but it just keeps edjecting the CD. If I try to add the video to the "Kenwood Server" it can not be added because the Kenwood Server does not recognize the extension TIX. Can you please help me?
Thanks!

After I hit submit...it said that it did not generate a support ticket because the answers were probably below......????? All of the below stuff was regarding how to burn (lame) and DVD players!

Also...it seems that the Kenwood site shows that the Kenwood Server should be "�ESETUP_VXXXX (KENWOOD PC SERVER Ver. 2.*.*)" but my download file is KPS_V01111.EXE and after the update the version number shows 1.1.11....is this right? I even verified with the kenwood-europe site.

Thanks all!

FireRec,

Version 1.1.11 is the current version. Thanks to your post, it is now corrected on the site.

As to the activation video, I haven't been able to get it to play either. I'm about a week into emails back-and-forth with their support. We should have it worked out soon.

This activation is necessary ONLY if you want to play the Video On Demand movies. Any DivX files you have on your hard drive will stream to the 8100 as long as you have the current firmware.

I'm amazed you got a response. Keep us up to date tgaut. By the way, in last night's episode of 24, I noticed the red push issues others have mentioned. It's only in high contrast scenes that it becomes evident.
I can live with it, although am considering just going with DVI straight from my cable box for TV and only going through the component on the receiver for net server and DVD functions.

Originally posted by sgroer
By the way, in last night's episode of 24, I noticed the red push issues others have mentioned. It's only in high contrast scenes that it becomes evident.


I don't recall this issue, so I searched the thread and didn't find anything. Can you refresh my memory?

I've been noticing that on scenes with a lot of bright or flashing lights, the screen flickers. This happens when I'm watching Law and Order or CSI when they're taking photographs at the crime scenes.
This is also evident in commercials with predominantly a white background, the screen flickers like crazy.
Anyone else seeing this?

Tgaut, here is the original post from Nacman. THinking more about it, I guess I wouldn't call it red push , but red or purple streaking across the screen is evident in select scenes. Maybe I'll try to post a Pic. Not sureif I can get a good one or not on my DLP.


Originally posted by Nacman
I have this receiver and love it in every way, except for the fact that it is causing totally unacceptable color artifacting on the component output. Here is the situation;

I have a Panny 50 inch plasma, New this Christmas, and the N8100 and a DVD and HD TIVO unit. All are hooked up through my N8100. When I have any video, whether it be a Menu, a Movie, the HD TIVO feed or OTA antenna feed through HD TIVO, I get a purple-ish artifact after ANY and ALL bright areas on the screen. For example, if you bring up a THX video optimizer in a DVD movie, with all the white boxes, the purple streams to the right from the white boxes to the edge of the screen.

Beating my head for a few days, I tried everything, from upgraded cabling, filters on the line, trying to setup my color in the Panny, all for nothing. I never considered the N8100 as the problem, yet it was the least common denominator.

I connected up the DVD directly to the TV and Viola no purple anymore. I tested all the other components and the purple is gone with them. just in case I hooked one at a time back into the N8100 and regardless of the order, the purple appears. So it IS the N8100. I called and need to wait till tomorrow to talk to a second level tech, but this baby needs to be replaced I believe.

Has anyone else experienced this with the unit or am I alone in this?

Nacman

Originally posted by sgroer
Tgaut, here is the original post from Nacman. THinking more about it, I guess I wouldn't call it red push , but red or purple streaking across the screen is evident in select scenes. Maybe I'll try to post a Pic. Not sureif I can get a good one or not on my DLP.

I've seen this effect too... Also confirmed that it's the receiver since the effect is gone when I connect my video source to the monitor directly.

I've just sent this up the line to the service/engineering people. Anyone else having this issue?

Tgaut, you have a PM...

I'm using the HD DirecTivo unit and the Zenith DVB-318 with a Hitachi 51S715. I was under the impression that my unit didn't suffer from the purple banding problem until I watched my Tivo'd NYPD Blue tonight. Everytime the detectives walked past the blinds in the squad room with the light streaming through there were purple bands across the actors where the vertical blinds are. I hope there is a work around and I don't have to take it back to Fry's.

Yes, it is very common with a face in front of blinds. That is where I see it most as well.

I wonder if they are having the same issue with the 7100?

Originally posted by memphismafioso
I'm using the HD DirecTivo unit and the Zenith DVB-318 with a Hitachi 51S715. I was under the impression that my unit didn't suffer from the purple banding problem until I watched my Tivo'd NYPD Blue tonight. Everytime the detectives walked past the blinds in the squad room with the light streaming through there were purple bands across the actors where the vertical blinds are. I hope there is a work around and I don't have to take it back to Fry's.

Do you guys see a pattern here? this phenomenon is so evident in police drama series :D ...

That must be it! Honestly though, a head in front of blinds is most commonly seen in police dramas. I did see it in "House" last night though.

Yeah. The Doctor's foreheads in House were greenish and purplish for me. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to return my unit this weekend.

To be honest, I would wait and see if this can be fixed with a firmware update. It doesn't bother me that much, but do what you want, I'm not your mother. ;-)

My PC server is not working correctly after I upgraded the version to 1.1.11. I can connect to the pc server with the receiver but it will not find the firmware update file that I downloaded after the version update and it will not see new imported media files. It will still connect play what was saved before the version update though?

I've tried rebooting and restarting the kenwood service to no avail.

Should I just uninstall it and start over?

Forgive me for asking a simple question, but you did go to the firmware update option of the main setup menu - - - yes?

I seem to recall running into this issue, and I had to uninstall the pcserver software and reinstall it. For me, it stemmed from not following the upgrade directions exactly.

tgaut, any indication that the issue with the component output could be fixed with a firmware update? Like any geek, I'd be willing to wait for a firmware update if I knew it was coming...but I'd hate to wait so long that I couldn't return the unit to the store.

For the time being I'll just hook my components up to the TV. While I love my old Pioneer and would go back to using it if I had to return the Kenwood, I can't believe how big it is next to the Kenwood. I can stack my DVD player on the Kenwood and it's still half the size.

mmmmmm.....digital amplification.

Originally posted by memphismafioso
tgaut, any indication that the issue with the component output could be fixed with a firmware update?

It's too early to know. This issue was a total unknown until you guys reported it. It will be resolved, but right now (February 4th) we've reported it, and the engineers have got to figure out what's causing it.

Thanks, I uninstalled the pc server software and reinstalled. Everything works now including the firmware update to my receiver. It even kept my current media in place so I didn't have import everything again.

Glad it worked for you!

Yeah man, this receiver is just the coolest! People stopping by are just nothing but impressed. Foy anybody with a huge selection of digital media files, this receiver is a must. I love not having to burn cds.

I just can't decide whether or not to go about converting all of my iTunes (.aac) downloaded tracks or to stick with my MP3's for now and wait for a firmware upgrade.

OK.
Everyone may have already figured this out, but since the solution has not been posted here it is.

When you download the activation video it has the .tix extension. When you play the activation video with the DivX player on your PC, it creates a new activation file with a .divx extension in your DivX movies folder. This is the file that you import into the Kenwood PC Server to be played on the 8100. After playing the movie on the 8100, you are good to go for all DivX VOD.

Speaking for myself, when the activation video downloaded on my system it played automatically in the DivX player. The file said "You have successfully activated your player" so I never took the next step to play it on the 8100.

Sorry it took so long to get this info!
David

Hi-

How does the DivX work on the network with this receiver? I thought DivX movies required a lot of processor power to decode. Have you ripped some movies to DivX, and if so, what resolution? Any HD?

Thanks!

I have played a few divx movies now, and they are flawless... Look very good! I'm new to this divx thing, and I don't know how an HD divx movie would make it to the receiver... has anyone tried or know where to download some HD divx material?

http://www.divx.com/movies/trailers.php

tgaut,

I would be interested in buying the N8100 if two things happened:

1) Support for Samba network shares - same thing "Brentis" mentioned a while back in this thread. Samba enables files on a Unix/Linux system to be accessed via a Windows system. See here (http://www.samba.org/samba/what_is_samba.html) for more info. All of my media sits on a Linux box, which is the central fileserver for our house. I don't want to run a WinXP server just so that the N8100 can connect to it. Why can't we just point the N8100 to a network share using the standard syntax (\\server\share), be it a Windows directory or a Samba share (which looks like a Windows directory for all purposes)??

2) Video upconversion. I would like to use the N8100 for video switching, so that it can be the hub of my A/V network. To do that, I would like to connect the N8100 to my TV via a single component connection, with various video inputs (S-video, component, RCA) getting upconverted to component if necessary.

Do you forsee either of these things happening? If not, I will have to look for another receiver. But I really like what I see in the N8100 and would buy it if it could do these things.

Also - where can I download the product manual for the VRS-N8100? I searched http://www.kenwoodusa.com/support/manual.jsp but can't find it there.

Thanks.

The direction Kenwood is currently going is to the DLNA protocol. The next two networking receivers in the pipeline will use DLNA. For info, see www.dlna.org.

As much as I would like to say we'll have video upconverting in the Fineline receivers, it's not coming soon.

Yep, I can't find it on the site either.:confused: I am currently on the road and will be back in the office Thursday. I'll take care of it pronto.

David

Thanks for replying. I took a look at the DLNA whitepaper pdf. Am I right that when you conform to the DLNA protocol, you will be providing a receiver with full UPnP compatibility? If so, that should work with both Linux and Windows (I think). I know there are some open source UPnP implementations for Linux, but I haven't used them. If anyone is interested, the related sites I came across are http://upnp.sourceforge.net (an SDK) and http://linux-igd.sourceforge.net (uses that SDK).

does this receiver have internet radio or an alarm to wake you up in the morning with either mp3's from the pc or internet radio?

I have the phillips mini system that supports both. I use it mainly to wake up in the morning but it's so flaky that i'll buy the kenwood instead for those two features.

crotchrocket,

It doesn't have either of those.

David

Hello, yesterday i bought this receiver from frys electronics for a great price. I am planning to replace my old onkyo receiver and dlink media player with this one. i would like to know couple of things, before I open the box.

1. Still waiting to see the manual online :-)
2. Are there any plans to support internal radio and/or shoutcast streaming in the near future?
3. Does FF/REW works while streaming videos from PC?

Thanks
-Ganesh

I just discovered this reciever too, I had just purchased a cheap Pioneer for like $135 and was thinking maybe I should splurge and get this baby for the extra features like streaming video. Sounds pretty cool.

Few questions:

1) How do HD divx files work? These are generally 960x500+ in size (sorry don't have the acutal size in my head yet...)
2) Anyone know if replayTV mpeg files play fine? They are slightly different that normal mpegs there's some extra timing information at the start of the file and some other clock references that most good decoders should be able to ignore.
3) This receiver looks to be on closeout at a few places. Is there something newer that I should wait on?
4) Anyone know if costco stores had this unit? If so could someone PM me a price? I want to see how it compares with what I can find at other places local. Or I guess I could call costco...
5) And is it true that all photos will be resized by the server software? I'm an embedded software guy, I can understand why the need for this, but I would hope this could be done real-time and not preprocessed. Who wants to waste the disk space? tgaut, any idea if it's planned to support a larger resize? Better resolution for HDTV displays?

No 5.1 analog input for SACD/DVD-A... that sucks. =(

EDIT: Looks like costco stores don't carry the time... arrgh, can someone PM me?

Originally posted by gkarkala
2. Are there any plans to support internal radio and/or shoutcast streaming in the near future?


This should be a no-brainer after figuring out a way to connect to the server. A shoutcast stream (last I looked) was just an mp3 stream.

I checked remotecental but could not find the codes for this receiver. Does anyone has the codes for power on/off and input selection?

thanks
-Ganesh

I agree internet radio is a must. the reason i would be interested in this is because in my area (san francisco) radio reception is horrible with nothing but static. Internet radio with a wake up alarm or 2 should not be that hard to include. It would also give your potential customers that many more reasons to buy this.

I hope you consider this. If you do Please allow the user to set separate volume controls for the alarm and make it separate from when you actually last used it. nothing is worse than forgeting to lower the volume before you go to sleep and having it wake you up louder than loud..

Yes... I wonder why this reciever can be had at 75% off MSRP right now. It's got me concerned since I paid quite a bit for it not too long ago.

Originally posted by sgroer
Yes... I wonder why this reciever can be had at 75% off MSRP right now. It's got me concerned since I paid quite a bit for it not too long ago.

75% off. Can you please PM with some info??

It's pretty official, this thing is on closeout all over. Not sure if it's at the end of the life cycle (short if true) but places are clearin' 'em out.

Jeff - One chain having it on sale for a major discount doesn't make it "official". Have you heard something from another source, or seen it at other stores for this price?

J&R has both the 8100 & 7100 for 50% off.

So after looking at one of these...

I see elsewhere that a different screen size setting has been suggested for picture display. I'd also like this for the video playback. If I play a widescreen media file it displays letterboxed even though I'm on a widescreen display. =(

EDIT: No one else mentioned it, several folks commented the new firmware didn't do much. Well, there's a new Screen Size setting with the 16:9 option. Fixed up everything widescreen low res movies play full wide-screen. THANKS!!!


This one seems to have some problem with the color, seems to have a purple tint (I think I read someone else has something like this, I'll have to go look that up)

A note for those that want to know....
1) ReplayTV mpegs don't work straight off the replay
2) High resolution Divx files don't play

Man the whole UI is confusing for this thing unless you read through the manual. (next step)



RightHere, most retailers have knocked several hundred off the price they normally charge. It's not a true word from above, but some retailers will tell you they don't expect to get any more or that the item is discontinued. So, maybe that's misleading, but I've heard it from more than one source.

I just bought mine open box for half the street cost of only a month ago.
What gives?
Not that I am complaining. I cannot wait to install it tomorrow and test it out, AND figure out a way to get a network feed to my entertainment center...would like to stay away from wireless from the things that I have read.

I hope that Kenwood has not given up on this unit.

MW

If you want to use the video streaming piece, stay away from anything short of 108 mbps wireless. Honestly though, I'd recommend a good old fashioned network cable as I was running 802.11b wireless and made the switch and the difference was astonishing.

Discontinued? Nope.

Retailers decide whether to keep or discontinue items based on move rate. The problem we see is that without a knowledgeable salesperson to explain the unique capabilities of the VRS-N8100, it looks like any other receiver sitting on the shelf.

Sitting on the shelf it isn't apparent that:
1) It's small because it uses TI's digital amplifiers, also resulting in lower heat output.
2)Kenwood brought technology not usually seen in slim receivers to the 8100 and 7100. (PWM shielding, rigid chassis, heavy solid copper bus bar, additional shielding between FR and FL channels.) Ignoring all the Networking capabilities, this is an incredible HT receiver. If you haven't seen it, look at the thread for the VRS-7100 and the head-to-head comparisons done there.
3) I won't go into the networking because I think everyone here is well familiar with that.
4) Dual Source/Single Zone for playing two sources in the same room simultaneously with headphones.

I'll get off my soapbox, but thanks to all of you for realizing that this is a major step forward in digital convergence and you're riding the cutting edge.

David

Originally posted by tgaut
Discontinued? Nope.

Retailers decide whether to keep or discontinue items based on move rate. The problem we see is that without a knowledgeable salesperson to explain the unique capabilities of the VRS-N8100, it looks like any other receiver sitting on the shelf.

Sitting on the shelf it isn't apparent that:
1) It's small because it uses TI's digital amplifiers, also resulting in lower heat output.
2)Kenwood brought technology not usually seen in slim receivers to the 8100 and 7100. (PWM shielding, rigid chassis, heavy solid copper bus bar, additional shielding between FR and FL channels.) Ignoring all the Networking capabilities, this is an incredible HT receiver. If you haven't seen it, look at the thread for the VRS-7100 and the head-to-head comparisons done there.
3) I won't go into the networking because I think everyone here is well familiar with that.
4) Dual Source/Single Zone for playing two sources in the same room simultaneously with headphones.

I'll get off my soapbox, but thanks to all of you for realizing that this is a major step forward in digital convergence and you're riding the cutting edge.

David

David, it is true this unit does pack a lot in that little space. Sorry if my posts about clearing otu were wrong, got to remember sales folks are often clueless.

Honestly I wouldn't have given the 8100 a second look either. The best part that you forgot to mention... software upgradable, nothing like a box that can be "fixed" or upgraded without the user having to take the unit in for a service visit!


This brings me to a problem point...
Anyone with component video outs notice a bleading? I've got pictures to show what I'm talking about, but it's not the cables. Any time there's a menu or dispaly up you can see the image blead across the display. You can reall see this best on the photo viewing page when you scroll down and all the items are redrawn you can see the bars that the file names appear in faintly to the right after the bar ends to the right edge of the screen. As the items are erased and redrawn the blead disappears (when erased) and reappears when the file name boxes reappear.

BTW, I haven't tested it out, but it seems that the photo viewer may just display 16:9 resolution images full screen in 16:9 mode.

David, I'm going to PM you, I have some questions I should ask you offline.

Glaad to hear the n8100 is not being killed off. It's way too cool for that anyways!

As for the bleeding issue, it is being addressed by tgaut and kenwood engineers as we speak.

seriously thinking about this reciever after reading the entire thread. i missed out on the $199 clearance but might try to pick it up elsewhere.

any ideas on the best/least expensive place to purchase?

also...one thing that's fairly important to me....i have a set of outdoor speakers that i will need to power from this unit. does this have an a/b switch or will i be able to utilize the multizone headphones feature to power the speakers outside?

if not, what are my options? i remember at the begining of the thread something about an a/b external switch shorting out the reciever.

thanks for the updates and thread.

tgaut,

Can you share with us what types of changes are being worked on for the client or server software?

Also, when can we expect the software to be made open source? No offense to the programmers who wrote the software, but in my opinion people that are actually using the software tend to be more motivated to put features into it than the original programmers.

I've already logged about 80 hours writing the Randomizer program for creating shuffled playlists, and this was purely because I wanted that feature for my own use.

Originally posted by mcowher
tgaut,

Can you share with us what types of changes are being worked on for the client or server software?

Also, when can we expect the software to be made open source? No offense to the programmers who wrote the software, but in my opinion people that are actually using the software tend to be more motivated to put features into it than the original programmers.

I've already logged about 80 hours writing the Randomizer program for creating shuffled playlists, and this was purely because I wanted that feature for my own use.

You know since it just uses network traffic to get stuff done it could be reverse engineered pretty easily. If you find enough interest around here we might be able to put together something better. THe trick is finding folks who agreee on how to get it done. Since the receiver just seems to be making the requests the server could do whatever you want.

I'm curious to look at the traffic and see exactly how easy it would be to mimic.

As long as there isn't a need to do anything on the receiver side it should be pretty easy.

Of cousrse what they are doing is important, but not the only factor. I know I did a lot of background work to fix Onkyo's NetTunes and then they came out with 2.0 and most of my issuse has been addressed. (BTW NetTune 2.0 seems to have support for movie files too... no clue what they have in store.)

All of the playlist and setting data is stored in a collection of XML files that the receiver reads when displaying it's playlists.

Because of this, I was able to write two VB.Net programs that modify and use these XML files to generate "Random" playlists.

The first program allows you to choose which playlists (set up in the Kenwood PC Server application) you would like to randomize, and allows you to randomize on demand.

The second program I wrote runs as a windows service and will randomize on a set interval (i.e., 24 hrs)...The only problem with this second program is that in order for the receiver to be able to see the new "randomized" playlists, I have to stop and restart the normal windows service that the receiver communicates with (called KENWOOD PC SERVER)...This is not a major problem, except when the receiver happens to have an active connection to the PC.

I've been trying to get some help from TGaut to see what type of Java call I can make to avoid having to stop and restart the service, but apparently this is not possible.

All the Java code used for the PC-based software is stored in collection of .JAR files stored in the "C:\Program Files\Kenwood\pc-server" folder...I'm not very knowledgeable about Java, but I was able to break open those JAR files (particularly the "kwdpcserver.jar" file), but was unable to go much farther...Maybe someone with Java skills can take a look.

From what I could see, the Receiver software is written in C...

Help! I did the firmware upgrade on my 8100 and I had no video out. So I tried the hard reset and now the screen comes up INITIALIZE

Any ideas anyone? The upgrade seemed to go okay, it said update complete, then turned off.

well it quit saying INITIALIZE, however I still can't get the OSD to come back with either the memory card or the net server...

pause button won't toggle video sources either, and it never tries to connect to the pc server...

You'll have to use the front panel display to navigate to the video out option in network setup. Set it for whatever output is being sent to the TV.

So when you select Network Server it never comes up "searching" on the display on the receiver?

Originally posted by tgaut
So when you select Network Server it never comes up "searching" on the display on the receiver?


Nope, shows network server on the display, but never goes to searching. I have 2 units and the other one is still working with 1.05 firmware, but now i'm afraid to upgrade it since this happened.

Originally posted by sgroer
Yes... I wonder why this reciever can be had at 75% off MSRP right now. It's got me concerned since I paid quite a bit for it not too long ago.

I'd appreciate that info via PM as well. Thanks.

So, my guess was right on with 16:9 photos they display widescreen no problem. THe only problem is coming off the PCMCIA slot this gets resized by the software in the receiver, and that's not pretty.

This product would benefit from so many things I've worked with on a professional level. Hacking the firmware doesn't sound like a fun thing to do though... =(


BTW did anyone else notice the remote function to rotate a picture is actually assigned to the button ABOVE the silkscreen label and not below? Or is this remote just old and that was fixed?

It seems that the large retailer clearancing these units for 75% off is no longer offering the unit for sale. Must have sold out quickly.

Maybe someone else can help me out here, if not hopefully David has some advice.

I'm playing around with the photo size for display full wide-screen.

First attempt was to just cutting out a 16:9 region from a pict and display it.
The resolution was about 2000x1100 it was larger than this in resolution, but I don't remember the exact size.
Displayed full wide-screen but with what looked to be a crappy scaling going on.

Resized my source to 1920x1080 (I'm running 1080i at the moment) and this displayed full widescreen, but again it looked like it was going through some crapy scaling.

I then decided maybe it needs a DVD image size for correct display, resized again to 852x480. This time the image was about 1/4 screen size and centered. Even though it was smaller I could still see the same crap image displayed, there's something with the decompress or some color space conversion that isn't working correctly.


Anyone have a guess at what size an image should be for 1:1 source to display sizing in a 16:9 frame?

I did not wish to bother with posting a new thread, since this thread has a lot of information on setting this thing up, however I have some questions that are so basic that I hope nobody gets upset with my asking...

First off, I love the unit. The sound is best described as "effortless" right now, and we are about to play our first DVD through it in 5.1 "custom" surround. It fits so nicely in my home made TV stand that I almost want to post a pic. :)
I replaced an Onkyo 5.1 receiver that was not hurting in the sound department, but neither was it inspirational. Ok, on to my questions.

I wanted to direct wire it, but the vaulted ceiling means that I cannot get close enough in the attic to see if there might be a gap available. (Bummer) This means that I must go wireless to the entertainment center. My questions...I will run both an X Box and the 8100 on the network. I want to go with Pre-N. What do I need in order to do this? I see that wireless game adaptors exist in -G, but they are single connection points, and likely more expensive than they need to be. Do I purchase two routers, or a single rounter and a bridge? Or even a router to a game adaptor, to a switch to allow multiple connection points?
Suggestions, please.

Next question, how can I configure Stereo mode to use the Sub? I believe it worked when I first fired it up, but I changed the speaker configuration for surround for "large" fronts. Since then, if I use stereo mode, I only get LF-RF playback.

Finally, is there a guide to using the server software? While I am not connected, I did load the server software to a PC to play around with it, but it is anything but intuitive...of course I am guilty of not spending much time on it, but i was thinking some sort of help feature would have been nice. I have 1.0.7 version.

Thanks,

Mike

crashmw,
When the front speakers are set for large, it kills your sub.

There's not a guide for the server.
1) Before importing files, you must select genre.
2) To move an individual file you must either click it, release the mouse button, click it again and then drag it OR click the file then click import. If you want to move all just click select all then click import.
3) Until you upgrade your server software, you must click save before closing the server or you will lose all your work.

JeffD,
Regardless of the size of the photo originally, it will always be displayed at 640x480.

Hello,

I just bought this reciever. A few questions:

1) Is there anyway to have Svideo go in and Component video come out?
2) I have upgraded to latest firmware and server (1.11.11) it now plays some mpgs and some divx but not many. Exactly what is supported?
3) Why is this on clearance at outpost.com?
4) Will Kenwood continue to support this reciever?
5) Does Kenwood plan to introduce the DVf-7080 in the US?
6) If so, when?

Thanks in advance.

Divx

I have my front speakers set to Large, with the SW Re-mix option enabled in network setup. Do this by selecting the custom option in the speaker setup section of the receiver menu. I feel this produces the best sound from my polk front floorstanding speakser and hsu sub.

Originally posted by tgaut
Discontinued? Nope.

Retailers decide whether to keep or discontinue items based on move rate. The problem we see is that without a knowledgeable salesperson to explain the unique capabilities of the VRS-N8100, it looks like any other receiver sitting on the shelf.
David

Any chance that there is a knowledgeable salesperson in Southern California that could demo the N8100? I'm pretty inclined to buy one but it would sure be nice to have a look at if first.

Originally posted by tgaut
The direction Kenwood is currently going is to the DLNA protocol. The next two networking receivers in the pipeline will use DLNA. For info, see www.dlna.org.


David

Any chance that a future firmware upgrade will get the N8100 up to DLNA or UPnP standards or are there hardware issues as well?