this one has some potential.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=96&categoryid=18

What is a "D4 Video Output"?

I believe D4 is a high-def video connector for the Japanese market.

Originally posted by jimre
I believe D4 is a high-def video connector for the Japanese market.

A search on google only returns Japanese sites, so no idea how much this will cost. Hopefully a V4 will turn into a DVI for us.

Cheers

Alan

At Amazon.co.jp its 31,883 Yen or just a little over $300.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000667Z60/249-1251182-6036368

We now seem to be getting a few machines capable of Component/DVI outputs and from a hardware perspective things are starting to look good. My problem is comparing the software. I download manuals and there is always something simple missing that puts me off.

I am sure that will inprove soon.

Alan

This one does look good. It is also designed to work with the Terrastation. Not sure what that means, but this thing a 1000gig could be pretty powerful :)

I still think that 2006 is the year and that 2005 will get us really close.

Drew

The D4 is an analog connection. at least it is on my Yamaha DLP projector.
There are adapter s for component

Originally posted by saintalan
...I download manuals and there is always something simple missing that puts me off.

I am sure that will inprove soon.... That's what I said a year & a half ago... :)

Originally posted by jimre
That's what I said a year & a half ago... :)

Great so SOON must be here:)

Does anyone know if this player will support WMA Lossless audio?

edit: it seems this chip only supports pro and not lossless.

Also, since this player does not include a DVI/HDMI output, I'm assuming I won't be able to upconvert since I have a RPTV and not a LCD/DLP/PDP/LCOS display. According to the specs on the chip, only those types of displays will allow upconverting through component. That stinks!

This player uses the same chipset and firmware base as the IODATA AveLinkPlayer2. Biggest difference is the wireless which Iodata is selling in Japan on a player with DVI also -- I expect the US version of the Buffalo won't have DVI either until some licensing issues are resolved..

Some of us with the LinkPlayer have been looking at the server software for the Buffalo and it is nearly identical to the server software for our Iodata boxes so I don't expect much in the way of differences except for Buffalo's wireless configuration utility.

The D4 connector comes with a D4 to component cable for 720p/1080i capable output.

Paul-

The D4 connector, which I'm not familiar with, will allow me to use the upconvert feature even though I'm not using the "required" type of display?

On the IODATA we can currently upconvert to eith 720p or 1080i via the D4 to component cable (although IODATAs website says we can't). I would expect the Buffalo is the same but you will need a Buffalo owner to find out for sure.

I just received an email from tech support confirming support for WMA Lossless.

Nice!

A device like this coming out in 2005 that still doesn't support WPA? Only WEP is listed.

A lot of devices unfortunantley are still hitting the market without WPA support.

Crazy.

Drew

Usually these devices require a PC to have software running that streams the media to the device. On the Buffalo High Definition Wireless Media Player does anyone know where if even needed the software will run? I thought I heard that it can work directly with the Buffalo Link station with is just a NAS device.

All I can find is on the spec sheet "Integrated PCast module allows for easy playback from Buffalo’s LinkStation Network Storage", without any explanation of exactly what that means. There's no posted manual online and when I google "Buffalo PCast" almost all of the sites that I get are in Japanese, or are just a PR containing that same blurb from their web page.

I-O Data sells a NAS that contains server software for their device which is what this might be.

Buffalo is not using IOdata's LinkServer software. It's their own server. Like IOdata's, it is accessed on either a Windows PC or their NAS device that contains an embedded server. Both media players are UPnP 1.0 compatible I believe, so in reality any UPnP server will do.

Personally the Buffallo looks attractive to me because I've been thinking of going the NAS route for media server service and the LinkStation is more ubiquitous than the IOdata box. Easier to find on the used market, Ebay, etc. and also known to be hackable. I hope they provide the server to Revolution (Kuro) (http://revogear.com/products.html) customers, because that may be the NAS I ultimately choose.

First EM8620L based unit to make it to the US market as far as I know. Are there others?

This sounds great! I like the idea that the software can (let's hope) run on the NAS. No worries about the PC being on since the NAS will always be on.

Does it seem like this space is starting to mature? Where does everyone see the whole media server/streaming space going? I'm excited about the prospects.

the only problem will be when the Studios get in the act and prevent the upconversion, DVD copying, etc. If we cant do that anymore then , what's the point? to look at my pics in HD??

Originally posted by sanssome
Buffalo is not using IOdata's LinkServer software. It's their own server.I worded that poorly--I didn't mean to say that it was I-O DATA's software (they way they seem to like to spell their name, BTW). What I meant was that the NAS might have some sort of built-in media server like (but not identical to) I-O DATA's NAS'.Both media players are UPnP 1.0 compatible I believe, so in reality any UPnP server will do.What does it mean for them to be "UPnP compatible"? Is there some UPnP media server standard? I really think that these things both need actual streaming server support.

Originally posted by michaeltscott
What does it mean for them to be "UPnP compatible"? Is there some UPnP media server standard? See UPnP Forum (http://www.upnp.org/) and UPnp MediaServer (http://www.upnp.org/standardizeddcps/mediaserver.asp).

Microsoft has their own UPnP server called Windows Media Connect (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect/industry.aspx). I've played with it using a Govideo connected DVD player as the client and while it kind of worked I was less than overwhelmed. UPnP media servers seem like a good idea that's not quite ready for prime time.

Jay

Funny, I've had my eye on the LinkTheater, they finally seem to be shipping, so I ordered one, expect delivery next week. But darn the information is sketchy... I look through the data sheet, and it's not even clear what inputs/outputs it has. It says that it'll output 720p & progressive scan, so it must have something other than NTSC outputs. But darned if I can find 'em listed anywhere. Even the back-panel picture on the datasheet is unreadable. Looks like it has one of VGA/DVI/HDMI, but I can't see which.

Well, we'll find out soon enough. Somebody has to try this crap out I guess. So far, all of these devices seem pretty lame, this one can't be any worse.

Zonegray, keep us posted. Thanks for being the first to jump.

Drew

According to the data sheet, the LinkTheater can play .mpgs. Does this include raw ReplayTV .mpgs?

Can someone a little more knowledgeable tell me the differnce between theV880N and the Buffalo Techonlogies PC-P3LWG/DVD player? They look to have almost the same features, the screen captures look like the software is similar. The Linktheater has shipped with sigma's EM8620L chipset (Is that better or worse than the v880n?) and and it is also UPnP 1.0, seems to come with a DVI cable yet the buffalo technologies player seems to be at a lower street price?

I am kind of new to this, I mean I have had a govideo d2730 and oritron networked dvd player for a long time now, but these seem not onlyto offer a much wider variety of file formats, but the fact they can stram VOB files and also output HD is a hugeplus. Now the question for me what is the better value between the two player? Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Originally posted by jerndl
See UPnP Forum (http://www.upnp.org/) and UPnp MediaServer (http://www.upnp.org/standardizeddcps/mediaserver.asp).

Microsoft has their own UPnP server called Windows Media Connect (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect/industry.aspx). I've played with it using a Govideo connected DVD player as the client and while it kind of worked I was less than overwhelmed. UPnP media servers seem like a good idea that's not quite ready for prime time. UPnP is sweet concept--I'm surprised that I've never become at least peripherally aware of it. I'll have to look at it in closer detail.

I hate its use of XML, though. More precisely, I hate XML, with a bright hot passion that shall never grow dim, nor cool with the passage of time :D.

Well, first observations based on a few minutes of playing when I should be working:

Outputs include component, S-Vid, RCA/NTSC, and DVI via a "D4" jack. A quick Google suggests that few if any vendors sell D4 connectors/adapters in the US. So that'll be interesting. Audio out is RCA or Coax or Optical.

Overall, few surprises. MPG playback of DVD-ready files recorded through Snapstream/PVR-250 are beautiful, and fast forward is actually usable. But the display letterboxed in both directions regardless of what aspect settings I use on the TV/Player. I guess there are a few more combinations to try, but it's pretty strange. But sound synch seems pretty good, at least on these files. I fast forwarded to the second inning of Game 7, and the crack of Damon's bat as he hit that grand slam was right on. I'll keep playing it over and over again, just to be sure.

I'll try some other file formats later, I mostly just use MPEG2's.

The software setup is fairly straightforward, I've used a Prismiq and a MediaMVP previously, and the Buffalo setup is similar in concept. Still haven't spent enough time with it to say much meaningful. Two observations: the "shuffle" function is apparently set on the server, I don't see any way to turn it on/off from the player.

And like all the players I've seen, it won't let you add songs to a "Now Playing" list. This is my pet peeve, because that's how I like to listen to MP3's, I go through my collection and queue up the stuff I'm in the mood for. Haven't yet found a player that allows this. It does play .m3u playlists.

I was surprised to see that it includes an Internet browser, it apparently works with your IE Favorites, so you can surf those with the remote. You can also type in text using the remote, if you're a masochist. I wonder if they could add USB keyboard support? Output on a 720p screen is pretty readable, so I was able to read Google news articles from several feet away.

Haven't hooked up wireless yet, because it doesn't have WPA, I'll have to set up a separate wireless network for it. Why the heck is it so difficult to support WPA?

That's all for now, as I spend more time with it, I'll try and update as appropriate. Generally pleased; it's about what I expected, which is a little less than what I want.

D4 is an analog connector -- not digital -- a D4 to component adaptor is what you need (surprisingly they don't say that it is included).

This is basically the same as the IODATA AVLP2 Linkplayer with the addition of built in 802.11g.

Does the manual actually say it supports DVI?? Buffalo sure doesn't say that on their website anywhere.

No it doesn't say that it supports DVI... I just looked and figured that's what it was. Ass-u-me and all that.

It has regular component outputs, so there's no adapter needed. Just a useless jack on the back panel.

How many audio outs does it have?? Does it include 6 separate 5.1 outputs for WMV-HD and DVD-Audio or does it only have analog L/R and digital TOSL and Coax??

The latter, just stereo RCA jacks, a coax jack, and an optical one.

I'm expecting my LinkTheater (Buffalo PC-P3LWG/DVD) to be delivered tomorrow morning. I'll most likey be connecting this one in the masterbedroom to my Syntax Olevia 27" LCD via component cables, and optical audio to something TBD. I am really hoping a couple of these through out the house, along with the soon to be released Buffalo Terastation, will be the "magic formula" for media content distribution. I'll report back later...

Well, one weirdness.... video files display at their actual resolution. So if you play a 320x240 video clip, it occupies a tiny square in the middle of a 720p screen. Likewise, DVD MPG's fill about 2/3 of the screen. There's no "fit to screen" function, though I notice that the IODATA product does include an option in their setup screen.

Anyway, playing videos at their original size is pretty much useless.

UPDATE: I found the button on the remote that cycles video between "Original Size", "Fit To Screen", or "Full Screen". Much happier now.

Another Quickie Review
- Also got one from buy.com for $319 (now listed as $309).

- Infant Mortaility Problem: DVDs / CDs not recognized
- Loose piece of plastic rattling around inside, probably related to DVD drive mechanism
- Returning to buy.com for a replacement

All the below was done from 'PC playback'
- Using component output, 720p (and yes all output scaled to 720p with 'PC playback', not so w/ DVD, claims the manual)
- Haven't tried D4, but don't expect a big diff
- WMVHD: Nice picture, but no sound (tested MSFT 720p content, step into liquid and dolphins)
- AVI / MPG, looks good
- VOBs play back fine (this is also a way to play back DVD content upscaled)
- The manual says that DVDs playback will not be upscaled, so this is a work around if you're willing to rip
- Have not tried ifo yet (but I also do not remember them showing up in the 'browse' list, I think there were just VOBs).
- Internet radio works fine
- Some issues w/ photos when pointing to a network drive instead of local drive (photos do not show up when using network)
- Network drive (instead of local drive on PC server) for music and video works fine (even w/ WMVHD)
- Double dipping in terms of network b/w, but w/ wired ethernet doesn't seem to be an issue
- Tried WMVHD on local drive, same sound issue
- Using wired ethernet, have not tried wireless
- Some audio hiccups at the start of browsing music, but could be related to network drive taking time to spin up after idle

When I get the replacement unit, I'll add some details on DVD playback (assuming it works).

keep up the details. sounds promising so far.

Mopsothoth,

When you say it has problems with photos on the network drive, is this a network drive that's mapped on the PC or directly accessing thru IP ?

Thanks.

I did get my Buffalo LinkTheater (BLT) late Tuesday afternoon, and was able to play with it for about an hour prior to leaving on a business trip to Denver. I almost packed it my suitcase ;)

Here's my quick synopsis:

I unboxed it, and was fairly impressed with the packing materials and accessories... and even the manual.

I installed the BLT software on my main PC (can't wait to get the Buffalo TeraStation so I don't have to deal with my PC being always operational!) which was fairly painless and straightforward.

I decided to use it downstairs instead of my upstairs master bedroom, because I haven't pulled a Cat5 Ethernet drop there yet , and my wireless (Cisco 1200 a/b/g AP) is set for WPA and the BLT only supports WEP currently. I connected it via S-Video and Component for video to my Samsung 46"DLP, and optical audio to my Denon 1804.

When I powered on, I had to view it over S-Video first, and once I enabled "HD Browser mode" in the setup screen and hit the TV Mode button on the remote a few times, I was able to view the BLT via the component connection at 720p (1080i worked too, but flickered a bit too much for my taste, and the Sammy DLP is native 720p).

I was then able to select my PC from the home screen, and then veiwed a few of my photos, listened to some MP3's, and played back some DivxHD sample content ("SharkTale" and "Madagascar"). The image was fantastic, the framerate perfect, no audio sync problems or anything!

I then played Starwars Episode II DVD. Again, image quality and audio was great. However, when fast-forwarding through some scenes, and then hitting play, the audio became all garbled. Once I stopped and then played again, there was no problem. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I haven't had time to test it again yet.

So far, I am really happy with the unit. After I get the TeraStation, I'll probably buy a couple more LinkTheater units for the other rooms.

A couple questions:
1. Does anyone have any details on the operation and features of the USB Tuners for the Terastation? Will the LinkTheater be able to "tune" live content from the tuners, like a Windows Media Center 2005 Extender functions ?

2. Windows Media Connect. How do you configure that to serve content to the BLT? I downloaded the app a couple weeks ago, but can't find much documentation regarding it.

Thanks!
Adam

ToadMazter,

Thanks for the positive feedback.

But does anyone know if this player is selling at any retail stores?

Ok, I work for BuffaloTech and just found this post so let me help out.

-It doesn't have DVI or HDMI.
-It does upconvert everything EXCEPT DVD playback to 720p/1080i. We don't do DVD upconversion because of the component video issues with upconverting DVD playback, it's limited to 480p pscan.
-The no sound issue with WMV-HD has to do with the WMA9 Pro audio codec, your version of firmware doesn't support it. We're still beta-testing a unit with WMA9 Pro support. If you can find WMV-HDs with regular WMA9 audio it will work fine.

D4 connector is a Japanese connector, this product has been out in Japan for a while.

Any other questions, let me know.

Originally posted by johnalt
Negatives:
- I cannot select and only play one mp3 from the linkstation player interface. Only Playall works.
- 5 seconds of audio hiccups at the start of playing music from the linkstation player interface.
- Can Only share 1 folder from the linkstation player interface. (What do they expect you to do, Pile up & mix all your file formats in 1 folder. This makes the interface terrible. And what will happen if you want to expand and attach a USB drive to it.)
- Did not pass DTS sound from Dvix/Xvid to the stero as it does dolby digital 5.1. Erorr Message - Invalid Codec -
- Did not play my AVI files from my cannon A75. Did play them after coverted to mpg. Hopefully a codec update soon.
- It reconized Rhapsody but did not play
- Front pannel not good enough to navigate your mp3 without the TV on.


1. We're working on the one mp3 playback from LinkStation, there's a syntax implementation problem on the web server. Expect a fix in less than 10 days.
2. The audio hiccup is also a known problem, it arised in the latest firmware version, we should have that fixed soon.
3. I'd be interested in seeing your DTS file that you're having problems with, it should play.
4. Do you know what avi codec was being problematic?
5. Rhapsody support will be in the future but not right now.
6. Product wasn't designed to be used without a monitor of some sort.

Infant Mortaility Problem: DVDs / CDs not recognized
- Loose piece of plastic rattling around inside, probably related to DVD drive mechanism
- Returning to buy.com for a replacement

YOU DEFINITELY NEED A REPLACEMENT!!

All the below was done from 'PC playback'
- Using component output, 720p (and yes all output scaled to 720p with 'PC playback', not so w/ DVD, claims the manual)

DVD upconversion is against consortium rules over component video, hence no upconversion on dvd playback, it will upconvert everything else though. This isn't a hardware limitation, it's an issue with MPAA and DVD consortium.

- Haven't tried D4, but don't expect a big diff

Same issue.

- WMVHD: Nice picture, but no sound (tested MSFT 720p content, step into liquid and dolphins)

WMA9 Professional codec is still in beta testing.

- Have not tried ifo yet (but I also do not remember them showing up in the 'browse' list, I think there were just VOBs).

IFOs will play but will not be interactive (almost useless). You will see the menu displayed, but the remote won't be interactive so you won't be able to dive into deeper menus. I'm looking into a way to support true IFO support.

- Internet radio works fine
- Some issues w/ photos when pointing to a network drive instead of local drive (photos do not show up when using network)

You're not doing something right here, shouldn't be a problem?

- Tried WMVHD on local drive, same sound issue

Codec support issue, not playback source related.

- Some audio hiccups at the start of browsing music, but could be related to network drive taking time to spin up after idle

This was a last minute bug that got into shipping firmware, we're working on rectifying it.

When I get the replacement unit, I'll add some details on DVD playback (assuming it works).

Originally posted by michaeltscott
All I can find is on the spec sheet "Integrated PCast module allows for easy playback from Buffalo’s LinkStation Network Storage", without any explanation of exactly what that means. There's no posted manual online and when I google "Buffalo PCast" almost all of the sites that I get are in Japanese, or are just a PR containing that same blurb from their web page.

I-O Data sells a NAS that contains server software for their device which is what this might be.

There are several ways to get media to the unit:

1. Install our PC software and stream anything from any of your PCs on your network.
1a. Anything you want to stream through Windows Media Connect. Our PC Software is NOT required for WMC to work, you can use WMC as a standalone. Alternatively, you can use both Buffalo's PC Software and WMC simultaneously. Both resources will appear on the main page, one designated with a Windows Media Connect tag after the machine name.
2. We will release a similar Mac OS X client by the end of the month.
3. If you have a Buffalo LinkStation NAS, you can stream anything inside of the selected LinkTheater share. This means if all of your mp3s, photos, or videos are on your LinkStation, then you can easily stream them from your LinkStation with no PC involved.
4. TeraStation will also include the same PCast support that LinkStation does, either right at ship date or shortly thereafter.
5. Any USB mass storage device can be hooked up to the front USB 2.0 port. This is an excellent feature that few here have mentioned. If you have a USB memory stick keychain with multimedia material on it, you plug it into the USB port and it automatically appears on the main page as a resource. You can then browse through the file/folders and select your multimedia file(s) for playback. In addition to USB memory sticks, USB hard drives of any volume will work in the same fashion, as will digital cameras that have USB mass storage support. A 5-in-1, 6-in-1, 8-in-1 (whatever flavor) card reader will also work. If you have a 6-in-1 reader, upon plugging it in, 6 volumes will appear on the main page, you will then be able to access media files on any of the 6 form factors on the reader. Once you remove the USB device from the USB port, it automatically disappears from the available resource list (PLUG and PLAY).
6. Any multimedia file that's on an optical disc, this includes ISO (DATA) formatted CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+/-R/RW.

Since there is no hardware impediment to upconverting DVD to 760p/1080i, is there a possibility for third party firmware hacks to add this capability?

If someone can figure out how to hack the firmware then more power to them, but Buffalo won't release a firmware that supports upconverting DVD playback, albeit creating a firmware that does would take all of 1 second, it's not a hardware limitation, it's an intentional software/firmware control.

FYI.... .pdf manual was released:

http://www.buffalotech.com/downloads/LT-Manual-LOW-RES.pdf

If I have a bunch of svcd files that are in .bin format to be burned to cd, is there any way this unit can view them? What if I used daemon tools to mount it as a drive?

ogg1e, I don't quite understand the question?

You have SVCD CDs and wonder if they'll play?
Answer: Yes

You have DATA CDs with SVCD info on them, will they play?
Answer: Yes you will be able to play the MPG or DAT file

You can SVCD files that are in bin/cue and wondering if they'll play?
Answer: No, we can't open a bin/cue image and mount it as data, you will need the data burned on the CD in standard ISO/Data format or in DVD or SVCD video formats.

If you're asking whether the DVD drive will mount data discs then the answer is yes.

Hello,
I've been lurking awhile and decided to report my experiences with the LinkTheater. I am pleased overall with the unit. But it has bugs to be fixed.

1. Wireless: Works OK without WEP. If you enable WEP, no connection. I have tried every combination. No luck. I am going to hardwire to my router so I guess I don't care.

2. Access from PC is great. Slideshows with music, nice interface. Access from DVD unit is terrible. If you put a CDR with pictures in the unit it finds them but all you can do is scroll down to the picture you want, push enter, look at it, hit stop,back out, choose another picture,etc.
No slideshow. No background music. It's useless. The same would go for USB devices I think. I have not tried yet because...

3. External USB harddrive not seen. The owners manual says only Fat16 & Fat32 formats can be used. My drive is NTFS. This will cause max file size problems if I reformat it. Not to mention the hassle.

On the plus side.
In spite of whats been said, comercial DVDs seem to be upscaled to 720p or1080i.

Dennis

WEP works fine for me. I'm using a Linksys AP, and I had to enter the hex key manually on the LinkTheater, but it worked first time.

It streams DVD-quality MPG's just fine over 802.11g with WEP, BTW.

It's interresting that you could get it to work. I have a D-Link DI-524. The link to my laptop works fine. I called Buffalo tech support, he walked through it with me, and agreed I was doing it right. Brick Wall!

I was impressed that I could call at 11:00 PM and get help. When I mentioned the other problems he said he didn't know. The product was so new he hadn't had a chance to see one yet!

I agree with the fact of its basic solidness. It's quite usable now and I expect the missing features will come in time.

Originally posted by dennismullen
Hello,
I've been lurking awhile and decided to report my experiences with the LinkTheater. I am pleased overall with the unit. But it has bugs to be fixed.

1. Wireless: Works OK without WEP. If you enable WEP, no connection. I have tried every combination. No luck. I am going to hardwire to my router so I guess I don't care.

2. Access from PC is great. Slideshows with music, nice interface. Access from DVD unit is terrible. If you put a CDR with pictures in the unit it finds them but all you can do is scroll down to the picture you want, push enter, look at it, hit stop,back out, choose another picture,etc.
No slideshow. No background music. It's useless. The same would go for USB devices I think. I have not tried yet because...

3. External USB harddrive not seen. The owners manual says only Fat16 & Fat32 formats can be used. My drive is NTFS. This will cause max file size problems if I reformat it. Not to mention the hassle.

On the plus side.
In spite of whats been said, comercial DVDs seem to be upscaled to 720p or1080i.

Dennis

1. WEP has to be implemented in one of 4 ways:

64 bit WEP ASCII - 5 alphanumeric characters
64 bit WEP HEX - 13 alphanumeric characters (in HEX format)
128 bit WEP ASCII - 10 alphanumeric characters
128 bit WEP HEX - 26 alphanumeric character (in HEX format)

Some routers allow you to use non-standard size keys and then they use a HASH to create a legit key out of it. The problem is if you client device doesn't have the same HASH info it can't create the same key. I would recommend trying a 64 bit ASCII wep code on the router (try 12345) and then trying it on the LinkTheater, it WILL work assuming your D-Link isn't totally screwing WEP up. I've used it with Linksys products before in standard based WEP implementation.

2. I can't remember if this was a bug in the shipping firmware, but if you press the 'Play' button from within DVD browsing it should start a default slide show. If it doesn't work (says "invalid") then wait a couple days for the firmware update that fixes that. Also, we're limited somewhat on the interface when using CDs and USB drives based on the lack of an XML webserver available on that resource. The interface is limited in aesthetics by quite useful.

3. It's not a Windows based system so getting it to acknowledge NTFS is involved. I'll see what I can do to get that done, but for now FAT16/32 is all that's supported and that's how all USB hard drives come from the factory.

Originally posted by zonegray
WEP works fine for me. I'm using a Linksys AP, and I had to enter the hex key manually on the LinkTheater, but it worked first time.

It streams DVD-quality MPG's just fine over 802.11g with WEP, BTW.

Depending on your network conditions you should be able to stream WMV HD (8-10 Mbps) wirelessly from another wireless computer (wireless laptop). That's two 8-10 Mbps feeds being sent.

Originally posted by johnalt
Thanks BrainV. I have been really enjoying this unit threw the PC interface and am looking forward for the Fixes for #1 and #2 to the link station.

#3. I would like to send the DTS file. It is large 40mb. Can I burn it and send to buffalo @ someones Attention? I used "Gordian knot" to extract it from my DVD and convert to Xvid. Dolby Digital 5.1 works Great!!!

#4 My Cannon manual is calling the AVI a MotionJPG @15fps.

Just one more question about the one folder share limitation of the link station. Would that present a problem when I want to expand the disk space by adding a USB Buffalo Drive Station to the Link Station?

Well expect the LinkStation single-file fix really soon, we just have to get the version rev'd up, tested, and posted. The hiccup is definitely fixable as it's a brand new issue with later firmwares, but it'll take slightly longer.

I don't understand what you're asking/telling in #3 and #4.

Unfortunately, the implementation of LinkStation's PCast Server is that it picks one shared folder to share to the LinkTheater. Thus, the usbdisk1 share created by a USB disk would only be accessible if it was selected as the disk to share with LinkTheater. Again, only 1 shared folder can be selected. This is something we can fix, but it'll be quite low on the list of priorities.

I appreciate everyone's feedback and bug reports. This is a really cutting-edge product in its feature-set. Everyone here has been extremely friendly about their bug reports. Threatening a company or complaining to sue because some little feature doesn't work really isn't good for any party involved. We appreciate your patience and business.

Brian, I appreciate your participation, too. For the sake of adding to the feedback, I'm pretty pleased with the LT. After a week or so, here are my gripes, wishes and suggestions:

"gripe": No WPA support, (I knew this when I purchased). I had to set up a separate wirelesss network for it, since everything else I have is running WPA. Then again, hardly anybody supports WPA in devices like this. I don't get it.

wish: Maintain a "Now Playing" queue, so I can add songs to the list and it will play through the list as I browse and add more songs.

suggestion: open up the server app as much as you can. Even if you can't or won't release the source, you can make it easier for people to enhance it. I've poked through and it looks like an enterprising Java developer (that's not me) could easily add functionality if some of the classes were documented. Likewise, documenting some of the XML config files would be nice. Maybe you could host a hacking forum.

suggestion: browser display is still pretty funky. I know, it's a pretty basic browser, and I didn't even know it had the feature until I booted it up. But it's not bad, and a few small enhancements might make it more usable.

suggestion: add a "portal" page, similar to what Prismiq has. Again, this might be nothing more than developing a theme, maybe customers could do it with a little support.

suggestion: add USB keyboard support.

suggestion: more themes.

wish: support playlists for video files.

suggestion: video playback should default to "fit to screen"

Anyway, the LT is as close to what I want as anything I've seen yet, I'll probably add a second one when budget allows.

Ditto, I posted this complaint earlier in the thread but that was before Brian was on board. I don't understand the lack of WPA either. I would be interested to know if this is something Buffalo might consider adding if possible in firmware. I just have a hard time justifying using WEP when I've got everything so locked down now with WPA. I have legacy devices I already own I'm not doing it for, so buying a new product that would only do WEP is out of the question at this moment.

I may end up being able to do wired after my home addition is done so hopefully it becomes less of an issue for me.

Originally posted by zonegray
"gripe": No WPA support, (I knew this when I purchased). I had to set up a separate wirelesss network for it, since everything else I have is running WPA. Then again, hardly anybody supports WPA in devices like this. I don't get it.

Yeah, I've passed over a lot of products that didn't support WPA, but this time I finally decided it was worth the extra effort and expense. At least it works with WEP; the Prismiq compained about the revision of my NIC card, and I never got it working at all.

My LinkTheater is connected to a Syntax 30" that I roll between the bedroom and the back porch... so wireless is a must for this use. Makes a nice slick little package. The Syntax has a subwoofer out, and between the LT and my D* box, I have all the basic functions covered in just two devices with decent audio quality, at least at low-mid volumes. And only two cables (power and coax) need to be disconnected to move it.

Ooh, one more wish list item I forgot to mention:

Easier navigation through videos. If I have a 3-hour video, fast-forwarding to the 3/4 mark just isn't practical. Maybe a "jump" feature whereby you could select a number from 1-9 and it would jump to the approximate spot, 10% to 90%, etc.

also a bug: often when I'm playing videos, the other buttons stop working. Like when I'm in FF, I'll hit Play, and it doesn't work. If I hit FF again, Play might work after that, but if it doesn't, I'll be FFx2, and quickly going past where I want. It also happens that if I'm in Play mode, FF won't work, but if I hit Play again, then FF will work. I'm not sure what this is, but I'm pretty sure it's not an IR issue.

Lack of WPA - The problem is WPA requires an intensive software supplicant to handle the key rotation schemes. Currently there are only a handful of supplicants out there that can handle it: Microsoft XP's WPA Patch, Meeting House Software, and Funk Software. These supplicants are pretty much all Windows based supplicants (Funk and Meeting House producing supplicants for WPA well after the XP patch; their supplicants for Win98, Win2k, etc.). Those supplicants are built into Windows software client managers to handle WPA connections. Since LinkTheater is an embedded system's device it doesn't use Windows at all. Today's technology is possible to get a supplicant into the product it's just extremely difficult, hence why most non-Windows devices don't support WPA. The wireless card inside the LinkTheater also has a hardware co-processor so from a hardware standpoint it's WPA2 ready. We decided not to hold shipment for this reason because there is a workaround.

If you must have WPA, our Ethernet Bridge now supports WPA-TKIP and AES, part number WLI3-TX1-G54, so if it's a MUST-HAVE feature then that product will suffice.

Now Playing Queue - Do you mean if you add additional files to a folder it will consider those files when in a "Play All" or "Play Randomly" situation? I'm sure this can be done, but how would one want this to work?

Opening up the software - The software is completely customizable via XML stylesheets and stuff. This is mainly designed so people and companies can create storefronts and backends to Internet data. We will likely be releasing an SDK and documentation on how to create these types of things for our users. We'll also put up some sample ones for advanced users like yourself to see; I think you'll be quite surprised.

Yeah the browser really doesn't do frames. It's really designed for quick web access to basic sites. This is low on our priority list to improve.

I'm not familiar with their portal page, can you explain it to me?

USB Keyboard support - We have thought about this, but by adding this support people would demand a much nicer web browser so it's kind of a feature that would cause another feature to be not sufficient. This device isn't really designed to be a web browser, it's just a bonus. Suprisingly, tons of people have asked for this feature, but I fear people will want so much more out of the web browser, and web browsers aren't easy to get right these days, with so many IE based scripts and active content.

Themes - We have like 10 themes, but only released one. It's probably that eventually will release a theme-pack for download or individual themes or something.

Fit to Screen - I agree, I'll see what I can do about that.


Thanks for your time providing this list!

Originally posted by zonegray
Ooh, one more wish list item I forgot to mention:

Easier navigation through videos. If I have a 3-hour video, fast-forwarding to the 3/4 mark just isn't practical. Maybe a "jump" feature whereby you could select a number from 1-9 and it would jump to the approximate spot, 10% to 90%, etc.

also a bug: often when I'm playing videos, the other buttons stop working. Like when I'm in FF, I'll hit Play, and it doesn't work. If I hit FF again, Play might work after that, but if it doesn't, I'll be FFx2, and quickly going past where I want. It also happens that if I'm in Play mode, FF won't work, but if I hit Play again, then FF will work. I'm not sure what this is, but I'm pretty sure it's not an IR issue.

I've noticed these tendencies on occassion and usually find that the 'PAUSE' button works most of the time and then restores regular functionality once paused. I'm trying to determine with more accuracy what exactly is happening.

Brian...

The "Now Playing" queue would work like this: I'd browse through my songs, then select one to play it. Then I'd browse some more, and select another one. It would get added to a "playlist" or queue, and would play after the first one finished. Meanwhile, I'd keep browsing and adding files, while listening to the songs that I've already selected. Seems you could just maintain an array in memory on the server, something like that.

Maybe I'm the only one who listens that way, I dunno.

The "portal" page in Prismiq lists your local weather, selected stock quotes and news headlines. Gets 'em off the net somewhere, I never checked to see where. It's fairly useful, but more importantly, it has a high "Oooh Factor". On the LT, it could probably integrate into the device main page, alongside the Video/Music/Photos/Internet menu. Or maybe on the Login page.

One other feature that would be handy is if I could use a separate set of browser bookmarks... since it's a basic browser, there's not much point in importing my IE or Firefox bookmarks. So make an option to import from an arbitrary location, so I can set up a bookmark list that's optimized for the LT browser. Maybe ship it with a set of LT-friendly bookmarks.

An SDK would be cool. The more I look at it and see that the LT is basically a web application, the more possibilities come to mind.

Originally posted by zonegray
Brian...

The "Now Playing" queue would work like this: I'd browse through my songs, then select one to play it. Then I'd browse some more, and select another one. It would get added to a "playlist" or queue, and would play after the first one finished. Meanwhile, I'd keep browsing and adding files, while listening to the songs that I've already selected. Seems you could just maintain an array in memory on the server, something like that.

Maybe I'm the only one who listens that way, I dunno.

The "portal" page in Prismiq lists your local weather, selected stock quotes and news headlines. Gets 'em off the net somewhere, I never checked to see where. It's fairly useful, but more importantly, it has a high "Oooh Factor". On the LT, it could probably integrate into the device main page, alongside the Video/Music/Photos/Internet menu. Or maybe on the Login page.

One other feature that would be handy is if I could use a separate set of browser bookmarks... since it's a basic browser, there's not much point in importing my IE or Firefox bookmarks. So make an option to import from an arbitrary location, so I can set up a bookmark list that's optimized for the LT browser. Maybe ship it with a set of LT-friendly bookmarks.

An SDK would be cool. The more I look at it and see that the LT is basically a web application, the more possibilities come to mind.

The Internet tab through the PC lists portals to different shopping/travel sites, etc. It should be the tab next to internet radio. That sounds a lot like the portal you're talking about.

As far as the bookmark importing, can't you just make a folder inside your IE favorites called -= LT Bookmarks =- and just enter there whenever you use that feature? I understand this is a slight inconvenience but it may suffice until we explore a better option.

This is one of the more promising products in this space that I've read about in a while. I hear what seems to be a relatively happy and growing user base, and a seemingly open and attentive manufacturer(BrianV). Kudos to all of you.

I've been on the fence about what to do about digital content going forward, as I figure to pull the trigger on an HDTV in the next few months. I've been reading lots about building an HTPC, which has some plusses and minuses. Anyone here go through that decision making process and choose this product instead?

Also, many HTPC apps will play a dvd video folder (TS_Video) created by simply ripping with DVDecryptor or the like. Can this gadet do the same thing?

I think someone alluded to the answer in an earlier post, but I guess I didn't quite get the answer.

As far as the real-time playlist updating, I think the best way to do it is to utilize m3u or pls files and let the user modify them as needed. When you save the m3u or pls which some programs automatically do and some manually do the LinkTheater we refresh the PLS or M3U making it always up to date. You could have the update occur everytime a new song starts or perhaps even when the song is playing.

Hi,
Just wanted to chime in that's how I listed to music. Maybe i'm too lazy to create playlists in advance. :)
i start up a song, start adding songs, and after 5-15 minutes I've got a pretty decent sized selection that I then let play for a while... and I usually tinker with it while it is "playing".

anyway, you're not alone. :)

Originally posted by zonegray

The "Now Playing" queue would work like this: I'd browse through my songs, then select one to play it. Then I'd browse some more, and select another one. It would get added to a "playlist" or queue, and would play after the first one finished. Meanwhile, I'd keep browsing and adding files, while listening to the songs that I've already selected. Seems you could just maintain an array in memory on the server, something like that.
Maybe I'm the only one who listens that way, I dunno.

SGS,

Devices like the Link Theater beat an HTPC hands-down for playback, with a few caveats... for example, most don't handle fast-forward very well. But it's so much easier.

I have a Snapstream/BTV HTPC, but in practice, all I use it for is to record shows and for storage. When I want to relax and listen to music, the last thing I feel like doing is hauling out a keyboard, putting on my glasses, adjusting all the inputs, and hoping Windows is in a good mood. Besides, with a media player, there's a chance that guests can figure out how to use it without a three-day training course.

Originally posted by zonegray
SGS,

Devices like the Link Theater beat an HTPC hands-down for playback, with a few caveats... for example, most don't handle fast-forward very well. But it's so much easier.

I have a Snapstream/BTV HTPC, but in practice, all I use it for is to record shows and for storage. When I want to relax and listen to music, the last thing I feel like doing is hauling out a keyboard, putting on my glasses, adjusting all the inputs, and hoping Windows is in a good mood. Besides, with a media player, there's a chance that guests can figure out how to use it without a three-day training course.

My parents and sister were able to figure out the LinkTheater with little instruction. I left them with a bunch of movies and they had no problem figuring it out, and my g/f masters is almost as well as I do.

I'll see what I can think of for a great way for you guys to be able to build lists while playing music. I do that with Winamp on my PC; I'm just trying to think of the best way to do it.

Since Linktheater plays from network folders, would this be the best option? When browsing a folder there's the play all and play randomly option. These just take all the mp3s/wmas in a folder and play them back in alphanbetical order or randomly. If you add file/folders to the network folder while LinkTheater is playing it won't notice any new files. If we just made LinkTheater refresh the directory once per song, it would always have an accurate list of what files are in there. Would you prefer it this way, or some real time reading of an actual playlist file (pls or m3u)?

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize supplicants were still such an issue--DLink is and has been selling wireless web cams with 802.11g and WPA for a while, I've got one on order so I don't know how well they work in practice. But I would think it would be an embedded device similar to your setup. Like you said, it is possible. I guess I don't know enough about WPA2 to know exactly what you mean there--will WPA2 be easier to support? But in any case like you said a bridge is an option.

Originally posted by BrianV
Lack of WPA - The problem is WPA requires an intensive software supplicant to handle the key rotation schemes. Currently there are only a handful of supplicants out there that can handle it: Microsoft XP's WPA Patch, Meeting House Software, and Funk Software. These supplicants are pretty much all Windows based supplicants (Funk and Meeting House producing supplicants for WPA well after the XP patch; their supplicants for Win98, Win2k, etc.). Those supplicants are built into Windows software client managers to handle WPA connections. Since LinkTheater is an embedded system's device it doesn't use Windows at all. Today's technology is possible to get a supplicant into the product it's just extremely difficult, hence why most non-Windows devices don't support WPA. The wireless card inside the LinkTheater also has a hardware co-processor so from a hardware standpoint it's WPA2 ready. We decided not to hold shipment for this reason because there is a workaround.

Thanks for the comments.

Any ideas regarding the playing of ripped dvd movies from a HD? Is it as simple as pointing it at a Video_TS folder from DVDecryptor?

BrianV, thanks for all of the input and thanks to the early adopters who are posting the comments/feedback.

A quick question on firmware updates.. What is the process for installing the updates? Also, what is the expected frequency of updates. It sounds like BrianV is taking a lot of the requests back to the firmware for potential inclusion in future updates. I'd like to understand the freqeuncy of updates.

Also, is there a link to any screenshots of the device? I'd love to see some of the UI.

Lastly, someone made a comment that wasn't further elaborated on about the LT upconverting DVD's? Has anyone else validated this? There was a link on CNET (http://reviews.cnet.com/Buffalo_LinkTheater_PC_P3LWG_DVD/4505-6505_7-31290624.html?tag=tab) and a CNET Video (check the tabs) and the guy doing the review clearly says that this device upscales DVDs. Can anyone confirm? Even though BrianV pretty much said that it does not.

Thanks
Drew

Originally posted by BrianV
ogg1e, I don't quite understand the question?

You have SVCD CDs and wonder if they'll play?
Answer: Yes

You have DATA CDs with SVCD info on them, will they play?
Answer: Yes you will be able to play the MPG or DAT file

You can SVCD files that are in bin/cue and wondering if they'll play?
Answer: No, we can't open a bin/cue image and mount it as data, you will need the data burned on the CD in standard ISO/Data format or in DVD or SVCD video formats.

If you're asking whether the DVD drive will mount data discs then the answer is yes.


My question is this:
Do I need to burn the .bin to a cd, and put the cd in the player to view the video?

Or, can I use daemon tools to mount the bin file as a drive, and will the player see the mounted drive and play the video file in the mpeg2 directory of the mounted drive? Also, can it see a mounted svcd on the network and play it?

I've had my LinkTheater for 24 hours now and so far I am pretty happy. This device is easy to set up and use and has huge potential.

Observations/issues:

The previously mentioned inability to preview photos or run a slide show from photo CDs also applies to USB devices. I hope the firmware to address this is released soon.

Playing music and viewing photos from PC using the LinkTheater server software works fine. I have been looking for a way to take advantage of HDTV resolution and screen size to view photos for long time and was contemplating a HTPC but the LinkTheater is a much simpler solution, and the ability to easily access all of the music and photos on my current PCs is just icing on the cake. The LinkTheater is easy to use, starts up quickly, reasonably responsive, and totally quiet which are arguments in its favor compared to an HTPC.

I do notice that the color level (saturation) when viewing photos is too high (significantly IMO). I am using 1080i output to a Toshiba HD RPTV. The color levels on the set have been calibrated using Avia Guide to Home Theater. This problem seems to be limited to photos and the LinkTheater's menus. I did not notice any problem with color saturation on DVD playback when I checked it briefly. [edit - not true, see below, needed to recalibrate TV inputs for the LinkTheater] Will watch a movie tonight to see for sure if there is a problem with DVD or not.

When I installed and set up the software on my PC, the internet setup dialog would not allow me to select my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks, even though that is my primary browser. That option was grayed out. I was able to select Internet Explorer.

When viewing the music playlist from the LinkTheater software on the PC it does not include the "watch folders", only the primary "My Music" folder. The watch folders do show up on the LinkTheater.

That's all for now.

Does anyone have info on how this unit compares with the Roku Photobridge (aka HD1000)? If the Buffalo unit works as well as the Roku for photo viewing I would probably buy one. The Roku allows you to easily pan and zoom with the remote and the picture quality was very good on my Mits. HD RPTV. I ended returning the Roku because the only thing it could do reliably was view photos. From the initial reviews the Buffalo unit looks promising. I've been waiting for the right product to come along. Maybe this one is it.

Jay

You need to calibrate with the LinkTheater as the source with the AVIA DVD. At least for starters.

Originally posted by Pennhaven
I do notice that the color level (saturation) when viewing photos is too high (significantly IMO). I am using 1080i output to a Toshiba HD RPTV. The color levels on the set have been calibrated using Avia Guide to Home Theater. This problem seems to be limited to photos and the LinkTheater's menus. I did not notice any problem with color saturation on DVD playback when I checked it briefly. Will watch a movie tonight to see for sure if there is a problem with DVD or not.

Originally posted by turls
You need to calibrate with the LinkTheater as the source with the AVIA DVD. At least for starters.
Yep. I should have done that first. I found that the saturation, hue, and black level were also off with DVD viewing - not just with photo viewing as I first thought. I needed to recalibrate that component input on my TV. Surprising that there was so much difference from my previous progressive scan DVD player (Toshiba).

Originally posted by johnalt
Has anyone found a preset code to program the LinkTheater to be use from there stereo remote control?
Not yet. But I'd like to. Would also like to find discrete on off codes for use with remote macros. Thought I'd get used to the Buffalo supplied remote first and see which keys I used most before I attempted to program a universal remote for the LinkTheater.

I'm curious if the LinkTheater will play TS files? It seems to play a variety of potentially hi-def files, but I haven't read anything thing about transport streams.

Thanks,
Randy

I am also interested in how the LT plays ripped DVDs . Can anyone answer this?? Will i be able to watch the ripped dvd in hi-def?? will i have access to the menu of the dvd in the LT?? anyone doing this yet??

Originally posted by BrianV
I'll see what I can think of for a great way for you guys to be able to build lists while playing music. I do that with Winamp on my PC; I'm just trying to think of the best way to do it.

Since Linktheater plays from network folders, would this be the best option? When browsing a folder there's the play all and play randomly option. These just take all the mp3s/wmas in a folder and play them back in alphanbetical order or randomly. If you add file/folders to the network folder while LinkTheater is playing it won't notice any new files. If we just made LinkTheater refresh the directory once per song, it would always have an accurate list of what files are in there. Would you prefer it this way, or some real time reading of an actual playlist file (pls or m3u)?

Brian... technically, the LT plays files and playlists from a web server. If you just open http://localhost:8000 on the server PC, you can see the URLs and parameters that get passed. When you "play" a file, the server seems to send back a line of text that includes title/artist metadata and a URL for the actual file source (BTW, this seems to screw up IE, but Firefox displays it okay).

The trick, obviously, is let the user add files to whatever list the server uses, whether it's an actual .pls file or just a memory array or whatever.

As I think about how it might work, lots of interface questions come up... for example, what button would you push to Queue a file instead of Play it?

One obvious obstacle is that currently, when you select a single file to Play, you go into slide show mode, you can't continue browsing files. That should probably be changed anyway, going into a slide show for a single song is pretty silly.

But I'm not sure of the limitations of the app... ideally, after selecting a single song to play, it would return you to browsing files. But would this even work?

Meanwhile, I found an undocumented feature.... hitting "Right" on the navigation pad while playing a video brings up an on-screen menu, "GO TO XX%", which lets you jump through files easier than using FF. As you continue pushing the Right button, the percentage climbs, and when you stop pressing it, it jumps to that part of the file. Only catch is that it moves in 1% increments, so if you want to go to the 90% mark, then that's 90 keypresses. Incrementing by 2% or 3% might be preferable. But it works okay, definitely better than nothing.

BTW, I downloaded one of those DivX-HD trailers, very impressive.

Originally posted by turls
Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize supplicants were still such an issue--DLink is and has been selling wireless web cams with 802.11g and WPA for a while, I've got one on order so I don't know how well they work in practice. But I would think it would be an embedded device similar to your setup. Like you said, it is possible. I guess I don't know enough about WPA2 to know exactly what you mean there--will WPA2 be easier to support? But in any case like you said a bridge is an option.
Yeah our bridge supports WPA (and WPA2) like that d-link cams do. The thing is, we had regular bridges out before that just supported WEP as dlink had cams that just supported WEP. Those products have been on the market for some time so the engineers have time to spend on supporting WPA. Our engineers were pedal to metal to get the product out supporting its current feature-set. It'd take quite a bit more time to get WPA going, and we'd rather get it out sooner. It's likely an update will happen in the future, but I don't know when, we're still focusing on fixing the little bugs and adding more/better DRM support.

Originally posted by SGS
Thanks for the comments.

Any ideas regarding the playing of ripped dvd movies from a HD? Is it as simple as pointing it at a Video_TS folder from DVDecryptor?

Yeah, you can play the VOBS fine, the IFOs will display but they won't be interactive. This is what I do:

DVD Decrypt a DVD movie, dump the decrypt into a folder, point LinkTheater to that folder, press the Play_all button. It'll stream the VOBS perfectly with a ~2 second pause between VOBS.

Hopefully we can get a little better implementaiton of this in the future, I wasn't aware so many people were interested in doing this.

Originally posted by drew138
BrianV, thanks for all of the input and thanks to the early adopters who are posting the comments/feedback.

A quick question on firmware updates.. What is the process for installing the updates? Also, what is the expected frequency of updates. It sounds like BrianV is taking a lot of the requests back to the firmware for potential inclusion in future updates. I'd like to understand the freqeuncy of updates.

Also, is there a link to any screenshots of the device? I'd love to see some of the UI.

Lastly, someone made a comment that wasn't further elaborated on about the LT upconverting DVD's? Has anyone else validated this? There was a link on CNET (http://reviews.cnet.com/Buffalo_LinkTheater_PC_P3LWG_DVD/4505-6505_7-31290624.html?tag=tab) and a CNET Video (check the tabs) and the guy doing the review clearly says that this device upscales DVDs. Can anyone confirm? Even though BrianV pretty much said that it does not.

Thanks
Drew

Firmware updates are simple, in the main setup there's a firmware update tab, you press the button over the check for firmware update and a list will appear with firmwares available for update. You then press the button and it takes about a minute. The only requirement is that the LinkTheater is attached to a network that has an internet connection.

Don't believe everything you read with editors, they mis-interpret things.

Originally posted by ogg1e
My question is this:
Do I need to burn the .bin to a cd, and put the cd in the player to view the video?

Or, can I use daemon tools to mount the bin file as a drive, and will the player see the mounted drive and play the video file in the mpeg2 directory of the mounted drive? Also, can it see a mounted svcd on the network and play it?
I haven't tested, but you should be able to mount the bin as a virtual drive (using like Alcohol 120) and then play it off of that virtual drive. Give me until the end of the day and I'll see if I can test that out for you.

Originally posted by BrianV
Yeah, you can play the VOBS fine, the IFOs will display but they won't be interactive. This is what I do:

DVD Decrypt a DVD movie, dump the decrypt into a folder, point LinkTheater to that folder, press the Play_all button. It'll stream the VOBS perfectly with a ~2 second pause between VOBS.

Hopefully we can get a little better implementaiton of this in the future, I wasn't aware so many people were interested in doing this.

Nail this feature and the LT and TerraStations will start flying off the shelves! If you can get the IFO's to be interactive....... that's the ultimate solution for me. The 2 second delay is a real drawback though. That should be a high priority fix. And would push me over the edge to buy one.

Drew

Originally posted by BrianV
Yeah, you can play the VOBS fine, the IFOs will display but they won't be interactive. This is what I do:

DVD Decrypt a DVD movie, dump the decrypt into a folder, point LinkTheater to that folder, press the Play_all button. It'll stream the VOBS perfectly with a ~2 second pause between VOBS.

Hopefully we can get a little better implementaiton of this in the future, I wasn't aware so many people were interested in doing this.

Oh yeah, this is a big one for me. Actually, it would really be the main reason for purchsing such a device. Any pause between VOB files during a movie would be annoying enough, that I think viewers would rather I get off my butt and put the disk in - defeating the whole point.

I guess I'll need to keep an eye on this as time goes on, and hope better support for this functionality arrives someday.

Thanks for the honest reply BrianV !!!!

The previously mentioned inability to preview photos or run a slide show from photo CDs also applies to USB devices. I hope the firmware to address this is released soon.

Definitely fixed in the next firmware, which should be available this week. You can just press the play button and it'll start a slideshow. Also there will be a setting that specifies how to zoom/expand/fit to screen the images

Playing music and viewing photos from PC using the LinkTheater server software works fine. I have been looking for a way to take advantage of HDTV resolution and screen size to view photos for long time and was contemplating a HTPC but the LinkTheater is a much simpler solution, and the ability to easily access all of the music and photos on my current PCs is just icing on the cake. The LinkTheater is easy to use, starts up quickly, reasonably responsive, and totally quiet which are arguments in its favor compared to an HTPC.

Yes HD upconversion on photo playback is INCREDIBLE, the PC interface looks really slick too

When I installed and set up the software on my PC, the internet setup dialog would not allow me to select my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks, even though that is my primary browser. That option was grayed out. I was able to select Internet Explorer.

Will be fixed in the next software release version, which will also include slight improvements in several areas including PODCAST support. Expect this fix this month as well as a similar Mac OS X compatible application.

When viewing the music playlist from the LinkTheater software on the PC it does not include the "watch folders", only the primary "My Music" folder. The watch folders do show up on the LinkTheater.

[b]Wasn't aware of that bug and just verified it. I'll see what I can do about getting that fixed. THANKS!![b]

Originally posted by jerndl
Does anyone have info on how this unit compares with the Roku Photobridge (aka HD1000)? If the Buffalo unit works as well as the Roku for photo viewing I would probably buy one. The Roku allows you to easily pan and zoom with the remote and the picture quality was very good on my Mits. HD RPTV. I ended returning the Roku because the only thing it could do reliably was view photos. From the initial reviews the Buffalo unit looks promising. I've been waiting for the right product to come along. Maybe this one is it.

Jay

Ours can pan and zoom. The good thing about the Roku is that remote is extremely user friendly, the bad thing is its limited playback of anything but photos. My dad has a Roku HD1000 (has had it for almost a year now), and now he has the LinkTheater and he much prefers the LinkTheater. I do admit though, if ALL you want to do is view photos the Roku is a tad bit easier to use, but other than that I highly recommend the LinkTheater.

Originally posted by rstewar
I'm curious if the LinkTheater will play TS files? It seems to play a variety of potentially hi-def files, but I haven't read anything thing about transport streams.

Thanks,
Randy
Nope, not right now!

Originally posted by zonegray
Brian... technically, the LT plays files and playlists from a web server. If you just open http://localhost:8000 on the server PC, you can see the URLs and parameters that get passed. When you "play" a file, the server seems to send back a line of text that includes title/artist metadata and a URL for the actual file source (BTW, this seems to screw up IE, but Firefox displays it okay).

The trick, obviously, is let the user add files to whatever list the server uses, whether it's an actual .pls file or just a memory array or whatever.

As I think about how it might work, lots of interface questions come up... for example, what button would you push to Queue a file instead of Play it?

One obvious obstacle is that currently, when you select a single file to Play, you go into slide show mode, you can't continue browsing files. That should probably be changed anyway, going into a slide show for a single song is pretty silly.

But I'm not sure of the limitations of the app... ideally, after selecting a single song to play, it would return you to browsing files. But would this even work?

Meanwhile, I found an undocumented feature.... hitting "Right" on the navigation pad while playing a video brings up an on-screen menu, "GO TO XX%", which lets you jump through files easier than using FF. As you continue pushing the Right button, the percentage climbs, and when you stop pressing it, it jumps to that part of the file. Only catch is that it moves in 1% increments, so if you want to go to the 90% mark, then that's 90 keypresses. Incrementing by 2% or 3% might be preferable. But it works okay, definitely better than nothing.

BTW, I downloaded one of those DivX-HD trailers, very impressive.

That's sort of what I was thinking as well, I have a couple of ideas regarding how we can work with queues. You're right, everything is a webserver here (that runs on port 8000). You can't access the High-Def webserver through a web browser though, just the SD version.

Originally posted by SGS
Oh yeah, this is a big one for me. Actually, it would really be the main reason for purchsing such a device. Any pause between VOB files during a movie would be annoying enough, that I think viewers would rather I get off my butt and put the disk in - defeating the whole point.

I guess I'll need to keep an eye on this as time goes on, and hope better support for this functionality arrives someday.

Thanks for the honest reply BrianV !!!!

I'll definitely move it up the list on the priority list.

Remote Control Information

For those of you playing around with universal remotes, let me know how this works. I'm absolutely not saying it'll work, but it's worth a shot. If it doesn't work for you, please let me know which universal remote you're using:

http://64.182.122.206/remote_code.pdf

.ts files?
I'm curious if the LinkTheater will play TS files? It seems to play a variety of potentially hi-def files, but I haven't read anything thing about transport streams.
Originally posted by BrianV
Nope, not right now!
What about VOB files with HD content? Some HD Tivo users have figured out how get files from the HD Tivo to the PC in VOB format. These files play fine with software DVD players like PowerDVD, HDTV PC cards like MYHD, and external devices like the Roku PhotoBridge and the AVeL LinkPlayer2. Will these files playback properly on the Buffalo unit?

Jay

If I read into the documentation a little, it seems like you can only use one video output at a time. Is this correct?

I currently have a Denon DVD player, that allows me to use the S-Video and component video out jacks at the same time. This allows me to hook it up to me Tv directly, and also to run the DVD signal to a modulator for the rest of the house. This has been a real crowd pleaser at home.

I suppose I could also do the same thing with a dual head video card on an HTPC.

Any chance this thing can do this as well, or is it one video output at a time only.

Thanks in advance.......

Can the LT play AVIs ? I have alot of AVIs downloaded from my camcorder.

Originally posted by BrianV
Remote Control Information

For those of you playing around with universal remotes, let me know how this works...
http://64/182.122.206/remote_code.pdf
Unable to access. The server is timing out.

There's a typo in Brian's link, here's a correction:

http://64.182.122.206/remote_code.pdf

Originally posted by jerndl
What about VOB files with HD content? Some HD Tivo users have figured out how get files from the HD Tivo to the PC in VOB format. These files play fine with software DVD players like PowerDVD, HDTV PC cards like MYHD, and external devices like the Roku PhotoBridge and the AVeL LinkPlayer2. Will these files playback properly on the Buffalo unit?

Jay

Well it will play VOB, if anyone can upload a HD VOB file to my ftp or something, I could test it out?

Originally posted by SGS
If I read into the documentation a little, it seems like you can only use one video output at a time. Is this correct?

I currently have a Denon DVD player, that allows me to use the S-Video and component video out jacks at the same time. This allows me to hook it up to me Tv directly, and also to run the DVD signal to a modulator for the rest of the house. This has been a real crowd pleaser at home.

I suppose I could also do the same thing with a dual head video card on an HTPC.

Any chance this thing can do this as well, or is it one video output at a time only.

Thanks in advance.......

I'll have to check on the exact combos, but in some variations, multiple video outputs are available.

I think in Component NTSC, both Svideo and composite are available. Also, in default mode, both svideo and composite work. This is probably the deal breaker, but I'm rpetty sure in 480p, 720p, or 1080i mode, composite and s-video are disabled.

Originally posted by ny888
Can the LT play AVIs ? I have alot of AVIs downloaded from my camcorder.

Yes it plays AVIs extremely well, it even upconverts them to HD if you're using an HD display. It will also play DivX and XVid if your AVI's happen to actually be one of those formats.

Originally posted by zonegray
There's a typo in Brian's link, here's a correction:

http://64.182.122.206/remote_code.pdf

Thanks, I modified the original post!!

Originally posted by BrianV
Well it will play VOB, if anyone can upload a HD VOB file to my ftp or something, I could test it out?

Several of us with the IODATA LinkPLayer2 repackaged TS or TP files into VOBs using HDTVtoMPEG2 Version 7 or using Videolan (VLC) so we could play HD streams before IODATA officially started supporting TS. The Sigma chipsets the same in both players so you probabably should be able to do the same with the LinkTheatre with no problems ...

I'm now on my third week with the BLT. Still haven't used is as much as I had hoped, but here are few other observations/comments/questions:

Again, I am ecstatic about the picture quality on all content, especially 720p/1080i HD content. I am very happy with my purchase, and will most likely be getting a couple more for the other two TV's in the house.

Like other users on this thread, I also need a way to create/edit audio playlists on the fly, and I can't seem to make Windows Media Player playlists work. It is mentioned on page 31 of the manual, but there aren't any details.

I am still bummed about Buffalo killing the tuner support on the TeraStation NAS , because the ability to have the BLT deliver "live" HD content streamed from a centralized PVR (using the Terastation - not a HTPC) would make it a must have device in every household... and then Buffalo would probably get acquired by Cisco ;) So, assuming the USB tuner support on the TeraStation is dead, is there a way for the BLT to be a "frontend" to a MythTV or WindowsMCE2k5 box? I don't know enough about the UPnP protocol to know if this kind of application would work... and I am not sure how the current remote controller would support it.

Originally posted by ToadMazter
I'm now on my third week with the BLT. Still haven't used is as much as I had hoped, but here are few other observations/comments/questions:

Again, I am ecstatic about the picture quality on all content, especially 720p/1080i HD content. I am very happy with my purchase, and will most likely be getting a couple more for the other two TV's in the house.

Like other users on this thread, I also need a way to create/edit audio playlists on the fly, and I can't seem to make Windows Media Player playlists work. It is mentioned on page 31 of the manual, but there aren't any details.

I am still bummed about Buffalo killing the tuner support on the TeraStation NAS , because the ability to have the BLT deliver "live" HD content streamed from a centralized PVR (using the Terastation - not a HTPC) would make it a must have device in every household... and then Buffalo would probably get acquired by Cisco ;) So, assuming the USB tuner support on the TeraStation is dead, is there a way for the BLT to be a "frontend" to a MythTV or WindowsMCE2k5 box? I don't know enough about the UPnP protocol to know if this kind of application would work... and I am not sure how the current remote controller would support it.


ToadMazter, no one said the USB tuner was dead for TeraStation, it is something we CAN do if the market demands it. Give it some time and read the press releases.

Cisco buying Buffalo is highly unlikely, Buffalo is a 1+ billion dollar internation corporation that's revenue generating. Cisco already bought Linksys for well less than that.

Originally posted by BrianV
ToadMazter, no one said the USB tuner was dead for TeraStation, it is something we CAN do if the market demands it. Give it some time and read the press releases.


Patience is not one my best virtues, but I'll quit bugging you and will just go out and but one! And I'll keep my eyes on the press releases...

Originally posted by BrianV
Cisco buying Buffalo is highly unlikely, Buffalo is a 1+ billion dollar internation corporation that's revenue generating. Cisco already bought Linksys for well less than that.[/B]

Of course you know I was only kidding. Linksys has quickly become a great revenue stream for us, and I expect even greater things to come from it. I just wish Linksys had a TeraStation and a LinkTheatre so I could finally take advantage of the employee purchase program. ;)

how does it handle large numbers of music files?

i have 51,000, and other media players have lagged or frozen with such a large number.

however, they are organized in folders:


A
--artist folder
------album
------album

B
--artist folder
------album

etc...

I have absolutely NO CLUE how it will handle 51,000 mp3s, I have 3,000 and honestly it could be a bit better. It takes about 20 seconds to queue up the entire 3,000 song playlist, I imagine it'll be exponentially higher with 51,000.

Once it did get started it was fine, I could skip songs without hesitation.

I used the PC Software for this as the LinkStation PCast Server doesn't do nested folder playback, just plays all the files inside a directory.

Also, anyone who is using LinkStation with the LinkTheater, please PM me if you want to resolve the single file-playback issue.

I'm traveling on business the next three days but I'll be available periodically so I'll be able to respond to the PM's.

I was following this product before it was released and kind of forgot about it...I'd just like to thank Brian for being a great resource on this forum.

I'm holding out getting one until the first firmware update and until my external 300G (NTFS formatted) USB drive is recognized and the 2 sec delay is gone from VOB playback. I would love to rip all my DVDs to the ext HD (which I've already done), hook the drive to the LT, and not have to put in a disc every time I want to watch a movie...and also not have to keep the PC turned on to stream the files to the LT. That is the ultimate in my book.

This is a big one for me. I have my DVD's stored on a hard drive(s). ripped using DVD Decrypter in VOB format (not ISO/BIN).

I would definitely want to be able to play a DVD stored on a drive via LT and have it be the same experience as playing a physical DVD.

thx.

Originally posted by SGS
Oh yeah, this is a big one for me. Actually, it would really be the main reason for purchsing such a device. Any pause between VOB files during a movie would be annoying enough, that I think viewers would rather I get off my butt and put the disk in - defeating the whole point.

I guess I'll need to keep an eye on this as time goes on, and hope better support for this functionality arrives someday.

Thanks for the honest reply BrianV !!!!

Originally posted by fhall1
I was following this product before it was released and kind of forgot about it...I'd just like to thank Brian for being a great resource on this forum.

I'm holding out getting one until the first firmware update and until my external 300G (NTFS formatted) USB drive is recognized and the 2 sec delay is gone from VOB playback. I would love to rip all my DVDs to the ext HD (which I've already done), hook the drive to the LT, and not have to put in a disc every time I want to watch a movie...and also not have to keep the PC turned on to stream the files to the LT. That is the ultimate in my book.

I think the only USB port in on the front of the device. Is there one in the back?

Also, I think the LT would recognize your external USB drive? The other issues (2 second delay and firmware update) hopefully will be resolved shortly. I'd also like to see support for DVD cover art, but that might be asking for too much.

Drew

Originally posted by drew138
I think the only USB port in on the front of the device. Is there one in the back?

Also, I think the LT would recognize your external USB drive? The other issues (2 second delay and firmware update) hopefully will be resolved shortly. I'd also like to see support for DVD cover art, but that might be asking for too much.

Drew

According to ealier posts, it only recognizes the drive if it's formatted FAT16 or FAT32...I need it to handle NTFS

Sorry if this has already been posted, but does anyone know when the first firmware upgrade is going to be released? I think I will wait until they work out a few of the problems before I purchase one of these.

Originally posted by fhall1
I was following this product before it was released and kind of forgot about it...I'd just like to thank Brian for being a great resource on this forum.

I'm holding out getting one until the first firmware update and until my external 300G (NTFS formatted) USB drive is recognized and the 2 sec delay is gone from VOB playback. I would love to rip all my DVDs to the ext HD (which I've already done), hook the drive to the LT, and not have to put in a disc every time I want to watch a movie...and also not have to keep the PC turned on to stream the files to the LT. That is the ultimate in my book.

Let me see what I can do about NTFS support.

Originally posted by drew138
I think the only USB port in on the front of the device. Is there one in the back?

Also, I think the LT would recognize your external USB drive? The other issues (2 second delay and firmware update) hopefully will be resolved shortly. I'd also like to see support for DVD cover art, but that might be asking for too much.

Drew

Only one port on the front. Currently it will not mount NTFS partitioned drives.

Originally posted by chrixx
Sorry if this has already been posted, but does anyone know when the first firmware upgrade is going to be released? I think I will wait until they work out a few of the problems before I purchase one of these.

Likely this week or definitely by next week.

Bugs fixed:

-DRM support via WMC
-Photo resizing preset setting using LinkStation, USB, or CD/DVD drive
-Easier USB/CD/DVD File Navigation
-AOSS Wireless Bug Fixes
-I know I'm forgetting a few more

The other bugs have been addressed and will hopefully all come in future releases.

The 2 second pause on VOB and the recognition of NTFS need to be put to the top of your list. These are huge deal breakers for many potential buyers.

A quick question for users who are playing VOBs. If you are ripping your DVD into one big file with DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor instead of multiple one gig VOBs, I guess this avoids the 2 second pause. Right???

Obviously, Brian knows better than I, but if the LT is a Linux-based device, then NTFS support might not be all that easy; is there a stable read/write Linux NTFS driver yet? It's long been a sore point.

Of course, you could use NTFS on a network drive, and stream over ethernet rather than via USB.

Originally posted by zonegray
Obviously, Brian knows better than I, but if the LT is a Linux-based device, then NTFS support might not be all that easy; is there a stable read/write Linux NTFS driver yet? It's long been a sore point.

Of course, you could use NTFS on a network drive, and stream over ethernet rather than via USB.

Agreed. For me this is not an issue since I plan on streaming over Ethernet.

Does anyone have any experience with playing XviD on this unit?

I am editting this because I see that someone already tried XviD on this unit, but was the DTS problem worked out?

I received the LinkTheater yesterday and noticed a few problems that will hopefully be addressed in a firmware upgrade.

While playing a DVD I noticed that audio was not in sync with video. It was annoyingly off track by a half second or so. Also, the background for an interactive DVD menu failed to load and I only saw the icon on a black screen. This only happened once. On another interactive menu page, after clicking one of the selections the cursor sometimes would just move to the bottom of screen and not go into the content. Sometimes it would play the content and sometimes not. Could this be a bug in the DVD itself.

It did play ReplayTV MPG files with out problems. Is there way to skip commercials when playing a ReplayTV MPG on a LinkTheater?

How can I designate a different directory than My Documents / My Videos, My Music and My Pictures? I store my files on a different drive and different directories. Most of my videos are on a Linux machine. Is there a way to tell LinkTheater to look on a Linux server? Or can I SAMBA share that drive to Windows and have LinkTheater find the network drive?

Originally posted by zonegray

Of course, you could use NTFS on a network drive, and stream over ethernet rather than via USB. [/B]

"Could" is the operative word here....I could - but I don't "want" to. I don't want to have to have my PC on all the time and streaming files over the net just to watch a movie that's ripped to an external disk when I could simply plug the disk directly into the USB port on the LT. With 500G drives around the corner and 1TByte drives coming in 18 months or so, having your entire movie and music library on a removable USB drive would be a "killer" app for the LT...along with replacing my standalone DVD player AND being able to probably disconnect my CD changer from my HT setup. Or getting one for my technophobe parents and not having to set up a PC and network for them...just a USB drive. The LT has tremendous potential....I want it to succeed.

Ok, first let me say straight out, I am definitely what you would call an early adopter when it comes to HT equipment. In fact, I retrofitted my 2 story condo 6 years ago to have cat5 wiring in all rooms, and have been streaming video and music in 4 of these rooms ever since (well, for music, video came 2 years ago).

I've tried quite a few products, and so far, as interface goes and codec support, nothing has been able to match my Play@TV, that is, until I started toying with High Def, mainly Transport Streams, WM9... Now I am not a masochist, and keeping buying hard drive storage in the terabytes is not my idea of a cost effective digital media server, which is why I long for an easy way to convert all my TS files in WM9 or Divx HD (haven't tried that yet). I'm afraid we will never see a support for WM9 with 6 channel WMA Pro, since this would require a real time transcoding in AC3 or DTS to be of any real interest, and I doubt Buffalo will be able to pull that out.

That said, I am rather satisfied with the LinkTheater so far, and even more so with the TeraStation. I've been buying NAS storage for about 4 years now, and TeraStation is the first product that got it right as far as price/features ratio goes... Can't wait to see the Pcast server for it, as that was the main selling point for me, since I already have about 2 terabytes of storage available. My main concern with the Pcast is user interface. I hope it will be as good looking as the PC server interface, but again, I'm not holding my breath... And for those asking about the noise factor, let's just say the TeraStation is amazingly silent compared to any other NAS on the market. My hats off to Buffalo for this product. One thing that needs to be addressed though : the backup software for PC is definitely not working. And when I say not working, I mean totally useless, as it won't backup jack, and some stuff is still in japanese or something...

Back to the LinkTheater. Way better than the IO-Data Avel product. I just returned the Avel, which is the most unfinished product I ever came across. Keep in mind that today, what makes most of the difference between 2 similar products such as these, is the software. And on that front, IO-Data can go back and rewrite it, and quick. It is unbelievable to me that every firmware update on the IO-Data actually breaks more things than it fixes. And being a foreigner myself, it is unbelievable to me that a company that actually pretends to sell anything good in an english speaking country can't have employees that actually speak better english. I think some people forgive way too much when it comes to the electronics business, and since I used to be in that business, I wish at that time the mentality would have been the same, as it would certainly had made my life much easier.

Mind you, the LinkTheater has its quirks, and I, for one, don't even care about what Brian says has been fixed in the next update. What I would like fixed is this :

- PAL DVD playback is god awfull, unwatchable unless you have Parkinsons
- when is somebody ever going to do gapless MP3 playback ? Audiotron is the only product that got that right with perfect gapless MP3 playback. I'm a pro DJ, and 50% of my CD collection and my own mixes can't be played right because of that short pause between tracks. Not even SonosNET does it, what's up with that ?
- speaking of music, there is a glitch at about 2 seconds in every track played
- some video files can't play, even though they should be since the Sigma chip used supports them, I have 3 WM9 files that don't play the picture correctly, and quite a few Divx and Xvid also, but then again, I've been compressing 800 DVDs in the last 4 years, so multiple codecs have been used...

Also, count me in for a USB tuner, as long as it's an OTA DTV one. That would be just killer as it would allow me to stream live OTA TV to all rooms (I don't have cable and never will, way too much of a rip-off) and use the TeraStation as a PVR...

I'm sure I am forgetting a few things, but I'm not about to rewrite War & Peace either, so I'll leave chapter 2 for another post...

Thierry

Thierry, thanks for the feedback. Seems like you mostly stream your dvd's which outputs an upconverted signal.

Does the DVD player itself upconvert as well when viewing discs? There was a review on CNET indicated that it did, but Brian indicated that it did not, although he did say that it 'could'. I am trying to find out for sure. Although it sounds like your experience with PAL hasn't been fun.

Thanks

Drew

I live in the UK and have been waiting for either the Iodata or Buffalo products to be released in Europe.

I was leaning towards the Buffalo, but am now somewhat concerned by eurotrance's comments regarding PAL DVD playback. Can anyone else comment on their expreience with PAL?

Also any other comments regarding comparison with Iodata's Linkplayer would be appreciated.

One last thing, does the Linktheatre play subs such as .srt with Xvid/divx?

Drew,

I can confirm that the player upconverts actual DVD discs, however how long this will remain is a matter of IF an eventual firmware "upgrade" will disable it, just as the secret menu for region code...

But don't expect to play PAL discs and to not throw yourself out the window when you see the result. You've been warned.


Bluesheep,

Streaming in PAL seems fine, but then again, in Xvid or Divx, can we really talk of PAL or NTSC ? Not really. I didn't try to stream a PAL vob. The PAL DVD disc playback is definitely unwatchable. It was the exact same problem with the IOData, so I hope this is not a problem within the Sigma chip, in other words an hardware one...

Haven't tried the subtitles yet, will let you know tomorrow. But there was no .srt support on the IOData, so most likely there won't be on the Buffalo (yet).

Thierry

I apologize if this is a repeat question, but...

what exactly is the d4 used for? I know it's the japanese (analogue?) interface, but how is it used here (in the US)? The LinkTheater already has component output, so is there an adapter for the d4?
if so what does it convert to? and does if it doesn't come with an adapter where could one purchase it? (where would we purchase one anyway?)

thanks for your support.

visionmind

Originally posted by MoG
This is a big one for me. I have my DVD's stored on a hard drive(s). ripped using DVD Decrypter in VOB format (not ISO/BIN).

I would definitely want to be able to play a DVD stored on a drive via LT and have it be the same experience as playing a physical DVD.

thx. Has anyone confirmed this yet?? Can this device play ripped and stored dvds and stream them without issue??

This will be my primary purpose, if this works then i am definetly in.

Originally posted by Toastermax
Has anyone confirmed this yet?? Can this device play ripped and stored dvds and stream them without issue??

This will be my primary purpose, if this works then i am definetly in.

I just got mine yesterday. I am almost completely satisfied, having trouble with the digital coax out. I hope it is just my set up.

I use DVDClone to rip my movies to VOB and the player plays them very well! It cues them up very fast and they look great. As for sound, the analog stereo out is good and in sync. Hopefully I will be able to report on digital sound soon.

I got the player to play torrents of TV shows I missed. And so far it has played everything I have thrown at it. And to top it off the picture is excellent.

Does anyone know if you can watch Live television programs through this unit if your PC has a tv tuner?

Originally posted by chrixx
The 2 second pause on VOB and the recognition of NTFS need to be put to the top of your list. These are huge deal breakers for many potential buyers.

A quick question for users who are playing VOBs. If you are ripping your DVD into one big file with DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor instead of multiple one gig VOBs, I guess this avoids the 2 second pause. Right???

It would, but you couldn't playback from any USB device due to the 2GB file limitation of the FAT file system. You could stream it from any of your PCs or LinkStation/TeraStation.

Originally posted by zonegray
Obviously, Brian knows better than I, but if the LT is a Linux-based device, then NTFS support might not be all that easy; is there a stable read/write Linux NTFS driver yet? It's long been a sore point.

Of course, you could use NTFS on a network drive, and stream over ethernet rather than via USB.

Yeah it shouldn't be too difficult.

While playing a DVD I noticed that audio was not in sync with video. It was annoyingly off track by a half second or so. Also, the background for an interactive DVD menu failed to load and I only saw the icon on a black screen. This only happened once. On another interactive menu page, after clicking one of the selections the cursor sometimes would just move to the bottom of screen and not go into the content. Sometimes it would play the content and sometimes not. Could this be a bug in the DVD itself.

That's not normal, is it just one specific DVD or all of them? I've played several DVDs both home-made with home-made IFOs and store bought ones and I've never seen anything like that. I've also never seen a audio/video tracking problem on DVD playback. Please look into this more, you may even want to consider RMA'ing if it happens on all dvd playback.

It did play ReplayTV MPG files with out problems. Is there way to skip commercials when playing a ReplayTV MPG on a LinkTheater?\

Just fast forward

How can I designate a different directory than My Documents / My Videos, My Music and My Pictures? I store my files on a different drive and different directories. Most of my videos are on a Linux machine. Is there a way to tell LinkTheater to look on a Linux server? Or can I SAMBA share that drive to Windows and have LinkTheater find the network drive?

You will have to use SMB and map a drive to a Windows machine and share it that way (via a Mapped Drive). Also, if you want to add more folders you can browse for another folder (on any drive) and add additional folders via the 'Watch Folder' tab.

Originally posted by fhall1
"Could" is the operative word here....I could - but I don't "want" to. I don't want to have to have my PC on all the time and streaming files over the net just to watch a movie that's ripped to an external disk when I could simply plug the disk directly into the USB port on the LT. With 500G drives around the corner and 1TByte drives coming in 18 months or so, having your entire movie and music library on a removable USB drive would be a "killer" app for the LT...along with replacing my standalone DVD player AND being able to probably disconnect my CD changer from my HT setup. Or getting one for my technophobe parents and not having to set up a PC and network for them...just a USB drive. The LT has tremendous potential....I want it to succeed.

I'll try and push for this NTFS support, I didn't realize that many people used NTFS on USB drives.

Originally posted by eurotrance
Ok, first let me say straight out, I am definitely what you would call an early adopter when it comes to HT equipment. In fact, I retrofitted my 2 story condo 6 years ago to have cat5 wiring in all rooms, and have been streaming video and music in 4 of these rooms ever since (well, for music, video came 2 years ago).

I've tried quite a few products, and so far, as interface goes and codec support, nothing has been able to match my Play@TV, that is, until I started toying with High Def, mainly Transport Streams, WM9... Now I am not a masochist, and keeping buying hard drive storage in the terabytes is not my idea of a cost effective digital media server, which is why I long for an easy way to convert all my TS files in WM9 or Divx HD (haven't tried that yet). I'm afraid we will never see a support for WM9 with 6 channel WMA Pro, since this would require a real time transcoding in AC3 or DTS to be of any real interest, and I doubt Buffalo will be able to pull that out.

That said, I am rather satisfied with the LinkTheater so far, and even more so with the TeraStation. I've been buying NAS storage for about 4 years now, and TeraStation is the first product that got it right as far as price/features ratio goes... Can't wait to see the Pcast server for it, as that was the main selling point for me, since I already have about 2 terabytes of storage available. My main concern with the Pcast is user interface. I hope it will be as good looking as the PC server interface, but again, I'm not holding my breath... And for those asking about the noise factor, let's just say the TeraStation is amazingly silent compared to any other NAS on the market. My hats off to Buffalo for this product. One thing that needs to be addressed though : the backup software for PC is definitely not working. And when I say not working, I mean totally useless, as it won't backup jack, and some stuff is still in japanese or something...

Back to the LinkTheater. Way better than the IO-Data Avel product. I just returned the Avel, which is the most unfinished product I ever came across. Keep in mind that today, what makes most of the difference between 2 similar products such as these, is the software. And on that front, IO-Data can go back and rewrite it, and quick. It is unbelievable to me that every firmware update on the IO-Data actually breaks more things than it fixes. And being a foreigner myself, it is unbelievable to me that a company that actually pretends to sell anything good in an english speaking country can't have employees that actually speak better english. I think some people forgive way too much when it comes to the electronics business, and since I used to be in that business, I wish at that time the mentality would have been the same, as it would certainly had made my life much easier.

Mind you, the LinkTheater has its quirks, and I, for one, don't even care about what Brian says has been fixed in the next update. What I would like fixed is this :

- PAL DVD playback is god awfull, unwatchable unless you have Parkinsons
- when is somebody ever going to do gapless MP3 playback ? Audiotron is the only product that got that right with perfect gapless MP3 playback. I'm a pro DJ, and 50% of my CD collection and my own mixes can't be played right because of that short pause between tracks. Not even SonosNET does it, what's up with that ?
- speaking of music, there is a glitch at about 2 seconds in every track played
- some video files can't play, even though they should be since the Sigma chip used supports them, I have 3 WM9 files that don't play the picture correctly, and quite a few Divx and Xvid also, but then again, I've been compressing 800 DVDs in the last 4 years, so multiple codecs have been used...

Also, count me in for a USB tuner, as long as it's an OTA DTV one. That would be just killer as it would allow me to stream live OTA TV to all rooms (I don't have cable and never will, way too much of a rip-off) and use the TeraStation as a PVR...

I'm sure I am forgetting a few things, but I'm not about to rewrite War & Peace either, so I'll leave chapter 2 for another post...

Thierry

Well we do have a working beta WMA 9 Pro codec, I haven't tested a 6 channel, 5.1 stream on it, but I'll try and get around to that.

I'll take a look at the PAL DVD playback. I haven't had a WMV 9 not work for me and the only xvid/divx that don't play are GMC encoded which is not even required for DivX certification. I've only found one GMC encoded file in my 7+ years of using DivX.

Originally posted by visionmind
I apologize if this is a repeat question, but...

what exactly is the d4 used for? I know it's the japanese (analogue?) interface, but how is it used here (in the US)? The LinkTheater already has component output, so is there an adapter for the d4?
if so what does it convert to? and does if it doesn't come with an adapter where could one purchase it? (where would we purchase one anyway?)

thanks for your support.

visionmind

D4 is very similar to component video, you can buy an adapter online but it really serves no purpose in the states. Search for info on D4 in google and you should be able to figure it out.

Originally posted by Toastermax
Has anyone confirmed this yet?? Can this device play ripped and stored dvds and stream them without issue??

This will be my primary purpose, if this works then i am definetly in.
It plays VOBs fine, but there's a 2 second pause between VOB playback. I'm pushing our engineers hard to make for true network VOB playback. In the meantime, you can rip to a single large VOB file and you'd be fine.

Originally posted by Stevenage
I just got mine yesterday. I am almost completely satisfied, having trouble with the digital coax out. I hope it is just my set up.

I use DVDClone to rip my movies to VOB and the player plays them very well! It cues them up very fast and they look great. As for sound, the analog stereo out is good and in sync. Hopefully I will be able to report on digital sound soon.

I got the player to play torrents of TV shows I missed. And so far it has played everything I have thrown at it. And to top it off the picture is excellent.

I use optical on mine and don't have any sound issues or sync issues. Are you only seeing it on VOBs or on the torrent tv files as well?

Originally posted by chrixx
Does anyone know if you can watch Live television programs through this unit if your PC has a tv tuner?

Only if the PC rips to a streamable format. The LinkTheater can play partial files, in so I mean:

If you take a 1 GB WMV and start copying it to your PC, you can start playing the WMV from LinkTheater long before the file has completed copying and it will stream the entire movie.

Brian,

I can upload anything anywhere you tell me if you want to see these WM9 that don't play properly, as well as these Divx/Xvid encodes (I'll check with Gspot but I don't believe any of them use Qpel or GMC). I also have one .ts file with AC3 sound that won't play the sound (video is flawless though).

Also, you avoided the gapless MP3 playback question... I must be the only person on this planet to listen to Live ripped CDs and Mixed compilations then... Re-ripping everything in one big file is not an option.

As for the NTFS on USB, of course people use it. With drive sizes now in the 100's of gigabytes and very affordable, people don't use them to store just pictures... One of the only uses in a consumer market for that much storage is video, and hi-def video automatically requires file sizes higher than 2Gb (unless you split videos in multiple smaller files, which brings back the pause problem between consecutive files).

What you're saying about the streaming of an open file is very interesting. I wonder if there would be a way to stream live tv with the upcoming slingbox (if that ever comes out), which would definitely be great for me... I'm pretty sure it would require a more full blown browser though, which I think is not one of your priorities.

Anyway, I love your product and would be happy to help in making it better, so let me know if you want me to upload anything for you to test. Like I said, I have ripped about 800 DVDs over the last 4 years, so I definitely have a lot of different codec variations available...

Thierry

Originally posted by eurotrance
Brian,

I can upload anything anywhere you tell me if you want to see these WM9 that don't play properly, as well as these Divx/Xvid encodes (I'll check with Gspot but I don't believe any of them use Qpel or GMC). I also have one .ts file with AC3 sound that won't play the sound (video is flawless though).

Also, you avoided the gapless MP3 playback question... I must be the only person on this planet to listen to Live ripped CDs and Mixed compilations then... Re-ripping everything in one big file is not an option.

As for the NTFS on USB, of course people use it. With drive sizes now in the 100's of gigabytes and very affordable, people don't use them to store just pictures... One of the only uses in a consumer market for that much storage is video, and hi-def video automatically requires file sizes higher than 2Gb (unless you split videos in multiple smaller files, which brings back the pause problem between consecutive files).

What you're saying about the streaming of an open file is very interesting. I wonder if there would be a way to stream live tv with the upcoming slingbox (if that ever comes out), which would definitely be great for me... I'm pretty sure it would require a more full blown browser though, which I think is not one of your priorities.

Anyway, I love your product and would be happy to help in making it better, so let me know if you want me to upload anything for you to test. Like I said, I have ripped about 800 DVDs over the last 4 years, so I definitely have a lot of different codec variations available...

Thierry

PM sent with FTP information. Will check on the gapless playback.

Just bought my Link station. Love the up conversion of the DVDS. Having a couple of issue that maybe someone else has solved.

1) Can't see to get the device to go out on the Internet for browsing, net radio, or to see if firmware is available. I'm thinking it is a PC setting that I need to change. Any thoughts.

2) Can't see to pull up pictures or music on a NAS device. Has anyone been successful in seeing pictures or music for a Networked Storage device? I thought I saw somewhere someone was have the same issue.

3) I think one of the post on this thread said that the device will work with WMA lossless. I can't see to get that to work. Is there something special I need to do?

4) Anyone know when the next firmware upgrade is coming.


Thanks for your help!

Originally posted by eurotrance
Brian,

As for the NTFS on USB, of course people use it. With drive sizes now in the 100's of gigabytes and very affordable, people don't use them to store just pictures... One of the only uses in a consumer market for that much storage is video, and hi-def video automatically requires file sizes higher than 2Gb (unless you split videos in multiple smaller files, which brings back the pause problem between consecutive files).

Thierry

eurotrance said just what I was going to in my reply. If all you owned were USB flash drives, NTFS formatting wouldn't make much difference, but multi-hundred Gig hard drives almost dictate that you use NTFS...not only for filesize issues, but it's also more stable/reliable and secure than FAT.

I'll also second the request for "gapless" MP3 playback. I own a lot of live CDs...I prefer listening to recordings of a band performing their stuff live rather than the studio. Having gaps ruins the experience...I was tearing my hair out when I first installed iTunes and hadn't found the right settings to eliminate the slight pause between songs

I got an email from Buffalo today regarding PAL, the firmware to enable this is being developed and will be available soon. So no surprise that PAL content wouldn't play properly for eurotrance.

Has anyone done a side-by-side comparison with the IOData Linkplayer2?

Thanks

1) Can't see to get the device to go out on the Internet for browsing, net radio, or to see if firmware is available. I'm thinking it is a PC setting that I need to change. Any thoughts.

Try disabling any software firewalls. Please let me know what you end up doing as it'd be important for us to document this issue. It does rely on the PC to get out to the internet. Other things to check are that your LinkTheater is getting the proper gateway and dns information from your router. In the settings, the "IP Address" tab lists all the IP info.

2) Can't see to pull up pictures or music on a NAS device. Has anyone been successful in seeing pictures or music for a Networked Storage device? I thought I saw somewhere someone was have the same issue.

If you're not using a Buffalo LinkStation, then you will have to map a drive on your PC and point the PC software to the mapped drive. It'll stream fine then.

3) I think one of the post on this thread said that the device will work with WMA lossless. I can't see to get that to work. Is there something special I need to do?

WMA 9 lossless is actually WMA 9.1 codec, we currently do not support it but it's planned for support in the near future. Currently, just WMA 9 works, not even WMA 9 Pro. We're beta testing those codecs from Sigma as we speak.

4) Anyone know when the next firmware upgrade is coming.

We have it, we just are finishing our final test report on it, then it will be uploaded to the server and users can update their firmware via the settings page.

Originally posted by fhall1
eurotrance said just what I was going to in my reply. If all you owned were USB flash drives, NTFS formatting wouldn't make much difference, but multi-hundred Gig hard drives almost dictate that you use NTFS...not only for filesize issues, but it's also more stable/reliable and secure than FAT.

I'll also second the request for "gapless" MP3 playback. I own a lot of live CDs...I prefer listening to recordings of a band performing their stuff live rather than the studio. Having gaps ruins the experience...I was tearing my hair out when I first installed iTunes and hadn't found the right settings to eliminate the slight pause between songs

Ok, will look into gapless.

At this point, we've put NTFS USB Drive support pretty much at the top of the list of priorities. I don't think I need anymore recommendations. We didn't think it would be a huge issue for most as USB drives come formatted as FAT32 anyhow. Regardless, we see the demand for it from our customers and we will rectify it. Thanks!!!

Originally posted by bluesheep
I got an email from Buffalo today regarding PAL, the firmware to enable this is being developed and will be available soon. So no surprise that PAL content wouldn't play properly for eurotrance.

We only do US testing of NTSC here, so that's why I know nothing about how PAL works. However, we will ship this product in our Europe market, so I'm sure PAL will work by time they ship.

Our Europe site has a page spec'd up for LinkTheater but it still says Coming Soon. Once they release it, it will likely support PAL and then the US market firmware can easily incorporate PAL support:
http://www.buffalotech.co.uk/webcontent/products/wireless/index.php?cat=LTH&itemID=pc-p3lwg-dvd

Originally posted by BrianV
Only if the PC rips to a streamable format. The LinkTheater can play partial files, in so I mean:

If you take a 1 GB WMV and start copying it to your PC, you can start playing the WMV from LinkTheater long before the file has completed copying and it will stream the entire movie.

I am pretty new to this idea so bear with me. If you can rip to a streamable format and start playing before the file has completed the copy, would you still be able to pause, stop, rewind, etc?

Originally posted by chrixx
I am pretty new to this idea so bear with me. If you can rip to a streamable format and start playing before the file has completed the copy, would you still be able to pause, stop, rewind, etc?

I'll test it this weekend, but I don't see why not. You just wouldn't be able to fast forward past where the video/file is still being written.

Lupe,

I was having the same network problem with both the IOData and Buffalo units until I started to use static IPs on them (manual config). For some reason, they were not getting a correct IP from my Dlink router with DHCP, and even the subnet was wrong, but they were getting the ISP DNS addresses right, so go figure. These are the first network units that I've come across that couldn't get a proper DHCP identification. Not a big deal to me as I rather be with a static IP to configure my firewalls anyway.

Hope this helps...


Thierry

Brian,

I'm the one that had the trouble with the audio syncing while playing a DVD a couple of days ago. As requested, I played two other DVDs and the audio seemed fine. I'll keep trying other DVDs and let you know if I find any more audio syncing issues.

As for the black screen on menus this is sort of related: I did run across another black screen on another DVD while trying to advance through the previews. It just sat there on a black screen until I turned off the power. No keys on remote worked to clear it except for the power button. This happened twice at the same spot.

Another glitchy thing is annoying me. After using fast-forward on the remote sometimes play will not get back to playing at regular speed. Then it overshoots and I have to rewind. Is this a bug in the current firmware? Are other people experiencing FF and then play doesn't respond?

And here is a suggestion for future improvements: I really love the 30 second forward skip and reverse skip on the ReplayTV 5500 series remote. It is really great at skipping past commercials or other stuff. Is that something you can implement and have a remote control key skip forward and reverse by a configurable amount like 30 secs or 15 secs?

BTW, playback of ReplayTV MPGs is awesome and the remote responds very fast on my wired 100Mb LAN.

Originally posted by BrianV
I'll test it this weekend, but I don't see why not. You just wouldn't be able to fast forward past where the video/file is still being written.

I was just researching PCI HD cards and noticed that the MyHD 130 records SD in .avi (which is supported by LinkTheater). However, HD is recorded as .ts. Any idea when this will be supported?

Originally posted by Barley
Brian,

I'm the one that had the trouble with the audio syncing while playing a DVD a couple of days ago. As requested, I played two other DVDs and the audio seemed fine. I'll keep trying other DVDs and let you know if I find any more audio syncing issues.

As for the black screen on menus this is sort of related: I did run across another black screen on another DVD while trying to advance through the previews. It just sat there on a black screen until I turned off the power. No keys on remote worked to clear it except for the power button. This happened twice at the same spot.

Another glitchy thing is annoying me. After using fast-forward on the remote sometimes play will not get back to playing at regular speed. Then it overshoots and I have to rewind. Is this a bug in the current firmware? Are other people experiencing FF and then play doesn't respond?

And here is a suggestion for future improvements: I really love the 30 second forward skip and reverse skip on the ReplayTV 5500 series remote. It is really great at skipping past commercials or other stuff. Is that something you can implement and have a remote control key skip forward and reverse by a configurable amount like 30 secs or 15 secs?

BTW, playback of ReplayTV MPGs is awesome and the remote responds very fast on my wired 100Mb LAN.
When you run into a DVD playback problem on a store-bought DVD let me know which one and I'll buy it and if it's reproducable I'll send it to our engineers in Japan to debug.

The 30 second is a great thing, I don't know if it'll ever make it in this version due to the inability to create a new remote and no real proper button but maybe we'll think of something.

As far as the FF problems, try using the pause button to stop fast forward or rewind and then press play. We are looking into the problem but PAUSE seems to work in the meantime.

If anyone has a short .ts file they can upload to my FTP, please PM me and I'll give you the ftp info. This way I can test it and send it to our engineers to work on support for it.

Or you can email me at brian@buffalotech.com

Originally posted by BrianV
The 30 second is a great thing, I don't know if it'll ever make it in this version due to the inability to create a new remote and no real proper button but maybe we'll think of something. Here's how it works with MyHD playback:

There are 2 user defineable fields one for FF and the other REW where you enter the number of seconds to FF or REW. I use 30 for FF and 8 for REW to work like the Tivo skip function.

FF/REW : When playing a file, use remote control number keys to control Multiple FF/REW.

remote number keys

1(REW*1sec) 2(FF*1sec) 3(FF*2sec)

4(REW*2sec) 5(FF*4sec) 6(FF*8sec)

For example if FF is set as 30 sec, pressing #5 will move the file to 120 sec after. I often use the "6" button to skip 4 minutes worth of commercials.

Jay

Originally posted by BrianV
The 30 second is a great thing, I don't know if it'll ever make it in this version due to the inability to create a new remote and no real proper button but maybe we'll think of something.

Brian, I noticed that the right and left arrows on the directional pad control a jump function during video playback. But the up and down arrows on that pad seem to be available.

Brian, thanks for taking the time to respond! I'll try your suggestions. I'm impressed your organization is taking the time to get answer these questions!

Originally posted by PeterS
Has anyone done a side-by-side comparison with the IOData Linkplayer2?

Thanks

Yes, I would like to know this as well.

Specifically:

1) Is the HD 720p and 1080i component output better (the LinkPlayer only has the D4 for component out), I'm not talking about upconverting, I'm talking about with DivXHD and WMVHD material?

2) Does it have DRM support (I know it doesn't have Windows Media Pro Audio support, just like the LinkPlayer)?

3) Does it have the nutty overscan problems the LinkPlayer has? The LinkPlayer has the most overscan of any device I've ever seen.

Ben

Lupe,

I was the one trying to help you with your network problems, not Brian, just FYI, and in case these suggestions don't work, get mad at me, not Buffalo.


Guys,

Don't worry about .ts support, it's there out of the box, no need to rename or anything. In fact, it's superb, except for the fact that you can't forward or rewind and except for 1 of my .ts files that plays with no sound.


Brian,

I am preparing quite a few samples for you, including that .ts I mention above, but there's no point in uploading things that are already supported properly (well except for the navigation in .ts case...).


Thierry

Does anyone have any screenshots? I've been looking around, but can't really see any that are big enough to see what it really looks like.

This is meant for Brian hoping we can get the support for seamless network DVD file playback.

I just tried a "play all" of the VOB files of "The Whole Ten Yards" and realized that simply stitching the VOB file together is not always good enough to play the whole movie without the 2-second gap.

What happened was that the Audio track numbers on these VOB files are "scrambled": the English channel is on "Audio 2" in the VTS_01_1.VOB and is on "Audio 3" in the VTS_01_2.VOB, and then back on "Audio 2" in the VTS_01_3.VOB. And the Linktheater always defaults to "Audio 1" for each new VOB file in the "play all" sequence.

So the correct way to resolve this would be to support the "REAL" IFO playback so that all the tracking info in the IFO file is properly interpreted. Since all this is already perfectly supported for the DVD disc playback, I'd imagine it would not be too difficult to transplant the feature to network directory playback.

Sorry about not giving credit where credit is due. I was able to get the INTERNET working. I had the wrong DNS and gateway settings on the device. Able to get MP3 music working from an NAS device by mapping a drive to the PC. Pictures (Jpegs) and video (AVI's) still not working. The pictures get thumbnails and when you select a picture to view the screen turns white.

I'll keep trying. These issues seem to be the nature of the beast of these products. Overall I'm very satisfied on what the device is doing and its potential.

Thanks.

Originally posted by BrianV

Originally posted by chrixx
... If you can rip to a streamable format and start playing before the file has completed the copy, would you still be able to pause, stop, rewind, etc?

I'll test it this weekend, but I don't see why not. You just wouldn't be able to fast forward past where the video/file is still being written.

Does anyone have experience using a LinkTheater with an ATI HDTV Wonder? Specifically, can you watch live HDTV via the LinkTheater? I can use the ATI software to write a native MPEG file (OTA HDTV) while recording live TV. But Windows Media Player and VLC won't play the file until you stop recording (file in use by another application). Based on this, I'm not hopeful that the LinkTheater could play the file while it was recording either. But perhaps it handles files differently since it's not Windows-based...

quote:Originally posted by Stevenage
I just got mine yesterday. I am almost completely satisfied, having trouble with the digital coax out. I hope it is just my set up.

I use DVDClone to rip my movies to VOB and the player plays them very well! It cues them up very fast and they look great. As for sound, the analog stereo out is good and in sync. Hopefully I will be able to report on digital sound soon.

I got the player to play torrents of TV shows I missed. And so far it has played everything I have thrown at it. And to top it off the picture is excellent.

Originally posted by BrianV
I use optical on mine and don't have any sound issues or sync issues. Are you only seeing it on VOBs or on the torrent tv files as well?

On non 5.1 encoded files I get sound fine through the coax digital out. DVDs and DVDs ripped to my hard, on my pc, do not work through the digital out. I have tried optical and coax. My receiver lights up and says it is receiving signal, but no sound. And I know my receiver is working. I hope it is just something I am over looking.

Thanks

Brian,

Just wanted you to know that Buffalo just gained a customer, in no small part because of your efforts here. I hope they're watching and see this. I work for a game company so I know how daunting it can be to deal with the public (especially on an enthusiast forum like this), so I really appreciate what you're doing here.

I own a Gateway connected DVD and it's okay for what I use it for, but the support is horrendous and numerous emails I sent both to Gateway and Digital5, inquiring about enhancements, suggestions, and bugfixes went completely unanswered. Even though my Gateway player works fine, I'm going to order a LinkTheater this week to replace my Gateway unit.

Can anyone tell me how MP3 playback is navigated? One major pet peeve I have with my Gateway unit is that songs can only be organized by album, artist, or genre, but not suborganized -- so for example, I can't select Van Halen, then get a list of all my Van Halen albums and drill down, I either get a list of all songs under Van Halen, or I have to go to Albums and search through every album in my database to find "Women and Children First".

Big props on the SDK. Certainly the hobbyist market isn't as huge as the "just give me a box with an easy button" market, but I think it can only help to have a thriving community of people releasing cool hacks and extending the device.

Dan

While I'm at it, can anybody post decent images of the remote and interface?

1) Is the HD 720p and 1080i component output better (the LinkPlayer only has the D4 for component out), I'm not talking about upconverting, I'm talking about with DivXHD and WMVHD material?

I haven't used D4 and wouldn't expect any US customer to use it. I haven't seen a LinkPlayer in action but I'm very impressed with the visual quality of the LinkTheater.

2) Does it have DRM support (I know it doesn't have Windows Media Pro Audio support, just like the LinkPlayer)?

Yes via Windows Media Connect. The firmware update that will likely be posted this week will add that support.]

3) Does it have the nutty overscan problems the LinkPlayer has? The LinkPlayer has the most overscan of any device I've ever seen.

Haven't seen the LinkPlayer but I don't think it does.

Originally posted by eurotrance
Lupe,

I was the one trying to help you with your network problems, not Brian, just FYI, and in case these suggestions don't work, get mad at me, not Buffalo.


Guys,

Don't worry about .ts support, it's there out of the box, no need to rename or anything. In fact, it's superb, except for the fact that you can't forward or rewind and except for 1 of my .ts files that plays with no sound.


Brian,

I am preparing quite a few samples for you, including that .ts I mention above, but there's no point in uploading things that are already supported properly (well except for the navigation in .ts case...).


Thierry

Upload a .ts so I can look into the navigation thing. Thanks!

Originally posted by Lupe
Sorry about not giving credit where credit is due. I was able to get the INTERNET working. I had the wrong DNS and gateway settings on the device. Able to get MP3 music working from an NAS device by mapping a drive to the PC. Pictures (Jpegs) and video (AVI's) still not working. The pictures get thumbnails and when you select a picture to view the screen turns white.

I'll keep trying. These issues seem to be the nature of the beast of these products. Overall I'm very satisfied on what the device is doing and its potential.

Thanks.
I haven't seen this problem, I use mapped drives all the time. Can you try another NAS, another PC, etc?

Originally posted by Stevenage
quote:Originally posted by Stevenage
I just got mine yesterday. I am almost completely satisfied, having trouble with the digital coax out. I hope it is just my set up.

I use DVDClone to rip my movies to VOB and the player plays them very well! It cues them up very fast and they look great. As for sound, the analog stereo out is good and in sync. Hopefully I will be able to report on digital sound soon.

I got the player to play torrents of TV shows I missed. And so far it has played everything I have thrown at it. And to top it off the picture is excellent.



On non 5.1 encoded files I get sound fine through the coax digital out. DVDs and DVDs ripped to my hard, on my pc, do not work through the digital out. I have tried optical and coax. My receiver lights up and says it is receiving signal, but no sound. And I know my receiver is working. I hope it is just something I am over looking.

Thanks

Would you be willing to upload a file that you're seeing this problem with. If so PM me for ftp info.

I talked to the engineers over the weekend and now have some questions for you guys:

1) Can anyone with absolute certainty state that the LinkPlayer does support true IFO playback over the network? According to our engineers it doesn't and it'd take some time to develop thatg support.

2) Can anyone point me to a player with a USB port that works with NTFS? Apparently there's some licensing required with Microsoft to support NTFS. Our engineers know of no similar players that support NTFS.

I'm not surprsed that there are issues with NTFS support. I don't iknow how true the licensing issue is, but in the Linux world, the only mature NTFS driver is read-only. That might be useful, I dunno.

Another option might be to support ext3; this would remove the file-size limts and add a little stability; I'm pretty sure there's a driver available so people could also mount the drive to XP/NT/Win2K systems.

zongray:

I forgot to mention that, I think EXT3 works now, but if it doesn't we could definitely add that. The only problem is people can't easily use their Windows box to write to it. You could use a TeraStation or LinkStation to write to it, as their native file format is EXT3. I'd be really interested in seeing if there's a EXT3 mountable driver/software for Windows. I'll look into it as time clears up today.

Thanks for reminiding me of that! PS - the read-only driver would work fine in our case since our device really has no interface to write or change on the drive anyhow.

Looks like the ext3 drivers for Windows are also read-only. Given that choice, read-only NTFS would probably be preferable, if it can work.

Y'know what would be a neat feature? If you could build some calibration patterns into firmware.

Originally posted by BrianV
I talked to the engineers over the weekend and now have some questions for you guys:

1) Can anyone with absolute certainty state that the LinkPlayer does support true IFO playback over the network? According to our engineers it doesn't and it'd take some time to develop thatg support.



1- IODATA doesn't do IFO and I personally believe their DVD license could restrict them (and maybe any other licensed player) from network IFO playback. (Kiss, Neuston, Pinnacle, Momitsu have had these requests for years and none of them have it either).

However, third parties who have reverse engineered IFO aren't so restricted, so at least one third party server project is letting the linkplayer community play VIDEO_TS directories of VOBS and IFOs with limited DVD IFO support.

That server project is using the open source project called "libdvdread" which allows decomposing an IFO to identify each title and chapter in the collection. The server software itself is going the extra step to remove the pause between vobs so you can play the whole dvd with no gaps or you can use chap> and chap< to get to a chapter and then play gapless from that point on. There are similar open source server projects going on for the existing showcenter and the existing Kiss players so this is probably the quickest way to get something like that for the LinkTheatre.

Originally posted by Paul_PDX
1- IODATA doesn't do IFO and I personally believe their DVD license could restrict them (and maybe any other licensed player) from network IFO playback. (Kiss, Neuston, Pinnacle, Momitsu have had these requests for years and none of them have it either).

However, third parties who have reverse engineered IFO aren't so restricted, so at least one third party server project is letting the linkplayer community play VIDEO_TS directories of VOBS and IFOs with limited DVD IFO support.

That server project is using the open source project called "libdvdread" which allows decomposing an IFO to identify each title and chapter in the collection. The server software itself is going the extra step to remove the pause between vobs so you can play the whole dvd with no gaps or you can use chap> and chap< to get to a chapter and then play gapless from that point on. There are similar open source server projects going on for the existing showcenter and the existing Kiss players so this is probably the quickest way to get something like that for the LinkTheatre.

Thanks a lot for the informative post. I'll see what I can get out of our engineers regarding this.

Originally posted by BrianV
I talked to the engineers over the weekend and now have some questions for you guys:

2) Can anyone point me to a player with a USB port that works with NTFS? Apparently there's some licensing required with Microsoft to support NTFS. Our engineers know of no similar players that support NTFS.

Brian,

I don't know of any...that's what would make the LT stand out in the crowd...as discussed above, read-only NTFS would be sufficient (if it does exist) since I see no need for the LT to ever have to write to the external device. If you guys can fgure out how to properly play ripped DVDs from a USB-attached hard drive (properly means no gaps/pauses, audio/video sync problems, functional menus, FF and REW work, etc) it would be KILLER! Just this week Circuit City has a 250G drive for $79 after rebate. Throw that in a $35 ext USB case and for a little over a hundred bucks you have 30 or so DVD movies - plus your entire music collection at your disposal. No network connection needed, no need for your PC running all the time, no pile of CD and DVD cases cluttering up the area.

Of course that leads to a future model request...it would make for a "cleaner" HT setup if the LT had another USB port on the back panel. the front would be used mainly for "flash" memory devices that you want to show pictures from and would be removed when done. The rear panel USB port would be for a more "long term" connection to a large hard drive and you wouldn't see an ugly USB cable snaked around the unit.

Might as well dream big!

Can you use a USB 2.0 hub on the LinkTheater to connect multiple external USB drives? Or a USB Drive and a CF card reader? Has anyone tried it yet?

Brian, can you display more characters for the directory listings? Or if they don't fit could you scroll the highlighted one? My directory of video folder names gets cut off and makes it difficult to figure them out since they start with mostly the same title: Friends 005 The One with the...

Can you use a USB 2.0 hub on the LinkTheater to connect multiple external USB drives? Or a USB Drive and a CF card reader? Has anyone tried it yet?

No

Brian, can you display more characters for the directory listings? Or if they don't fit could you scroll the highlighted one? My directory of video folder names gets cut off and makes it difficult to figure them out since they start with mostly the same title: Friends 005 The One with the...

Is this when browsing on a USB drive, PC software, or LinkStation?

eurotrance

I had no problem playing that WMV9 Transporter clip you uploaded to me. Ironically I couldn't play it with Windows Media 10 on my XP machine but LinkTheater would play it.

I do have a slightly newer firmware on my LT though, the one that'll be released this week, but I don't think that has anything to do with it.

I know there will be licensing issues, but what is the probability to support DVR-MS. If so, would it be able to run with Windows Media Center Edition?

Brian, to answer your question: I noticed the truncated directory text while I was viewing the hard drive connected via USB. I was in the video section of the LinkTheater interface.

I'm unclear on your response regarding use of a USB hub and mulitple drives (or a hub, drive and CF reader). Are you saying "no" that a USB hub isn't supported? Or "no" to trying it? If a USB hub and multiple drives isn't supported, is there a chance that it will be?

Originally posted by Barley
Brian, to answer your question: I noticed the truncated directory text while I was viewing the hard drive connected via USB. I was in the video section of the LinkTheater interface.

I'm unclear on your response regarding use of a USB hub and mulitple drives (or a hub, drive and CF reader). Are you saying "no" that a USB hub isn't supported? Or "no" to trying it? If a USB hub and multiple drives isn't supported, is there a chance that it will be?

I want to recheck the USB hub thing, as my hub was one with optional power and I was using two devices that didn't have a 5v supply, so I'm thinking I need to get the AC adapter for the USB hub or try two powered USB drives.

Give me until tomorrow to figure it out.

Brian,

Those samples will be uploaded today. I'll have a .ts in there but ironically enough, even with 2 terabytes of storage, I still got to juggle around to build these samples, and since 75% of my archived video is on 100 ethernet network, it's taking longer than expected. I'm starting to consider if I shouldn't switch everything to Gigabit, but being a heavy VoiP user, I got to wait for that elusive gigabit VoiP router 'cause my desk is starting to look like Fry's shelves with that many boxes...

I have tried that Transporter wm9 sample I uploaded for you on 3 different XP pro machines with the LinkTheater server application, and it's far from being flawless, are you really sure you don't see pinkish, on and off squares, especially in the background ? The reason you can't play it on the PC is because it's an incomplete file, with the AVI headers missing (it's just like an open file to Windows, whereas LinkTheater can play an already opened file).

Lupe,

What NAS do you use ? If the NAS is too slow, the LinkTheater network module will timeout and give you that white screen. It doesn't do that on MP3s 'cause they require less bandwith and speed, whereas full pictures and especially video require more... Of course I could be wrong, but that's a behavior I noticed with other streamers...


Thierry

Originally posted by eurotrance
starting to consider if I shouldn't switch everything to Gigabit, but being a heavy VoiP user, I got to wait for that elusive gigabit VoiP router 'cause my desk is starting to look like Fry's shelves with that many boxes...


I could probably provide you a Cisco Catalyst 3550G (10/100/1000 with 802.3af power for your phones) or a Cisco 2821 router (FXO/FXS/PRI interfaces to the PSTN and a few 802.3af 10/100 ports and 2 1000BaseT links to the TeraStation and your PC). Either of these should fit on your desk quite nicely! Now, if I could only find a way to add a DivxHD codec into the Cisco 7971 Color IP Phone..... ;)

On a more serious note (not that I am never serious about Cisco IP Telephony!), I am more and more pleased with the LinkTheater everyday. My wife even likes it, which is the first "stamp of approval" on a new tech-gadget I have had from her since I brought home our first toaster oven! Kudos, Buffalo!

Adam

Modix player does support true IFO play. It plays off the internal HD drive, but it doesn't have a network interface.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050106/modix-08.html



Originally posted by Paul_PDX
1- IODATA doesn't do IFO and I personally believe their DVD license could restrict them (and maybe any other licensed player) from network IFO playback. (Kiss, Neuston, Pinnacle, Momitsu have had these requests for years and none of them have it either).

However, third parties who have reverse engineered IFO aren't so restricted, so at least one third party server project is letting the linkplayer community play VIDEO_TS directories of VOBS and IFOs with limited DVD IFO support.

That server project is using the open source project called "libdvdread" which allows decomposing an IFO to identify each title and chapter in the collection. The server software itself is going the extra step to remove the pause between vobs so you can play the whole dvd with no gaps or you can use chap> and chap< to get to a chapter and then play gapless from that point on. There are similar open source server projects going on for the existing showcenter and the existing Kiss players so this is probably the quickest way to get something like that for the LinkTheatre.

Originally posted by Tmd720
Modix player does support true IFO play. It plays off the internal HD drive, but it doesn't have a network interface.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050106/modix-08.html

Modix doesn't play encrypted DVDs so they never had to obtain a DVD consortium licence -- that would be my guess as to how and why they do this.

Originally posted by Paul_PDX
Modix doesn't play encrypted DVDs so they never had to obtain a DVD consortium licence -- that would be my guess as to how and why they do this.

Interesting theroy. If that were the case, I wonder how many people would purchase the LT w/o a DVD player to gain true IFO support.

Drew

Originally posted by BrianV

2) Does it have DRM support (I know it doesn't have Windows Media Pro Audio support, just like the LinkPlayer)?

Yes via Windows Media Connect. The firmware update that will likely be posted this week will add that support.]


Does this mean we should not expect "stand-alone" DRM support from the LinkTheater, either for "on-disc" or for "phone-home" DRM? I primarily want to be able to play store-bought WMVHD DVD's with on-disc DRM, without the aid of a computer.

Also, what about Windows Media Pro Audio support, any idea when and if that is coming? Even if it is just down-mixed to stereo is fine with me, it is better than nothing.

Ben

Do you mean the DVD consortium prohibits the licencee to play non-CSS'd DVDs. If that's the case, playing VOB files would be illegal as well. This is really hard to believe.

I guess that the DVD player codes the manufacturers got are not in source code form so there is no way they can easily transplant the IFO feature to the playback of networked VIDEO_TS directories. If this is the case, "libdvdread" minus DeCSS would be one viable solution. Alternatively, building an ATA interface emulation for the network drive to interacts to the DVD player code the same way as the DVD loader might be even easier.

Originally posted by Paul_PDX
Modix doesn't play encrypted DVDs so they never had to obtain a DVD consortium licence -- that would be my guess as to how and why they do this.

so i guess this means that the LT does not play ripped DVDs just like a true dvd. If the menu selection is gone and the ability to play from specific chapters are non functional, then this wont work for me. It has to have the ability to behave like a real dvd player but play the dvds that i rip onto my external harddrive. And the NTFS read support is a must, all my ripped dvds are stored on an external usb drive.

Originally posted by Paul_PDX
Modix doesn't play encrypted DVDs so they never had to obtain a DVD consortium licence -- that would be my guess as to how and why they do this.

Originally posted by Tmd720
Modix player does support true IFO play. It plays off the internal HD drive, but it doesn't have a network interface.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050106/modix-08.html

Nice find! I need to look into this unit. Not sure what it means that it doesn't play encrypted DVDs? Once they're ripped to the hard drive using DVDdecrypter (or similar) they aren't encrypted any more, so what's the issue (besides the obvious legal one if you don't own the original media)?

also http://tvixusa.com/

no network interface, but it has component out that modix doesn't have.

Originally posted by eurotrance
Brian,

Those samples will be uploaded today. I'll have a .ts in there but ironically enough, even with 2 terabytes of storage, I still got to juggle around to build these samples, and since 75% of my archived video is on 100 ethernet network, it's taking longer than expected. I'm starting to consider if I shouldn't switch everything to Gigabit, but being a heavy VoiP user, I got to wait for that elusive gigabit VoiP router 'cause my desk is starting to look like Fry's shelves with that many boxes...

I have tried that Transporter wm9 sample I uploaded for you on 3 different XP pro machines with the LinkTheater server application, and it's far from being flawless, are you really sure you don't see pinkish, on and off squares, especially in the background ? The reason you can't play it on the PC is because it's an incomplete file, with the AVI headers missing (it's just like an open file to Windows, whereas LinkTheater can play an already opened file).

Lupe,

What NAS do you use ? If the NAS is too slow, the LinkTheater network module will timeout and give you that white screen. It doesn't do that on MP3s 'cause they require less bandwith and speed, whereas full pictures and especially video require more... Of course I could be wrong, but that's a behavior I noticed with other streamers...


Thierry

euro, I did see the blotches but I assumed they were because I testing them on a SD TV. I'll try it again tonight on an HDTV and let you know. If it doesn't work I'll send it to our engineers to troubleshoot.

Originally posted by Tmd720
Modix player does support true IFO play. It plays off the internal HD drive, but it doesn't have a network interface.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050106/modix-08.html

Thanks, I really wish it was a network product as I think there are different rules regarding network playback.

Originally posted by bcbuie
Does this mean we should not expect "stand-alone" DRM support from the LinkTheater, either for "on-disc" or for "phone-home" DRM? I primarily want to be able to play store-bought WMVHD DVD's with on-disc DRM, without the aid of a computer.

Also, what about Windows Media Pro Audio support, any idea when and if that is coming? Even if it is just down-mixed to stereo is fine with me, it is better than nothing.

Ben

Right now, Cardea DRM REQUIRES XP to decode. There are other DRM technologies that will work directly with set-top players to decode protected data, but for right now XP is required. Thus, you'll need Windows Media Connect to play the WMV file. You can stream the file from the DVD though.

Originally posted by Paul_PDX
Modix doesn't play encrypted DVDs so they never had to obtain a DVD consortium licence -- that would be my guess as to how and why they do this. Although not an exact comparison there was a similar issue with the MyHD card DVD playback capability. Here is how I remember the issue:

[list=1]
MIT (the makers of the MyHDcard) bought a DVD consortium licence to play commercial DVDs
Becasue of this they were prohibited from upconverting to 1080i/720p when playing a DVD from the DVD media
They were aparrently able to get around this issue when playing ripped DVDs which are upconverted to HDTV res. and still have full IFO navigation
[/list=1]

So somehow MIT is apparently able to do IFO playback of ripped DVDs and still be in compliance with their DVD license.

Jay

Originally posted by jerndl
...
So somehow MIT is apparently able to do IFO playback of ripped DVDs and still be in compliance with their DVD license.



I have a MYHD MD-120 and it does not play back any encrypted DVDs -- it only playes rips or unencrypted. The DVD license gives a manufacturer a decryption key for theirr player but it legally restricts them on what they can do with the knowledge they get -- I think MIT opted to give the MYHD more flexibility by not having a license...

Well you guys know more about the DVD licensing agreements. I do know for a fact that there is an issue with upconverting over component video. I don't know the whole details on VOB/IFO playback but our lead engineer who knows everything didn't say anything about it (yet), he just said it's an involved task. I'll keep you posted.

On another note, I caught wind of a new firmware (which won't be released for a while because it's in testing), there are some new features that are fairly enticing. For now, I'm still working on getting a firmware update to you guys that fixes a couple navigation issues, adds DRM support, and other minor setting's changes.

Additionally, we are still on-track to release Mac OS X support this month as well as a PC Software update. I will likely also release some info on custom plug-ins and SDKs for creating your own plug-ins.

Originally posted by slocko
also http://tvixusa.com/

no network interface, but it has component out that modix doesn't have.

The Modix has component out, but you need a special "3 to 1" cable. In looking at a number of these similar items, the TVIX has promise...there's also a product that was announced at CeBit called the Rapsody RSH-100 ...Can't find much in English yet about the Rapsody, but from the pictures I found on some web sites it looks like it has standard component video outputs, so no need for the special cable.

Note to Brian....all these boxes claim to be able to do NTFS too!

We're still looking into it, there's some concern of licensing. We can technically do it, that's not hard, we just need to get our ducks in a row and make sure we're implementing it in proper protocol.

Thinking about getting the LT...does it support WMA DRM?

Thanks!

Did you read Brian's post that's three before yours?

Yes...just was not sure if that was WMV DRM or WMA DRM.

Originally posted by BrianV
Right now, Cardea DRM REQUIRES XP to decode. There are other DRM technologies that will work directly with set-top players to decode protected data, but for right now XP is required. Thus, you'll need Windows Media Connect to play the WMV file. You can stream the file from the DVD though.

Ok, that is wanted to hear, at least finally someone confirmed for me what I already suspected, that we won't be playing current "retail" WMVHD DVD's (either on the LinkPlayer or the LinkTheater) without the aid of a computer in some way.

When should we expect the Windows Media Connect compatible firmware? Windows Media Connect is just MS's UPNP implementation correct, just with the added ability to access licenses in the registry to allow DRM pass-through, etc.?

Does Windows Media Connect work in conjunction with other UPNP servers (like Buffalo's), or does it replace it. In other words, I assume we will have to live with Microsoft's interface?

Ben

Brain, can you check this page out and let me know your opinion if this is BS or what:

http://www.lconcept.com/products/products_list.php?catg_id=9

See the player at the bottom. They specifically indicate they are "currently integrating Cardea DRM support".

After finally understanding how this DRM stuff works (thanks in part to your help), I just don't see how Cardea DRM can be implemented without a Windows PC to run licgen.exe (a Windows executable) on the disc. Furthermore, I believe licgen.exe writes a registry entry that includes the key to validate the license, so not only would some sort of Microsoft Windows VM be required but also some way to mimick the Windows registry.

The funny thing is that IO Data keeps saying they will eventually have this problem fixed as well, but I just don't see it.

You are the only one so far who has been up front enough to say "hey, Windows is required", but is there ANY way you can imagine it being implemented? Like I said, the only thing I can think of is a Windows VM of some kind, seems like you would need a lot more memory for that though.

Originally posted by BrianV
You can stream the file from the DVD though.

How, Windows Media Connect doesn't support "sharing" of removable or network drives, including DVD/CD drives. It won't even allow you to make your DVD drive available to Windows Media Connect clients (UPNP clients).

Or is there another way?

Ben

Originally posted by bcbuie
Ok, that is wanted to hear, at least finally someone confirmed for me what I already suspected, that we won't be playing current "retail" WMVHD DVD's (either on the LinkPlayer or the LinkTheater) without the aid of a computer in some way.

When should we expect the Windows Media Connect compatible firmware? Windows Media Connect is just MS's UPNP implementation correct, just with the added ability to access licenses in the registry to allow DRM pass-through, etc.?

Does Windows Media Connect work in conjunction with other UPNP servers (like Buffalo's), or does it replace it. In other words, I assume we will have to live with Microsoft's interface?

Ben

The interface with WMC is pretty cut and dry, it's quite similar to the interface you use when using the USB port.

It works in seperate from our pc software, so we only recommend WMC use when required. Your 'Home / Login' page will have two entries when your PC is running WMC:

1. COMPUTER_NAME (This is the entry for your PC with the PC Software running)
2. COMPUTER_NAME: Windows Media Connect (This is the entry for the same PC with WMC running)

It really isn't that bad.

I'm pushing to get the firmware out by the end of this week. If the WMA uses cardea or janus drm then it will play.

Originally posted by bcbuie
Brain, can you check this page out and let me know your opinion if this is BS or what:

http://www.lconcept.com/products/products_list.php?catg_id=9

See the player at the bottom. They specifically indicate they are "currently integrating Cardea DRM support".

After finally understanding how this DRM stuff works (thanks in part to your help), I just don't see how Cardea DRM can be implemented without a Windows PC to run licgen.exe (a Windows executable) on the disc. Furthermore, I believe licgen.exe writes a registry entry that includes the key to validate the license, so not only would some sort of Microsoft Windows VM be required but also some way to mimick the Windows registry.

The funny thing is that IO Data keeps saying they will eventually have this problem fixed as well, but I just don't see it.

You are the only one so far who has been up front enough to say "hey, Windows is required", but is there ANY way you can imagine it being implemented? Like I said, the only thing I can think of is a Windows VM of some kind, seems like you would need a lot more memory for that though.

Microsoft is working on another type of DRM support to coincide with Janus that will allow set-top players to play DRM stuff without a PC involved. Basically, they will go out to the internet themselves and register/verify with servers. I don't know the current status of this development as I'm not that involved in this stuff, but once it's available I'm sure both IODATA and Buffalo will be working diligently to implement that support. Chances are if the DRM technology takes a long time to come out then it would be something left to implement in a future product.

Originally posted by bcbuie
How, Windows Media Connect doesn't support "sharing" of removable or network drives, including DVD/CD drives. It won't even allow you to make your DVD drive available to Windows Media Connect clients (UPNP clients).

Or is there another way?

Ben

I wasn't aware of that, but you are correct it won't mount any external storage device. I don't happen to own or have access to a WMVHD DVD, but can one copy the WMV file to their computer's hard drive and then play it through Windows Media Player? If so, then that file should be streamable via WMC.

Originally posted by BrianV
I wasn't aware of that, but you are correct it won't mount any external storage device. I don't happen to own or have access to a WMVHD DVD, but can one copy the WMV file to their computer's hard drive and then play it through Windows Media Player? If so, then that file should be streamable via WMC.

After you run licgen you can copy the file to the hard drive and play it for about a week. Then you have to delete the file off the hard-drive, run licgen again (off the DVD), and copy it to the hard drive again.

Fun stuff :)

Ben

Originally posted by BrianV
Microsoft is working on another type of DRM support to coincide with Janus that will allow set-top players to play DRM stuff without a PC involved. Basically, they will go out to the internet themselves and register/verify with servers. I don't know the current status of this development as I'm not that involved in this stuff, but once it's available I'm sure both IODATA and Buffalo will be working diligently to implement that support. Chances are if the DRM technology takes a long time to come out then it would be something left to implement in a future product.

Will this apply to any of the CURRENT DRM-protected content out there, or is this going to require new content encoded with the new DRM scheme?

If the former, will it only apply to "phone-home" DRM (is that what you are calling "Janus").

DRM is the devil :) What a waste of time and money over something that will eventually be cracked by some kid in Eastern Europe. There are WAY too many points of failure in these DRM implementations.

Ben

Originally posted by BrianV
The interface with WMC is pretty cut and dry, it's quite similar to the interface you use when using the USB port.


Brian, make sure the unit knows it is NOT a USB drive though. I assume you have different bitrate limits and/or buffering schemes based on the source of the media (USB vs. network vs. DVD), so it needs to know that the Windows Media Connect Server is not really a USB drive.

This is a problem "another manufacturer" is having with their current beta firmware. Actually shows "USB" on the display when connected to the WMC server :)

Ben

Originally posted by bcbuie
Will this apply to any of the CURRENT DRM-protected content out there, or is this going to require new content encoded with the new DRM scheme?

If the former, will it only apply to "phone-home" DRM (is that what you are calling "Janus").

DRM is the devil :) What a waste of time and money over something that will eventually be cracked by some kid in Eastern Europe. There are WAY too many points of failure in these DRM implementations.

Ben

I'm still trying to figure out if this new DRM will basically be an addition to current DRM schemes or whether it will be all new content.

I agree, DRM is seriously slowing down this technology.

Originally posted by bcbuie
After you run licgen you can copy the file to the hard drive and play it for about a week. Then you have to delete the file off the hard-drive, run licgen again (off the DVD), and copy it to the hard drive again.

Fun stuff :)

Ben

How does the computer/dvd know whether it's on the HD or DVD disc? I wasn't aware WMVHD DVDs even had week long timers on them or anything.

Originally posted by bcbuie
Brian, make sure the unit knows it is NOT a USB drive though. I assume you have different bitrate limits and/or buffering schemes based on the source of the media (USB vs. network vs. DVD), so it needs to know that the Windows Media Connect Server is not really a USB drive.

This is a problem "another manufacturer" is having with their current beta firmware. Actually shows "USB" on the display when connected to the WMC server :)

Ben

It absolutely IS NOT considered USB, and it even looks and behaves differently. I just meant to say it's a lot closer to looking like USB navigation than the PC software's navigation. If you own the prodcut, you'll know that the PC software navigation is much prettier, mainly because the XML/HTML page rendering process is off-loaded to the PC. WMC doesn't do any rendering and the LinkTheater itself doesn't have the processing power to render high-resolution HD displays fast enough.

Ben,

Totally agree with you, DRM is useless and only handicaps people that actually purchase those crippled DRM'ed content products. If people were a bit smarter, they wouldn't even give their hard earned cash to greedy media corporations that still can't swallow the Betamax lost case... Their ultimate dream is for you not to own any content permanently, as the Circuit ****** - Crooked LA Lawfirm fiasco with DIVX showed the all world a few years ago. But people have short memories, I sure don't and don't forgive that kind of greedy behavior, so I haven't even set foot in a Circuit ****** since then...

Reminds me of those morons paying expensive tickets for going to Mr Olympia (Pro Bodybuilding), which is a showcase for steroid freaks, but then complain that "there's too much drugs in Pro Bodybuilding". Then why are you so stupid that you actually finance and support those drug users ?


Rant mode off (for now).

Thierry

Anyone who uploaded content to my FTP server, please PM me with which file you uploaded and the specific problem you were having. I've played them all back and can't keep track of what was wrong with them.

eurotrance, I do see the blockiness you're talking about. You wouldn't be willing to make a new rip for me or upload the entire file. I really need to be able to show that it looks fine in Windows Media Player and not on our player.

Everyone else, please PM me.

Originally posted by BrianV
How does the computer/dvd know whether it's on the HD or DVD disc? I wasn't aware WMVHD DVDs even had week long timers on them or anything.

Typically it is transparent to the user.

You put the DVD in for the first time, and it auto-runs the FBI warning, menus, etc. It then does licgen in the background (you don't see this).

Technically the license is only valid for 1 week. But since it runs licgen every time you pop in the DVD, it is a non-issue for most people.

However, when you run licgen manually and copy the video file to you hard drive, the license will expire (because you aren't running licgen every time you play it if you are playing it through WMP or with other software). Thus, after a week it will stop playing off the hard drive. Then you have to pop the DVD back in and run licgen again.

I'm not 100% sure you actually have to copy the video file off the DVD again, probably not now that I think about it (because the DVD is read-only, so it obviously isn't updating the video file on the DVD). I am 99.99% sure though that you have to run licgen off the DVD, because I think it picks up part of the key from hidden files on the DVD. Otherwise "on-disc" DRM would be pointless.

Here is a link to the licensing properties of the Amazon 720p .wmv file I copied off the Amazon disc after running licgen.exe. It is a wordpad document with a screenshot (bmp) inserted.

http://s28.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1FQ82ML4UE06102IPNS8R620VY

Hope this helps!

Ben

Originally posted by eurotrance
Ben,

Totally agree with you, DRM is useless and only handicaps people that actually purchase those crippled DRM'ed content products.

...

Thierry

The problem is that WMVHD DVD's are the ONLY retail HD content you can buy on DVD, at least in the states.

I'm looking at this from the standpoint of a content creator, potential reseller of these players, and also a home theater designer.

My hope is that I can say to someone, "hey, HD DVD is here now, here are 10 titles already at Best Buy you can play in this nifty new device". Because at the end of the day the average middle-aged home theater person who is craving HD content (who doesn't care about computers) is going to want to know what they can go out and buy to play on this thing. Sure, 10 titles isn't much, but considering the lack of HD content out there it is a welcome addition to most people.

So, for me it is a non-issue, I can play non-DRM WMVHD stuff off the Internet, DivXHD, capture HD M2T's and play those, play WMVHD DVDs with DRM through my HTPC, etc, but that is all greek to the guy who just likes to sit on the couch and watch HD on the big screen. I just want it to work :)

I have the Amazon WMVHD DVD and use it for testing (because it is the newer type of disc with on-disc DRM), and I have to admit it is pretty sweet looking. The implementation through the use of a new Windows XP computer is pretty slick (transparent to the user, nice menus, nice picture, etc). Unfortunately there are very few computers set up 100% correctly to play these discs.

But we are all in agreement that DRM sucks.

bcbuie, thanks for the detailed responses. I need to purchase one of those WMV HD discs for the office so I can follow along.

I'll likely get the Terminator 2 one since that movie rocks anyways.

PS - Who's a moderator here who can correct the spelling of Buffalo in the thread title? It should be spelled right so users can search for this thread for the useful info everyone has posted.

Ben,

You got a point regarding the average Joe, but the thing is, not too many WMHD-DVD will come out on the US market, and no average Joe I know of will be willing to buy a player based on a 10 or even 25 titles availability... Which brings us back to the greedy corps, who could have very well released HD content on dual-layer DVDs with MP4 AVC or WM9 or VP7 codec use, but would rather sell us 2 new incompatible hardware formats, namely HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

So, that said, I see a brilliant future for non DRM'ed converts of enthusiasts like you and me with the use of advanced codecs like WM9, which allow much smaller file sizes than transport streams... WMHD-DVDs, at least in the USA, will stay at the point where they're at now, a very restricted niche format that will never be widely supported by any studio... Spending too much time and resources on supporting a dead medium like DRm'ed WMHD-DVDs doesn't make much business sense in my opinion...


Brian,

Any update on an eventual gapless MP3 playback capability ? This is the only thing that's stopping me of buying more LinkTheaters at this point... (Well, that and the waiting for the promised Terastation PCast)

Thierry

Originally posted by eurotrance
Ben,

You got a point regarding the average Joe, but the thing is, not too many WMHD-DVD will come out on the US market, and no average Joe I know of will be willing to buy a player based on a 10 or even 25 titles availability... Which brings us back to the greedy corps, who could have very well released HD content on dual-layer DVDs with MP4 AVC or WM9 or VP7 codec use, but would rather sell us 2 new incompatible hardware formats, namely HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

So, that said, I see a brilliant future for non DRM'ed converts of enthusiasts like you and me with the use of advanced codecs like WM9, which allow much smaller file sizes than transport streams... WMHD-DVDs, at least in the USA, will stay at the point where they're at now, a very restricted niche format that will never be widely supported by any studio... Spending too much time and resources on supporting a dead medium like DRm'ed WMHD-DVDs doesn't make much business sense in my opinion...


Brian,

Any update on an eventual gapless MP3 playback capability ? This is the only thing that's stopping me of buying more LinkTheaters at this point... (Well, that and the waiting for the promised Terastation PCast)

Thierry

It's been reported as a feature-request; haven't heard anything yet on it.

Originally posted by BrianV
bcbuie, thanks for the detailed responses. I need to purchase one of those WMV HD discs for the office so I can follow along.

I'll likely get the Terminator 2 one since that movie rocks anyways.

Get one of the ones released by Image Entertainment in June 2004. That is the newest batch of them (there were several released at the same time, "Amazon", "Magic of Flight", etc). There is a thread somewhere when they were announced that lists all the titles. Just look for a June 2004 release date.

The reason is they all include the latest DRM scheme, on-disc, and they are actually implemented fairly well (at least with the use of a computer). The older ones (especially T2) have the phone-home type (requires an Internet connection) and everybody has problems with them (even with a computer). I guess you could get both, but it doesn't look like anyone will be releasing new DVDs with the scheme that T2 uses.

Ben

You asked what NAS I have when getting the white screen on pictures. I use a Linksys 120. Makes sense on it being slow. Saving my pennies to buy the Buffalo 1tb NAS.

Hi,
Great information Brian!!! Thanks for all of your time!! Any chance we can maybe get an AVS Group buy on the LT??

Thanks again, and VOB playback without the 2 second delay is I would think the Number 1 everest to climb....

Ciao.....

I've reported all of the bugs reported by AVS users and have received some feedback regarding them. Hopefully in the next week or two I'll have a better idea of what can and can't be fixed and in what time frames.

I think the biggest issues right now are:
NTFS USB Support
VOB/IFO Playback

I'm playing with some new software and will likely release a new version late next week. We will be releasing Mac OS X, Linux, and new PC Software as well as custom plug-in options. I may release it to some of you prior to it being posted on the web page, as it may take a while to make documentation changes.

Originally posted by qrazy
Great information Brian!!! Thanks for all of your time!! Any chance we can maybe get an AVS Group buy on the LT??


I'll second the big thank you to Brian! The LinkTheater seems to finally have everything I'm looking for in a media server.

I'd also be very interested in a group buy!

- Peter

I find that in Photos, "actual size" does the same as "fit to screen". Small photos are enlarged, etc. They are not actual size.

This is a great unit overall!

Originally posted by dennismullen
I find that in Photos, "actual size" does the same as "full screen". Small photos are enlarged, etc. They are not actual size.

This is a great unit overall!

Actual Size = Picture is shown in actual size, if picture is small then it will appear small on screen. If the picture is huge then it will require scrolling to see it all.

Full Screen = Stretch/expand to use all of the screen real-estate. If you take vertical pictures then people will become extremely fat (wide)

Fit To Screen = Use as much screen real-estate as possible without messing with the aspect ratio.

I actually have never tried actual size, but I'll give it a try this weekend and verify your findings. I'll see if it's firmware related or pc software related.

Thanks

Thanks Brian

Its great to have you on this forum to help us fit the features to our needs.

Wish list: Slide show sort by (name +or-), (size +or-), (type +or-), (date +or-).

dennis, I'll add those features to our request list.

Also, for everyone else, I have an update on NTFS support.

I have verified that for us to support NTFS we need an agreement/approval from Microsoft that could include licensing fees. We're not against paying a licensing fee for NTFS support, but currently we're trying to determine the avenue and processes involved in getting this ball rolling. Hopefully we'll be able to get this worked out.

Along with the sort feature would go the ability to select a range of files.
The closer to ACDSee Classic the better.

I can't remember if this was asked, but here goes. When you navigate to play videos and there is a picture associated with the folder on the PC (not sure what this is called), does the picture show up on screen through the LT? I have two small children who would love to be able to associate the movie with a picture (they are too young to read at this point ;-)

Brian.....Thanks for everything you have been doing on the forum. I am going to be ordering an LT on Monday.

Originally posted by BrianV
dennis, I'll add those features to our request list.

Also, for everyone else, I have an update on NTFS support.

I have verified that for us to support NTFS we need an agreement/approval from Microsoft that could include licensing fees. We're not against paying a licensing fee for NTFS support, but currently we're trying to determine the avenue and processes involved in getting this ball rolling. Hopefully we'll be able to get this worked out.

Interesting...I wonder if the Korean mfgrs of the Modis and Tvix boxes have paid any licensing fees to Microsoft or not...

Anyway, I personally would think it'd be worth it to pay the fee even if it ends up adding $5 or $10 per unit to the price of the LT.

Thanks for the update Brian

Originally posted by chrixx
I can't remember if this was asked, but here goes. When you navigate to play videos and there is a picture associated with the folder on the PC (not sure what this is called), does the picture show up on screen through the LT? I have two small children who would love to be able to associate the movie with a picture (they are too young to read at this point ;-)

Brian.....Thanks for everything you have been doing on the forum. I am going to be ordering an LT on Monday.

I'll have to check on this, I know that when you view folders that have images inside, it puts a small thumbnail picture of the first image in the folder on the folder.

I'll report back sometime this weekend.

Originally posted by fhall1
Interesting...I wonder if the Korean mfgrs of the Modis and Tvix boxes have paid any licensing fees to Microsoft or not...

Anyway, I personally would think it'd be worth it to pay the fee even if it ends up adding $5 or $10 per unit to the price of the LT.

Thanks for the update Brian

There's A LOT more involved then just the fee, and $5-$10 is SKY-HIGH fee and honestly the ROI would be negative if it was that high, but based on the fact that Microsoft charges 25 cents for the FAT license, I don't think it'll be that high.

Regardless, this is will likely be a lengthy process due to the size of Microsoft.

Please provide me links of any player that plays NTFS file formats back.

Originally posted by BrianV
There's A LOT more involved then just the fee, and $5-$10 is SKY-HIGH fee and honestly the ROI would be negative if it was that high, but based on the fact that Microsoft charges 25 cents for the FAT license, I don't think it'll be that high.

Regardless, this is will likely be a lengthy process due to the size of Microsoft.

Please provide me links of any player that plays NTFS file formats back.

I had no idea what the fee would be, but that's what I thought it'd be worth to me (the end user) as an increase in the retail price per box to cover the fee....if it's much less, so much the better.

A couple of products that claim (I don't own them so can't verify) to do NTFS are at:
http://www.tvixusa.com and http://www.cooldrives.com/hdmohdpousb2.html (http://www.cooldrives.com/hdmohdpousb2.html ) but you may have to go into their FAQs or forums to see where they say that they support NTFS...I've been looking at so many of these boxes lately they're starting to blur together...

Originally posted by BrianV
PS - Who's a moderator here who can correct the spelling of Buffalo in the thread title? It should be spelled right so users can search for this thread for the useful info everyone has posted.

Brian....in case you never got an answer....I don't know how often he reads the forum, but on the first page (where all the threads are listed) in teh upper left corner it says "(Moderated by: David Bott)" and his name is a link with a lot of info about him, like where you can send him email.

Also, within the thread, each mesage has a link "Report this post to a moderator"

Originally posted by fhall1
I had no idea what the fee would be, but that's what I thought it'd be worth to me (the end user) as an increase in the retail price per box to cover the fee....if it's much less, so much the better.

A couple of products that claim (I don't own them so can't verify) to do NTFS are at:
http://www.tvixusa.com and http://www.cooldrives.com/hdmohdpousb2.html (http://www.cooldrives.com/hdmohdpousb2.html ) but you may have to go into their FAQs or forums to see where they say that they support NTFS...I've been looking at so many of these boxes lately they're starting to blur together...
Well the price is set at $349.99 and it's a huge mistake to ever raise a price on a technology product, thus the consumer won't eat the difference in adding the feature the manufacturer will.

Most LinkTheater users will not regularly use the USB port, and if they do it'll likely be memory stick keychain things and camera media. Not too many people need to stream 4+ GB VOBs (except for people on here). Additionally, every USB drive for sale in the world comes pre-formatted in FAT32 so the average user will likely leave it that way, including MAC users.

I do absolutely see the value of it and I'm confident the licensing fee will be appropriate. It'll be a nice differentiator for advanced users.

I see that Mac Os X will be supported. Thats great. I keep my digital photos on my mac with iphoto. Will the Mac software work with iphoto like it does with itunes for the pc? This would be great.

BrianV, thanks man! The LT sounds like what I'm looking for, the support so far has been awesome. Keep up the good work!

I'm pretty set on picking up an LT soon and have only one question - are you guys planning to have flac and shn support? I've got a lot of live music and would like to keep the collection as compact as possible but maintain the quality.

Also NTFS support would be groovedaddy.

Brian,
Another note on the Photo, "actual size" issue. I find when I view a 1920 x 1080 picture in 1080i mode, instead of the exact picture, I find a small portion of each side is cut off. On my HDTV I'd hope it would be spot on. I'm shooting for no scaling here for best resolution.

Originally posted by Stevenage
I see that Mac Os X will be supported. Thats great. I keep my digital photos on my mac with iphoto. Will the Mac software work with iphoto like it does with itunes for the pc? This would be great.

I'll check on Monday, I know it integrates with ITunes no prob, and I know it automatically shares the Video/Pictures/Music default folders. I'm a ****** when it comes to Mac so I'll have to check for that feature.

The Mac software looks a lot like the PC software except there's no configuration done on the computer side, the settings are all set via a settings page on the interface (using the remote control). The breadth of settings is slightly smaller than that of the PC, but overall it's an easier package to use and something most Mac users will appreciate.

Originally posted by ciampa
BrianV, thanks man! The LT sounds like what I'm looking for, the support so far has been awesome. Keep up the good work!

I'm pretty set on picking up an LT soon and have only one question - are you guys planning to have flac and shn support? I've got a lot of live music and would like to keep the collection as compact as possible but maintain the quality.

Also NTFS support would be groovedaddy.

It seems the most requests have been for WMA Lossless over flac. I will send a request for FLAC support but I can't make any promises. Hopefully Sigma already has code for FLAC support and we're just not using it yet.

Originally posted by dennismullen
Brian,
Another note on the Photo, "actual size" issue. I find when I view a 1920 x 1080 picture in 1080i mode, instead of the exact picture, I find a small portion of each side is cut off. On my HDTV I'd hope it would be spot on. I'm shooting for no scaling here for best resolution.

I'll see if I can reproduce that with a 1920x1080 picture of my own.

Originally posted by BrianV
I'll check on Monday, I know it integrates with ITunes no prob, and I know it automatically shares the Video/Pictures/Music default folders. I'm a ****** when it comes to Mac so I'll have to check for that feature.

The Mac software looks a lot like the PC software except there's no configuration done on the computer side, the settings are all set via a settings page on the interface (using the remote control). The breadth of settings is slightly smaller than that of the PC, but overall it's an easier package to use and something most Mac users will appreciate.

If it is using the default folders than it will be real nice!

When I'm listening to music files I often get static at the beginning of the file. The static only last for about a second or so. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm running a Belkin 802.11 G router and this may be a wireless issue.

Brian, anything in the works to support quicktime?

This is a great player, thanks for the support.