Egreat EG-M34A vs WD TVHD

Well, it's a NMT (Networked Media Tank), the WD TV-HD is not, at least not with official firmware. So you are comparing different devices.

If you need networking, a NMT is the way to go, although I'd probably invest a bit more and get a Popcornhour A-110 instead, due to the likely better firmware support.

Regardless of the lack of network capabilities (with official firmware), the WD TV-HD has huge potential - the current firmware still needs to mature. It will likely have the biggest userbase of all (if it doesn't already), and should WD (Sigma) decide to release more of the code as open source in future, the appeal to coders and therefore the community will be the biggest by far. It already has a very active community with quite a few relatively mature unofficial firmwares available, adding networking and DVD drive support etc.

The reason why I personally did not go the NMT route yet is that the network performance of the current NMT generation is simply too low, especially for HD. Most users use the USB port to copy their files over to the Popcornhour (or similar) anyway because of this, so no difference to the WD TV-HD in this respect. I don't need to watch YouTube videos on my TV, and I don't need DTS downmixing either, and HDMI 1.3 is no killer argument for me (-> transparency with DTS 1.5 Mbps; need high end hifi gear to hear the difference (if at all). Add the considerably lower price, the better aesthetic appeal (and better cooling), and you get the deal.

I really don't understand you all. WTV does not supports dvd menus and doesn't read most of iso files. Isn't it a problem???

Egreat uses the same popcorn firmware.

DVD menus would be a nice bonus, but personally, I can live without them. It plays all of the ISO files I've thrown at it (but not their menus, of course). And DVD menus will probably eventually show up in a firmware update or in the 2nd generation WDTV.

I have a WDTV and I love it. It does have limitations (although none that prevent me from watching my HD movies). I am always up from trying new toys, however. I ordered the eGreat m34a yesterday so I will see how it compares once it is here.

Why buy a High Definition player to play Standard Definition DVDs? For 20 or 30 you can buy a proper DVD player!

I really don't understand the buzz because of DVD menus....

I second that!

I own a PCH A110 and it plays all of the HD media I have in mkv format on my NAS over ethernet LAN flawlessly and quickly.

Not sure what you are talking about here.

On another note:
I'm considering returning my PCH A110 and getting two M34As, if they do the exact same thing for almost half the cost.

All I need is a streaming device over ethernet from my NAS. No USB or internal HDD needed.

That's exactly what goes through my head everytime I see someone complaining about DVD menus. If you want DVD menus, play DVDs...in a DVD player. I know I didn't buy a WD DVDTV, I bought a WD HDTV, being able to play DVD ISO is just an added benefit. For my purposes this thing is perfect, it's small plays .mvk, and pass DTS through to my stereo, exactly what I got it for.

I third that, and anyways I know menus are cool but I'm worried about the movie, how long can you sit there and play with the menu.

I personally bought this thing to go with my hdtv to play HD movies. I've got plenty of dvd players lying around for that.

Tomorow in Portugal, start the distribucion of m34 to the preorders owners, 150, with HDMI cable.

some guys sells their WDTV......Lets see.... their reviews....

Ok,

I have been playing with this box for a week now. It is a great unit. As far as I can tell it is essentially the same as a PCH as far as the software and processor goes. The build quality is excellent! The case is ALL metal and the ports and all seem very tight and secure. Interestingly it has an external port and cable for an internal SATA drive. I have no problem with that, but I will need to put the drive into something. The menus are a lot faster than the WDTV, and the remote is a lot more responsive. So far it has played every media file I have thrown at it. I noticed you cannot rewind in MKVs so that is a downside. The interface is also not as nice as the WDTV, but I know I can change that once I figure out how. I have not networked it yet, but will try that this week.

Thanks for the review. Mind if I ask what you paid for it? Apparently the rewind problem also applies to other Egreat boxes and other NMTs (based on some brief initial research). Sounds like the workaround is using time seek.

i don't think that anyone can discount the great strides that the WDTV development crew have made since the products launch only a few months ago. it's a really good product with a team that has a great eye for community interaction. there will always be minor faults with it (like the current greek/turkish/arabic subtitle support issues) but the major issues seemingly have been getting attention in the firmware releases.

i personally don't feel as though the current generation of networked media players are all too robust to rationalize paying the price difference between them and the WDTV; streaming 1080p is sometimes as likely to work as kicking a field goal from the opposite end zone and minor issues choke up to bigger ones at the drop of a hat. for now, relying on a hard drive is still the best way to go in my mind. other peoples mileage may vary, and i respect that.

How can it be a WDTV killer if it can't rewind a mkv video? A video player that can't rewind, you cannot be serious! I'm not saying WDTV is perfect media player but at least they can rewind mkv video.

thanks for your review, it made me very eager to ordering a m34a myself. I currently have a WD, which is ok...but, in my experience, has too many bugs and uncertain future support. besides, the egreat is a winner on paper for that price!

a few questions, if you dont mind:
- does dvd menus work (as with the PCH) ?
- is DTS downmixing available already in current FW ?
- are idx/sub subtitles supported ? (i found out PCH still doenst)
- compared to PCH, WD interface is very fast....the m34 is based on same FW/HW as PCH...how can it be faster than WD ? it must be flipping menu's before you even think about pressing a button
- how is the overall stability ? did you encounter any weirdness that forced you to reboot/master reset such as seen with the PCH sometimes ?

thanks in advance for answering!

@posters above:

Hardware and possibilities are great with the WD, however currently there are still many issues not resolved + missing features seen on other players.

The egreat minus LAN & rewind still is a potential WD killer. Why? Because the software has a long history and userbase amongst other NMT players and therefore is futureproof. and it offers more features for a little extra cash.

As far as the support of WD goes: I do praise them for trying and for releasing many updates recently. However, i feel they should have done their homework some more, since most of the issues shouldnt be there in the first place if they want this thing to be a competitor against the NMTs. Many people think WD is so good at listening to the users and stuff...well I feel differently. To me it seems like this: WD drops a preFW on this forum, we all send in billions of bug reports and requirments to make this thing better....but then WD seems to be very quite...a reply here and there sure...but I dont see real communications and interaction between them and us. Many of the zillions times asked questions are not asnwered, nor do they -seem- to follow up on bugs reported. Its success lies in communication and honesty to/with its users, not by just dropping a prerelease and use us as testers.

WD would benefit from a real relationship with us: let us know what youre working on, even it doesnt work out as fast as we desire or even at all. Just be open about it. Ask for help of other devs who might have a solution. If some things are not possible and you know it, just say so. do not let people keep speculation about it.

The best example is the sudden release of the pre 0.7 FW as official. To me and many others, this came as a suprise, since there were still bugs in it. To me this seems suspicous, since the only reply from WD we got on asking why and how this has happened and if this is same as the Pre: "it is the same FW as the pre". Thats all ive seen so far....not very communicative nor transparant. I think this has been released because for now (or maybe ever) support will do nothing and let us live with bugs that some people see as dealbreakers. Also on other (wd) forums I dont see any activity of WD being in actual discussions about this. They should step in and let us know whats going on, how they will continue, what bugs are currently under development/investigation etc. that gives us, the relatively small userbase confidence in the devs, the device and ultimatily in WD as a brand.

Sorry for my long story, but I felt I had to I respect other opinions....but I personally am thinking about selling my WD and getting a NMT based player, such as the new egreat. I do not feel like defending WD's non-communicative and seemingly ignorant behaviour. I can hope that they are working on stuff, and hope they will fix bugs and give more options to make it a better device....but the current evidence shows otherwise. If they step in this forum, then they should know people will react and ask stuff....and know that if they dont respond and are not clear about things that people like me will start thinking, maybe unjustified, things. So I hereby challenge WD to step up and start doing what we expect them to do, whats needed to keep this device a success. If not, then I fear drop in sales and no more support. The support will make the difference ...and they must change this, especially since new devices are already here whooping its ass feature and price wise.

again: i respect other opinions, i respect the WD devs on here and praise them for trying, and i do still see potiental in this device....however I am very tempted to switch. maybe the devs cant be as dedicated into this as they wish to or is needed, maybe they want to but the managers tell them to do other stuff and give them other priorities ? i dont know really...I just hope this will change very soon.

tip to WD: set up your own forum (or link prominently from your website to an existing one like this), with decent moderators, facilitate us, the users, the buyers of your product to communicate with you, with eachother. structurize the bugs and wishes. be transparant about whats currently being worked on. stimulate us to get and stay involved in making this device better by starting a contest "best idea wins passport hd" or something. let us users identify what are the most important bugs and requirements, let people send this in and let others vote. Pick up the most voted for and do not decide on your own which are important from your perspective.

and last but not least: feel free to contact me on this...I'd like to help out on this whereever I can. I'm not a developer, but my job is about exactly this kind of interaction between users and companies and I have a great passion for your device and making this work for all of us. Us happy users and you making money by selling a gazillion of these little black beauties

http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?n...wtopic&t=20937

Someone from Egreat stuff commented on this new unit in this link, check it out.

Apparently no DVD menu support and unfortunately still no DTS downmix in this recently released new FW for Egreat units. Guess we will have to wait few more months..

i cant seem to find this in the messages, if so...it would be a bummer and the info on the egreathd website would be misleading:

"This is for sure the most inexpensive way to output 1080P .MKV's to your TV with DTS sound support."

to me that implies DTS downmixing to you TV.

No, downmixing is outputting/converting DTS surround sound as 2 ch. stereo so that you do not need a separate decoder unit to hear sound in DTS movies.

So far, Egreat (like all other NMTs , except PCH-110) only has DTS pass through and that is what they mean with DTS support.

Unfortunately many of us dont have desire or available space for surround speakers , so we are waiting for one such low priced unit.

This EG-M34A looks perfect ,with awesome firmware and everything, but when it comes to DTS downmix,we can only speculate, they are certainly not obliged to provide it.

i agree that DTS support does not mean downmix by default. but putting DTS support in a sentence like that makes it look like it does do DTS downmix through hdmi to your TV....or am i just confused ?

from other sources it says DTS downmix by april FW. its now May....where is the firmware ?

Well, think of it in a way like many products are advertised to support headsets, yet headsets itself are ofcourse not included in the product.
But you are right, it makes no sense they (and we) have to pay some sort of DTS license in order to include this downmix to stereo. We wont even be hearing DTS , and there is free software out there to convert DTS to stereo.


If I read correctly, new FW was released few days ago and there is no downmix. But that is not so dramatic anymore , some other NMT companies were promising this feature to be included back in september 2008 and even earlier, but they are still today postponing release date.

But in the link i gave, it is clear that Egreat and other companies are waiting for this license and there is nothing much they can do.. Or these are all just "innocent" lies and capitalism at work..

damn....all that waiting. it seems we are already paying dts license fee (this must be up front, since paying for a fee afterwords cant be done) for DTS downmix that still isnt there.

they keep saying its the DTS club delaying the thing but man....this has been going for like months now. It start to become an annoying argument .... they seem to forget we already paid for this thing and its not our problem that the DTS club is so slow. They need to fix this soon. Its easy for them to state "its not our fault" when the money is already in their pockets. If its their money being delayed....i can assure you things would go much faster.

Is there even a clear promise on this from egreat ? if so, what devices will support it ? it can only be the ones that already have the fee paid for....is the m34a one of them ?

update: maybe i was too harsh.....there is some info on this:

http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?n...=161832#161832

Seems the contract is almost in, hopefully the DTS FW is available this month. However....still wondering what models are supported ? the full egreat range or only the expensive models ? and, most importantly for us WD users: will the m34a have dts ? (the post mentions the 31B model)

update2: the 31B shares the same FW with the 34a http://www.egreatworld.com/en/Support31B34A.asp

so logic points towards a logical conclusion: if the 31B gets DTS, so will the 34a

[this is a major plus for the 34a vs the WD, since we know for sure the WD will never get DTS downmix, the 34a most likely will, whenever that might be]

Well, great than. Let me set my countdown of say 30 days. :P

And FW is already "perfected" since it is not unique to this model, so there should be less bugs than with WD.

This really could be a WDTV killer than, hopefully the price settles at ~150 here in EU..

from what ive read its being released today in portugal at 155 Euro. You can however decide to import it for 125 Euros + import taxes and stuff. In my case it would mean 19% extra, that would make it around 150 Euros. Just depends on if and when it will be available in your country and if your willing to wait for it. (in my case id like it yesterday, since it will be the same price anyway).

its good to see they started their own forum (just like I suggested WD, see post earlier) with moderators. Its still very fresh, only a handful of posts...but its a good start. only downside is that the site is very slow....they need better hosting also from what ive read downloading firmware is superslow often resulting in time-outs and corrupt FWs. but....we can rely on fellow nerds to upload it somewhere else to download from.

Correction: It probably does have DVD menu support. They are talking about retail DVD = CSS support.

confirmation on DTS support by egreat staff:

http://www.egreatworld.com/en/forum/...D=27&PID=70#70

"when we get the DTS license,all of our HDMI1.3 players(EG-M31B,EG-M34A,EG-M32B,EG-M33A) will support DTS downmix to Stereo..."

yeah, it seems taht way. if you use own rips in IFO/ISO format all should be fine.

another big plus for the m34a ! and yet another feature making this thing a very potential WD killer.

crap man...I want this egreat thing right now

why ?

• based on long history of updates
• more futureproof in updates
  (the sudden "official" release of the preFW made me suspicious)
• dvd support
• dts downmixing (soon)
• volume control
  (as in: the WD has a very low volume output on AC3...i have to crank up the TV alot....resulting in almost blasting my tv speakers after shutting off the WD)
• build quality: WD is nice, this thing is even better -> aluminium, better heat dissapation
• more connection options
• better remote
  (as in: more direct controls as opposed having to browse through menus)
• no audio clipping
  (issues reported, even with proof in sinus pictures and stuff.....and were never addressed nor replied to by WD)
• no inconsistent video quality
  (black level issues reported, which were never addressed nor replied to by WD)
• HD audio passthrough
  (might be handy in the future when we all have superduper receivers with HD audio )
• less spontanous bugs in new FWs
  (as in: the current WD fw has issues with files that played ok with older FWs, thus forcing users to either live with less features or more bugs)
• faster interface
  (? is that really possible? its hard to believe....since PCH is crap slow compared to the WD, while its using the same FW/HW)
• Lan
  (not used now, but might be in the future, no hassling with hacked FW needed)
• egreat is starting their own supportforum, seemingly to reach out to (potiental) users

and all this at a very good pricepoint. im sold. WD out, egreat come to papa

If the Egreat is to be confirmed with that specifications, it's going to be a serious competitor to WD TV... if not the winner!

O own a WD TV and I like my player... but the Egreat turns out to be a very good surprise to the costumers... all we need is more competition...