Mvix Ultio "It Plays All" HD media streamer debuts in the U.S. July 6 for $179 - Page 14

Man, reading Xtreamer's forum I'm just so angry I didn't by it instead of that pice of sh** MvixUSA is selling: http://forum.xtreamer.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2471

Another happy Ultio user I believe at least several people here have installed the 1.3 firmware upgrade without issue, including me. In fact I've gone back and forth between 1.2 and 1.3 firmware several times. Not sure what the problem could be. Assuming you may have already tried their failed software update procedure?

http://www.mvixusa.com/support/knowl...e+upgrade.html

Can't think of anything else unless you somehow have a bad image. Interesting notes. I'll have to find some time to see if I can figure out what you're attempting.

-rozz

Yes, It loaded for me ok. So far the only thing I have found is that when you are playing a DVD you can go to the menu by pressing the return button. I just loaded it 2 miutes ago so that's as far as I've got.

I had to copy over logo_pal.bmp to my USB as well. It's not what the manuals says. Looks like their devels fsckd things up again. And the bastards did not even enable telnet in the new build even though they told me they would do it. Did you see the changelog of 1.3? "This latest firmware fixes multiple issues". No sh**! Is that a joke? Eh...I'm just angry with this thing...

I currently have a WDTV HD Media Player and was considering getting one of the Mvix players. After reading this thread, I am not so sure.

What I liked about this player is that it supported internet streaming, had an optional wifi adapter and had a file manager. Needed the wifi because the wife would de-nutt me if I stretched more cables around the house. At least I think it has wifi support. Can't find where I read it.

I am not sure I would ever use an internal HDD with the heating problem. I am external HDD poor (14 of them), along with a HDD dock, 2 1.5TB, 3 500GB and 2 320GB drives. Also, I am not too sure about the physical dimensions. I have a really cramped space to put things in around my entertainment center.

So, ya'll help me out here and convince me I really need one of these as compared to the new WDTV Live Media Player that is coming out soon.

What change log? I didn't even see one, the only thing I see is "This latest firmware fixes multiple issues, including DVD Menu problems."

I saw the .bmp file and couldn't figure out what it was for but copied it to the mem stick anyway. I guess I just lucked out by doing so.

No instructions on how to install, no listings of changes, what a bunch of crap. How long would it take them to put that on the site.

Exactly, there is no change log, just a simple note with no useful info ...
Their website is also horrible, mvixusa.com does not even have Ultio mentioned in their product list...

You need internal HD, without HD this piece of sh** would not be able to create playlists. It can only create (one) playlist from music files on your internal HD. If you have a samba share then you can only play one music file at a time then you have to press play again.
Except the playlist is not working either and music files cannot be played continuously.
You will not be able to install extra software either. http://www.xtreamer.net/ seems like a way better option.

Any idea what to do to be able to continuously play music files? I have created a playlist from MP3s on my internal HD but the music files have to be played one by one. It makes Ultio pretty useless when It can't loop through a folder with MP3s or even continuously play files from a playlist.
I think it should be a pretty standard feature to have an "repeat all" function for a folder.

Read thru some of your notes and I'm not sure I understand what you are attempting to do since there is no relevant documentation available on the proprietary portions of the Ultio and I doubt that there ever will be. Interesting nevertheless.

The part I found curious was the quote you borrowed from the Mvix site:

Mvix uses a proprietary firmware built upon the Software Development Kit (SDK)
supplied by the Chipset providers: SIGMA DESIGNS.

Unless I'm totally missing the boat here, The info I have says the Ultio uses a Realtek RTD1073 soc. As far as I know, Realtek and Sigma are competitors. The only similarity is they both use Linux and the core processor in each is MIPS based. Why on earth would Sigma sell a design based on a competitors chip?

Would it surprise me to find out that Mvix doesn't even have a clue as to what they are selling, in terms of its internals like SDK, chipset, etc..? Not in the least.

On second thought, could be that was meant to refer to some of the older designs they used to market which were made by the Korean company Unicorn. The date on that Mvix article was from 2006.

-rozz

boy, you don't want much do you? We just got upgraded so we could access the Main Menu on a DVD file. What more can you expect, They are moving right along here guys.......

Maybe it has something to do with this
http://www.mvix.net/default.asp

rozz: I was trying to extract the root file stystem, alter it the way I like, replace binaries, config files, etc without having to use scp or ftp and then create new root file system and use it as my new firmware. I was also hoping to find info on how to communicate with the Raltek HW and replace the horrid old GUI and userland but I stoped hoping anything like that will ever be released... This is where I read about SIGMA DESIGNS http://www.mvixusa.com/support/knowl...layers%3F.html There you can find direct link to their "open source software".

Yazzy, ok, understood. Hats off to some good work. I also understand your frustration with the total lack of support from Mvix as far as development goes. Heck, you can't even get a datasheet from RealTek on the darn chip.

I think I'm relegating the Ultio to what it can do. Play back video files on my old 17" analog TV in my bedroom. I believe it can do a pretty fair job at that. . I've already moved on to constructing a real HTPC for primary use. Buying the Ultio was a gamble, and at $167 it was money I wasn't afraid to part with.

Who knows.. Maybe someday it will live up to its potential but for now it is what it is.

The mvix player is quite small. Not bad looking...I disabled the fan so I use an external fanless enclosure with an esata cable running from the enclosure to the Ultio (you can drill a small hol in the plastic back). Works great. If you ere to actually put in a hard drive in the Ultio would require the fan (perhaps an SSD wouldn't, or even one of Hitachi's low power 2.5" drives). If you don't mind the fan noise then use an internal 5400 rpm drive (Samsung makes one and both WD and Seagate have their green drives which seem to have a lower rpm).

The Ultio is sufficiently inexpensive that it's a pretty neat gamble. It does a grea job playing back videos and especially videos with subtiles (even picture subs). The file manager works well. The wireless G is available now but not wireless. Streaming 70p files works for me via the wired connection. I doubt that wireless would be smooth, but I could be wrong. I stream on my Apple TV all the time but only main profile 720p files ( I think the mkv world typically uses higher profiles and that requires more of everything).

Western Digital is about to out with a new version of their player. If I didn't like my Ultio and Apple TV so much I would really think of that one. The one problem is the poor subtitle support, but that probably doesn't bother most people in the US/Canada.

I think the thread is pretty good in context. What are the options?

philip

Thank's. Works fine. Much faster for me.

philip

I guess if you live in Europe the xtreamer seems pretty nice. Isn't it basically the same thing as the Ultio except that it uses 2.5" drives (which is nice). I looked at it, but they don't sell them in North America. You have to (or had when I was looking) order them from Europe and hope that the customs' people were sleeping.

By the way, I seem to have telnet access in 1.3.

pmcd

pmcd: The hardware of xtreamer is very similar and they use the same software base as MvixUSA. I actually wanted to install it on my Ultio but the NAND device on Ultio is too small.
Xtreamer makes so much more out of their software and they seem to have excellent community support paying attention to what users want. They have stable and beta releases of their firmware, a decent change log and a road map http://forum.xtreamer.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2471
Frankly I don't think MvixUSA has the talent and enough people to implement anything usefull. It took weeks to fix simple DVD menu, a problem which should never occur in the first place if they tested their software before releasing it.
And yes, I live in Norway and I really wished I found Xtreamer before I ordered Ultio.

Hmm...perhaps you should give it a try. They are coming out with a NAS at 59 euros if you order one.

I went and had a look at their site and some of the threads here. It's not as though there are no unhappy xtreamer users. They seem pretty divided. There was the fan issue, then the delays, then the stories of their web site, etc... Subtitles (idx/sub) seem to not work. I don't know.

The one thing that is neat is the enthusiastic user community for the Xtreamer.

I'm pretty happy with the Ultio. It does everything I wanted it for. It's not my main media system but for some reason I have not had the troubles that some have reported.

We will see. There seem to be quite a few of these media companies now. Not sure you'll find it all in any player.

philip

Ok, I just upgraded to the latest firmware, and while I now have menu access on DVD (ISO) files, I can't get into my BT/Samba info in my system menu. I made sure to first uninstall my BT/Samba before I upgraded to the latest firmware (1.3), as per the Mvix instructions so as not to have to do a fresh HDD format, but now whenever I install my USB thumbdrive with the 4 .ipk files on it to re-install my BT/Samba, I get a symbol on top showing a picture of a thumbdrive with a line going through it. Is there a fix to this? I don't want to have to reformat, requiring me to transfer all my 1TB worth of files to another drive by having to connect it through a USB cable, that will take forever. I did as the instructions asked and uninstalled BT/Samba before I upgraded to v1.3, what did I do wrong, and is there anyway to get my Samba up and running again without having to reformat and start from scratch?

I guess I didn't see that note and I installed 1.3 without removing anything. It installed fine and my BT/Samba Info is fine. Plus all the info on my HD is still there. Do you have a good network connection? I use a static IP address and had to re-enter that before it would work.

Even though they called it Firmware update, I don't really think it is. On my Firmware information everything stayed the same version wise. I think what they basically did was install some commands to aide the interaction for better DVD menu support.
Once I upgraded I went in settings to restore my preferences and noticed that BT/Samba was not accessable. I powered down my unit, restarted and returned to settings and BT/Samba. I was then able to access the settings which was already running (I did not uninstall BT/Samba prior to Firmware).

I went everywhere in the setting parameters and nothing else has seemed to have changed.

If you look on the Xtreamer web site, to the right you can select your country exchange (US or Eur.) and they state they do ship to the U.S. In the Specs. http://www.xtreamer.net/89/content-pages/Specs.aspx I didn't see the playback standards (PAL/NTSC) since it seems to be a mostly European player I wouldn't assume it will play NTSC.
It does seem vaguely familiar menu compared to the Ultio.

Oddly enough, this product seems to have some connection to Mvix of Korea (Unicorn) http://shop.xtreamer.net/Support/que...s+O%7CPlay+%3F.

I agree that MvixUSA needs to do a better job of support and interaction with their customers. Xtreamer forum is a nice example!

Has anyone checked these out, I know they are more money, but look very good. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's available in the US. I wouldn't mind spending the one time high price if I could get a GOOD multimedia player.
http://dune-hd.com/hd_players/111-du...prime-3.0.html

I take that back, it is available in the US.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe because it wasn't technically a firmware upgrade, I shouldn't have uninstalled BT/Samba. Does that mean that the only way for me to get my BT/Samba back will be to reformat or will a future firmware upgrade bring back my status page so I can re-install BT/Samba?

UPDATE: Well I just tried what you said. I powered down, restarted, and then it showed my status page, so I updated from there and now all works fine. Thanks for the advice!

cocopugg: I've the same problem. MvixUSA told me you're forced to reformat your drive after upgrading the firmware in order to install the modules (!?). They're looking into this issue...

yazzy, do what rgilly and I did. Power down your Ultio, (I unplugged mine for a few mins), then plug it back in and start it up, that should bring you back to the status page and allow you to re-install BT/Samba. Let us know if it worked. Good luck.

OK, I don't work for Mvix, but I certainly believe the the Ultio is a good device and has delivered essentially what they advertise which is stream/play most all types of video formats. The Ultio is still quite young and I think Mvix and the hardware manufacturer are working out the bugs for Ultio and the other brands of HTPC that have similar chips.

With that, I have discovered the Mvix released a new Samba update (1.1). Everything else stays the same (bit torrent) but the update of Samba enables Telnet, read/write mount instead of read only, and the editing of the host name (which is what I was after). I have not tested the new Samba yet but it certainly looks promising! A DVD menu operation feature and an improvement in Samba all within two days.

http://www.mvixusa.com/support/index...nloaditemid=58

Now, if Mvix will enhance the audio Jukebox of the Ultio I think most owners will be happy. I did tool with it a while myself and it is indeed discouraging that it only plays one song in a folder of songs. Two things I think help explain this: 1) main purpose of Ultio is video - although it is called a media player and audio is a form of media which leads me to 2) if the player was programmed to shuffle and play files, what would be the result when playing video? You would finish one movie and it would shuffle to the next one. But then again, it does slideshows for photos just fine (from one folder).
Mvix had this feature working fine in other products, so it will be just a matter of time to hopefully tweak this feature a little.

Well, I found this in an article: http://www.mvixusa.com/support/knowledgebase/How+do+I...%3F/Mvix+Ultio/How+to+create+a+m3u+audio+playlist+for+the+Mvix+Ultio.html

I don't know if it will do full Jukebox playing but someone can give it a try.

Is there anyway we can ask for features on future firmwares for the Ultiio? I would love to be able to see complete file details (file type, file dimension, bitrate, fps, kbps, audio bitrate, etc, etc), when we hit the DISPLAY button, like we saw with the 760/780HD. Is this too much to ask for?