Seagate's New Networked HD Media Player (WDTV2's Competitor) - Page 8

I picked up one of these last week on the cheap. It arrived today. I must say it's not bad. Not cutting edge but it does what it claims very well.

Fast enough. Simple as a plus. And offers a lot of features I did not expect.

The Seagates are not perfect, but actually they're quite good; especially for $100 players. There are "higher end" units that cost a lot more, but don't add a whole lot more for the price bump. DVD playback from a network source has been perfect for me; full menu support out of the box; viewer experience the same as putting a disk in a player. BD support is not as complete: no menu support, no HD audio. But it plays BD title rips just fine and lack of HD audio is not a big deal for me. All the other BD limitations are minor and have easy work-arounds. I would like some additional features/capabilities that circumvent the limitations, but they are just not worth the $2-300 price points.

I've come to the personal conclusion that the higher end models are currently over-priced. That's understandable, given the newness of these devices. The Netgear 550 looks to be one of the latest generation full-featured models to crack the $200 price bar. Keep an eye on that one. In the mean time, unless you demand the same viewer experience as a profile 2 BD player, you will enjoy the Seagate.

P.S. Anything you record on your DVDR (or TiVo) can be put on a networked HDD instead of burning to disk and streamed through the Seagate. A 2TB drive is cost neutral (or cheaper) with buying 400 T-Y DVD-R.

To be clear, you're not getting 1080p uncompressed Blu-ray rips working smoothly across a network are you? I was unable to do that when I tried out a FAT+ for 30 days. Blu-rays from a USB-connected drive played well for me, but stuttered a lot over the network.

That is correct to a point. I didn't state it explicitly because I've noted several times in posts in this thread that I can stream a BD rip with a bitrate of 22Mbps or less over my network. For that reason I play BD title rips from attached drives.

FWIW, I've not run across a TiVo HD/5.1 recording that I could not stream over network -- CBS recordings are generally 17-18Mbps.

Can you detail the procedure to do this? I'd like to give it a try.

Assuming you already have your TiVo on your network, it's very, very simple. You first need to look up your TiVo media access key (MAK) from the system info screens. Then use the free program "kmttg" to download the desired programs from your TiVo to your NAS (or other networked storage). The current version of kmttg has the capability to remotely set both TiVo tuners to non-channels. That frees up the CPU to concentrate on the file transfer. I get sustained transfer rates of 16-17Mbps with a TiVo HD; the Premier is faster. Make sure you check the "decrypt" box. That will strip off the .tivo wrapper and leave you with a standard .mpg file. The Seagate plays the .mpg file directly and streams it over the network.

If you try it and like it, look into VideoRedo TV Suite. You can use it to edit out the commercials from the TiVo HD/5.1 recordings. The Seagate has an acceptable FF but not the 30 sec skip button of the TiVo so it's not as handy to skip commercials on the Seagate as it is on the TiVo. With the new season upon us there are more interesting series in debut than I have time to watch. So, as in past years, I will decide to collect a few of them for watching in the off-season. So I pull the episodes off the TiVo as they are recorded and store them on my NAS until such time.

In the case of a DVDR, you have no network transfer capability. You have to burn the program(s) you want to transfer to DVD-RW and finalize with any menus. Then use a program like ImgBurn or DVD Decrypter to rip an .iso of the disk to your network storage. Not nearly as convenient as a networked TiVo. The Seagate will then play the .iso as if you put the disk in a player.

Kelson, thanks for the tip. I tried 'kmttg' out and it worked great.

You might want to check out this section of the TiVo HD FAQ about network transfers.

For anyone interested in acquiring an inexpensive NAS unit to feed your FAT+, the D-Link DNS-321 2-bay unit is on sale at Tiger Direct with a $20 D-Link rebate for a final cost of $70. The sale/rebate is only till the end of September and is a steal at this price. A good 2-drive "toaster" (bare drive dock) that only connects to your PC via USB or ESATA will run you ~$50. Current Internet prices for 1.5TB drives is $80-85 and for 2TB drives is $100-110. If you don't use the JBOD or RAID modes and run the drives as individual volumes you can add 1 disk at a time as your needs grow.

I bought one and stuck a single 1.5TB drive in it. I can verify it plays very well with the FAT+. The DNS-321 is a very simple unit to set up and use. It supports SMB shares and is a UPnP device but is not DLNA certified, however the tech reps on the D-Link forum state they have made sure the 321 works with several of the more popular DLNA clients. I can report that after enabling the UPnP option and rebooting the NAS, the Seagate player sees it as a media server and lists the files -- in my case that would be either .iso or .m2ts and it does both. It also appears to the FAT+ as SMB shares and so you can drill into the volumes and folders that way if you want.

I first set up the 321 in my study, plugged directly into my router switch. My network is 100baseT. The Seagate FAT+ connects back to this router through a pair of NetGear AV200 powerline adapters. Playback of DVD.iso and TiVo HD/5.1 (17-18Mbps) worked flawlessly as either an SMB or DLNA client. There is nothing more to say on this score and that is what I'll be using the DNS-321 for -- DVD rips and TiVo HD files.

I next wanted to see if the DNS-321 made any difference in BD.m2ts streaming to the FAT+. The 321 has plenty of speed for BD streams. The measured transfer rate between it and my PC connected through the router switch was 82Mbps. Unfortunately the powerline adapters are a choke with a measured throughput of only 42Mbps. So I installed the DNS-321 in my equipment rack next to the FAT+ and connected them through a NetGear 10/100 switch with 3' patch cable runs (the switch uplinks back to the router). I tried to play the Iron_Man.m2ts file which has an average bitrate of 37.5Mbps and peak bitrates of 48Mbps. On the whole the FAT+ did much better than I expected based on past experience with a Seagate Dockstar. The movie streamed perfectly for large segments at a time, but stuttered and lost audio at, presumably, the high bitrate scenes. Of note, I did not see any difference in playback whether I used SMB shares or DLNA. Many users of other players report improved playback with their units when used as DLNA clients which they ascribe to the lower overhead of the DLNA protocol. I saw no difference here, the title stuttered at all the same places with either protocol.

So bottom line: the Seagate FAT+ may not have the chops to stream high bitrate content over a network connection, but if you are looking for an inexpensive NAS solution to store and feed it lower bitrate material, the DNS-321 looks like a winner -- until the end of September, that is.

I logged into TigerDirect last night when I saw your post in Backing up your NAS and the price is now $85 - the $40 'Instant Savings' is now $25.

But, I plan to keep an eye on it until the end of the rebate / month.

Thanks!

Man, I just hate it when they do that. I ordered mine on Monday and it was still $70 on Tuesday. Before the DNS-321 I was actually looking to buy the Seagate BlackArmor 220. NewEgg was selling the 2TB model for $219 which was actually a good deal for that unit. I hemmed and hawed for just a couple days then decided to pull the trigger -- by that time NewEgg had boosted the price back to $260 which soured the deal for me. Same goes for 2TB drives. NewEgg had the Seagate Barracuda 2TB drives for $99 -- until I pulled the trigger on the DNS-321. Now they're at $110.

So we wait and watch and have PriceGrabber send EMAIL notices for when the price goes back down. I'm a patient person.

Does anyone know if you can use the FAT+ as a "virtual NAS"? In other words, when you connet a local hard drive (USB) to the FAT+ can you "see" it on your network and copy files to/from? I think you can do this with the WDTV Live+...

Any other thoughts on disadvantages of the FAT+ vs the WDTV+? It seems similar except for some minor audio format/output differences - but at a better price.

That feature was not available when I had mine. Although I read on the Seagate forums there was a custom firmware that allowed it at one time. But, too late if you have the latest firmware because reverting to early firmwares is not allowed since Netflix was added...

This is what worries me about getting a streamer with netflix.

No, you can't. I consider that to be a short-coming of the Seagate because you need to stream high bitrate content (BD.m2ts rips) from an attached drive. The lack of "NAS" ability means you have to detach the drive and load it from your PC every time you want to add or manage content. I use a 1TB USB powered drive so it is not so painful (I don't have to drag a power brick around) but it is a lot more expensive.

The WD has the advantage there, but frankly if I had the choice between "NAS" support for an attached drive vs. the ability to stream BD.m2ts rips over the network, I would pick the latter without hesitation. It takes an hour to send a 30GB BD.m2ts file over a 100MB connection -- the Seagate doesn't do gigabit.

I just picked up a 3rd 2TB Fantom Green Drive from Buy.com for $99 after $20 MIR to hook up to my Seagate Dockstar to give me 6TB total thus far of green NAS solution.

Been happy thus far with the 4 Fantom Drives I have purchased thus far.

Now I will wait until I see another price drop to around $80 and will pick up another to add for 8TB total... after that I will have to start looking for larger drives.....

How you going to do that? The Dockstar only has 3 USB ports (well 4 if you count the Go Drive docking bay, but you can't plug a USB external into that). Did you put a USB hub onto one of the DockStar ports?

Ahh... good question....

They actually sell a female (miniUSB) to USB cable that just plugs into the standard size male usb port were the Seagate drive normally sits.

I didn't know that was available. That would work.

I just remembered (it's been a while and I decommissioned the Dockstar for the time being) when I bought my Seagate Go drive it came with a "FreeAgent Go Dock+" docking station that was also a 3 port powered USB hub. I connected the Go Dock+ to one of the DockStar's USB ports and plugged a USB drive into the Go Dock+ hub and docked the Go Drive in it also. Anyway, it all worked just fine with no apparent decrease in network throughput with the drives that were on the hub. So it looks like you can connect some powered hubs and go crazy with external drives. You'll need one mother of a power strip, though.

Just a heads-up. The new firmware, revision 2.20 is out and available on the Seagate website. I haven't seen any release notes to know what it fixes or adds. It was apparently released last week and I may already have been running it since my FAT+ may have auto updated. I'll have to check when I get home.

If it is already loaded, I'll download it from the Seagate site and cold flash the FAT+.

I updated to this over the weekend. The only thing I can really say for sure is that it fixed the sorting issues I was experiencing with PlayOn.

I checked when I got home and the FAT+ had already updated itself to 2.2 at some point. No idea when this actually happened. I have not seen any difference in my normal usage, and that includes no changes to the UI, but now that I know it's there I'll see if any of my pet limitations have been addressed. I think I'll unplug it and do a power cycle. I should download the firmware and do a cold flash, but unless I see some problems, I'm not going to bother just yet.

I just got the BD for Disney's Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and ripped it for the FAT+.

UGH . . . actually multi-UGH

Put this one at the top of the list of BD titles that are authored as multiple .m2ts files that have to be assembled into a single .m2ts for the FAT+. PoP had 139 individual .m2ts files. TSMUXER didn't "appear" to have any problems with the task, but when I played the resulting .m2ts on the FAT+ (good movie, by the way) the sound was out of synch. It developed through the film. At the beginning the A/V was in synch but as the movie played I started to notice that the voices lagged the lip movement just a bit. That time lag got greater and greater as the movie progressed and by the time it reached the ending it was about 1/2-3/4 second. It was as comical as it was annoying. So obviously when TSMUXER assembled the segments, the sound was a little off with each joining and that A/V lag was cumulative across the 139 segments.

I guess I'm going to have to find another program to join the .m2ts segments. If anybody has suggestions, I would appreciate it.

Hey guys, I'm thinking of getting the Fat+ seems like a great deal. The player is $100 and a 1TB FreeAgent Go hard drive is another $100 (strangely their 500GB is $120 lol). I was thinking of waiting for the WD TV Live Hub, but I might choose to get this instead. They seem to have the same features except this has a removable hard drive which I like.

Someone experienced with this drive, could you please answer some questions

Is the fat+ a buggy unit? Any major issues? And how has Seagate been doing so far in terms of offering fixes for issues?

How's the video quality on it? I'll mainly be playing 1080p mkv files directly through the Go drive. And how's Netflix on it?

And if you plug in the removable Go drive into the fat+, does it show up on the network as a shared drive? I'm lazy, so I might want to just copy files to it directly through the network.

Also, given that this unit is over a year old.. is there anything that newer players like the WD Hub will have that this won't ?

Thanks!

I've had the v2.20 firmware installed for a little over 2 weeks now and I believe it has fixed a bug I have experienced frequently. I've noted before that the only misfire of the FAT+ I've experienced, that I considered a real bug, had to do with loss of audio with trickplay. More frequently than I would like, after RWing a stream (DVD over network or BD from attached drive) I would lose audio upon hitting normal playback. This was easily fixed by initiating another RW for a couple seconds at 1-2X then hitting play again, but it was annoying that it happened.

Well, under firmware v2.20, I have yet to experience a loss of audio upon trickplay. Since I became aware that the bug was gone, I started to press the issue with the FAT+ and did frequent RW's looking for the loss of audio. After a week of this, and not having any issues, I've convinced myself that they have fixed that bug.

I wish there were some release notes telling us what else they did with v2.20.

$5 promo code EMCZZYR25 takes the $50 special down to $45. Also includes a bonus 6' HDMI cable. UPS shipping free. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148499

At this price, I'm hoping I can tolerate the FAT+'s shortcomings. I really wish a software crew of TiVo's caliber would do a media player.

==>> "This market segment needs an enema."

The lack of well-thought-out features and the mostly sloppy implementation of offered features completely baffles this old-time hacker. To a greater, or lesser, extent, every single player is nothing more than a HiDef version of an old-school DVD player with a potentially large, and accessible, storage/media pool.

Sorry for the rant. It's just that this is such a neat application ... if I wasn't comfortably retired ...

Back to reality ... for $45, you might as well get another FAT+ . Remember, "it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

-- UhClem

That's a great price for a good player, obviously they are being cleared. The FAT+ is not long for this world, but the GoFlex TV will/has taken it's place and is the same player in a different box.

The FAT+ shortcomings are entirely on the BluRay side of things. DVD.iso streaming is flawless. The new NetGear NTV-550 coming out looks to be a significant step up in both full BluRay accommodation and UI. Put it on your radar.

On another note, I've not seen this mentioned here so I'll confirm it works.

The FAT+ will access any shared folder you establish on your PC -- that includes the root level of the optical drive. I have shared the BD-ROM drive on my PC and put a commercial DVD in it. The FAT+ sees the BD-ROM drive, opens it and, after drilling to the proper .ifo file, plays the DVD in the drive with full menu support. It should be noted that I do not have AnyDVD or any other on-the-fly decryption software installed on my PC, so the FAT+ has the CSS decryption built in.

quick question on the D-Link DNS-321 you were talking about.
Is the fan as loud as some posted on newegg?
Some said replace it asap.

Loud is a relative term, it's certainly not whisper quiet but it doesn't roar either. You can hear it in a quiet room if you are within 6' or so. It is intermittent and only runs when it needs to. I initially tucked it in the back of my open-air equipment rack when I was testing and did not really notice it, especially when the movies started playing. It did not intrude on quiet passages. I now have it sitting about 3' from me in the corner of my work desk in my study. The fan is noticeable when it comes on, but just blends into the background noise for me. The fan in my PC makes as much noise when it cranks up during heavy video processing.

I know some people are fanatics about wanting every piece of equipment to be dead silent when their ear is pressed against the case. The D-Link 321 is not silent, but it's just a matter of what you consider acceptable. I'm not about to replace the fan. On the other hand, it works really well with the Seagate FAT+. For the $70 I paid it was a steal. I have a pair of 2Tb Seagate drives in it that hold all my DVD.iso rips.

thanks Kelson I just ordered one for $89.
I have 2 f4 samsung 2TB disk to shove in it when it arives.