Seagate's New Networked HD Media Player (WDTV2's Competitor) - Page 11

any idea who might sell this locally? I didn't see it on bestbuys site. I'd like to check it out, without having to deal with the troubles of shipping it back to newegg should it not work out.

There are two improvements I have found with v2.20 firmware over v1.55. Under v1.55 I would frequently lose audio after a trickplay function (FF or RW). This could be recovered from by doing a RW at 1X for a couple seconds then hitting play to regain audio. This would happen when streaming DVD over ethernet or BluRay from USB and was very annoying. Firmware v2.2 has completely corrected this problem.

Under v1.55 I could not stream uncompressed BD.m2ts rips over ethernet that were over 22Mbps overall bitrate, without loss of audio and eventually stuttering. Under v2.2, that upper limit is increased to about 30Mbps. Better but still not good enough for most full bitrate BD.m2ts rips. The FAT+ still doesn't have the network chops to stream the high bitrate BD.m2ts rips over ethernet without stuttering [see note below]. For BD.m2ts rips you are best served by using an attached USB drive.

I bought mine when they were selling for $89 and have been very pleased. At the current $50 clearance price, they are a steal and I am contemplating buying another. The FAT+ does not have the glitzy video jukebox/fan-art interface that higher priced players have, but the simple interface it does have is clean and works reliably -- I like lists of titles organized in folders, anyway. As a DVD.iso player, I have found the FAT+ to be flawless with the v2.2 firmware in terms of both playback and DVD.iso menu support. Streaming DVD.iso over ethernet works like a charm even using a pair of powerline adapters to connect it back to the NAS. The overwhelming bulk of my collection is DVD.iso stored on a remote NAS, so flawless DVD.iso playback over ethernet is important to me. Trickplay functions (FF and RW) for DVD.iso work smoothly over ethernet at all speeds.

BD rip playback is adequate but lacking:

• It is most suited to playback of BD.m2ts files from an attached USB drive.
• Playback of BD.m2ts from an attached USB drive is flawless -- no stuttering or audio dropouts; FF and RW work smoothly at all speeds.
• It won't stream high bitrate BD.m2ts rips over ethernet without stuttering and losing audio.
• It can understand a BD.iso file but will only play back the largest .m2ts file in the STREAM folder.
• It doesn't understand the playlist in a BD.iso: you don't get chapter skip functionality; if your title is authored as seamless branching, only the largest .m2ts segment will be played.
• It will only pass through core audio and not HD audio. It has no problem extracting the core audio from a BD.m2ts rip that contains only the HD audio track.
• It doesn't support forced subtitles.
• It doesn't support management/loading of an attached USB drive either locally or remotely over the network. To load titles to the USB drive you have to detach it from the FAT+ and attach it to your PC. This makes it completely impractical to use a multi-bay USB enclosure or any USB drive other than a USB-powered drive. Most disappointing since you really need to use a USB drive for BD.m2ts playback.

[note] high bitrate BD.m2ts streaming over ethernet was tested by locating a NAS unit (D-Link DNS-321) right next to the FAT+ and connecting the two through a dedicated 5-port Netgear 10/100 switch with 3' cables. Nothing else on the switch except the uplink to the router.

Funny, I ended up there last night and did get it working -amazing. Thanks for the tip, I'm sure others here will put it to use too.

Now, if I could just find a similar way to get my WD Live to work I'd be very happy. What ever tricks work for the Seagate did nothing to resolve the same problem with the WD....

Thanks for that very detailed reply Kelson!
Looks like I should update to v2.20, cause I do frequently use FF/RW and quick skip.
As far as BD rips to .iso and .m2ts.... I really don't have any, so any issues the FAT+ has playing them won't be a problem with me

For $49.95 I don't see how you could go wrong with the FAT+ for a simple no-frills media player.

what is the best wi-fi adapter for this?

Back on page three of this thread- this one was reported working:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-066-_-Product

I should have prefaced my question by stating that I actually ordered that one last night, but this morning was worried that it may not still work because it had been so long since that post. I was wondering what people are currently using if anything. Thanks.

I believe another shortcoming of the FAT+ is that it will perform a 3:2 pulldown on 1080p/24 sources instead of passing it through so BD movies looks less like film. Otherwise, it is a handy streamer until the other streamers get their prices down and firmware stable.

I have two and can't complain since I have no problems with the folder list interface. It sure beats changing out discs.

This one works fine. $9.99 shipped with coupon code. It's one of the daily deals today at Meritline.

Airlink101 Wireless 11N Mini USB Adapter

Scroll down the page. 11th item down from the top.

My player arrived yesterday... setup and fw update were a snap...

Sweet little unit for $49.95- just ordered one for a work associate

It is actually quite a nice player. I bought one on a whim from newegg while they still had the PayPal thing and free shipping. Hard to beat for the price.

Philip

I found that with firmware v2.20, you can't use the slideshow function. After a few photos are displayed, the slideshow and the FAT+ freezes. The only way to recover is to remove power from the device and reboot. I reverted to firmware v1.55 since it does not suffer from the slideshow freeze and the audio problem as described by Kelson can be corrected with a few clicks of the remote.

Seagate has advised that a new firmware (2.22) is in the works.

Funny, I just discovered this today. I was flipping through a file of pictures and after a while the system froze up. Had to kill the power to reset. PITA.

Thanks for posting this - I've been searching all weekend wondering why some of my MKV bluray rips (some compressed, some untouched in video) would stutter during high-action scenes or right from the start of the movie (ie. Avatar). I knew it wasn't a network issue since I have an HTPC on the same wired network with WHS serving all the MKV's and stuttering/choppy playback has never been an issue with the HTPC.

It's too bad about this limitation because it's a waste to have to buy an external hard drive just for FAT+ when I have all my video collection already saved to my WHS box. And I've invested in wiring up the house with cat6 cables! I was hoping to have this set up for my wife on an LCD so she doesn't need to go through the HTPC with XBMC and turn on the projector/AVR etc etc just to watch a movie.

Is this limitation found in the other media players like Patriot Box Office or the Boxee? I understand most of these players use the same Realtek chip? Maybe it's too much to hope that this can be fixed with a future firmware

The FAT will have problems trying to playback B.R. over the network, about a 1/4 of my BR. ripps have stutter and audio drop outs.It does great playing from a USB external H.D..No problems at all with lower bit rate D.V.D.S.

I think I read it has something to do with the network card in the FAT.I think that The DUNE, NETGEAR, SAGE ,POP BOX,players do better with streaming and network but at a LOT higher price point.

All of these players have issues it just comes down to doing some reading on the diff. threads and picking the one that has the least problems on the issues that are important to you.After reading these threads almost daily for a while I would be leaning toward the Dune or Netgear 550 but for now the FAT will get me by for what I paid for it.

You are citing an old post of mine. Take a look at #302 for the latest status with the recent v2.2 firmware. It still is good that you are reading back a few pages since there is still a lot of info that is relevant -- i.e. methods for getting around the lack of support for forced subtitles and seamless branching.

Nearly all the entry-mid level players have problems streaming high bitrate BD rips over ethernet. If that is what you need then you need to be looking at the higher end players: PCH, Dune, Netgear NTV550 (I'm personally following the NTV550 closely for my next player). They offer full support for BD rips including BD menus, forced subtitles, seamless branching, chapter skip and HD audio pass-through. Regardless of a title's overall average bitrate, the max BD bitrate is 48Mbps (video+audio) and nearly every title I have ripped reports a max bitrate of 48Mbps (MediaInfo). The FAT+ seems able to deal with brief spikes from lower bitrate BD rips but not with sustained excursions that you get with higher bitrate titles. You can help this along a lot by removing the HD audio from the title during the rip. The FAT+ will only pass core 5.1 audio anyway, so having the HD audio in the rip just adds useless bitrate overhead.

Utilitarian list-based interface aside, the FAT+ is an excellent network streamer for DVD.iso rips and TiVo HD recordings. If your diet consists of primarily DVD.iso and you can live without BluRay (and honestly, on a 50" plasma I keep wondering if it is really worth the hassle and expense) then the FAT+ delivers flawless playback for a rock bottom price (while supplies last). If your diet is primarily BD, I can honestly say to side-step the FAT+ and go for a higher-end player. Although it plays BD.m2ts perfectly from an attached USB drive, having to detach the drive and cart it to your PC for loading severely limits it's utility -- it gets old real quick. If the FAT+ had remote management capability for attached USB drives it wouldn't be so bad, but it doesn't and I consider that to be one of it's biggest short-comings.

So I got mine today. The way it navigates the network for shares and plays movies is nice. There was one quirk though. I had a folder with 3 movies in it

Blade
casino royale
Kill Bill

When I play casino royale, it plays the FBI warning, then proceeds to seemlessly playing Kill Bill. If I hit info on the Seagate, first it will show Casino Royale, but after some point it will jump to Kill Bill. Very Strange!

My biggest problem though is Netflix. It wont connect to the server!? My Vizio TV will connect and play with no problem. But when I try to connect my Seagate to activate Netflix on it, it will say that it can't connect to the server.

Has anyone seen this?

I updated the firmware as soon as it was connected. I never tested it before the firmware update.

There's a long thread on Netflix Server Error on the Seagate forum:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/FreeAge...ror/td-p/71562

I'm still having a terrible time with remote lags, especially with Netfix. I'm now using my Harmony remote not the original. I can almost do a 3 count after hitting a button before the Seagate responds, is this normal?

Matt, I did find that the Seagate isn't the most responsive box when it comes to the remote. I often had to hit things more than once to get them to register. That's with both my harmony and the stock remote that it comes with. You could try messing with the delay within the harmony software.

I see the same lag on the FAT+ with the OEM remote and my Harmony remote.
Gave one of the FAT+ units to a work associate as a gift.... he instantly noticed and mentioned the remote lag too.... so I think it's common.

Never experienced that one. I have folders on my NAS with 20-30 DVD.iso rips in them (both full disk and main title rips) and have never experienced it jumping to another title from what I selected to play.
The device has to be activated for Netflix before it can be used. You do this from the setup menu to get a key you have to input into your netflix account. Have you done that? I know Netflix limits the number of devices you can have Netflix aware to, I think, 5. Are you over that number?

I have found that remote lag with Netflix is not uncommon. I prefer to use my TiVo HD for Netflix streaming rather than my FAT+ and use a Harmony 880 remote. My TiVo responds instantly to the remote until I use Netflix. Then it lags and misses button pushes like crazy. It must be the Netflix interface software is not all that good.

On other operations, especially network browsing, the FAT+ does take a few seconds to respond. I think that is just a reflection of the horsepower of the units processor. As long as playback is smooth, and it is, I can live with the lags.

Looking through the settings menu, I see an option for DivX registration for DivX Plus HD Certification.

Is that only to allow playback of DivX DRM files? Or does that activate a wider range of codecs than the player already supports?


One more question. In the video settings, the HDMI 1080p/60hz Option is there, but greyed out and I can't select it. My TV definitely supports 1080p, which I've tested with a manual output setting on my Blu-ray player.

Does anyone else have a problem selecting HDMI 1080p output? On the Seagate forum, I found a few mentions of the same problem. One poster said he could select 1080p only when connected over component. Someone else said switching to a different HDMI input allowed them to select the option.

Any tips to make the HDMI 1080p option selectable?

I'm connected via HDMI and at one point I had selected 1080p, but went back to auto.

Thanks for the reply. I put mine back on auto too. I tried a few different settings and connections to get the 1080p option to let me select it, but I couldn't get it to work.

I have it running through a switcher, but most of the time the other display is off (and unplugged). I guess there may be some sort of handshake issue, even though the switcher seems to pass 1080p from my Blu-ray player.

I can live with 1080i/auto. I was just wondering if this might be a common issue that had an easy work-around to enable selection of 1080p output.

My FAT+ also goes through a (Monoprice) HDMI switcher.
1080p is available in the FAT+ settings menu, but once selected.... it's rather flakey, 1080p through the same switch/cable is also flakey on my PBO media player. So for the time being I went back to 1080i on the FAT+ and it's been 100% reliable.

Because of other needs not related to this issue- I have a new 4X1 HDMI 1.3b Certified Switcher (http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2) and new 24AWG CL2 High Speed HDMI Cables on order from Monoprice- we'll see if that solves the 1080p issue.

Thanks for the info. I'm using a Monoprice 4x2 switcher.

Last night, I had the FAT+ turned on with the TV on another source and when I switched the switcher to display the FAT+ signal, I saw "1080P" show on the FAT+'s own on-screen info display for a few seconds on the Home menu. That's with HDMI Auto.

It still doesn't allow me to select 1080P in the settings menu, but maybe it sometimes auto-selects 1080P when I switch back and forth between switcher inputs.

This does not answer your problem but is provided as information. I have my FAT+ connected to an Onkyo AVR via HDMI and the Onkyo feeds a Panasonic plasma via HDMI. I have the FAT+ set to HDMI Auto. The Onkyo receiver is a 5-port HDMI repeater and does no upconversion of the video signal -- just passes through the source.

The FAT+, set to HDMI Auto, sends everything out as 1080p - DVD, BD and FAT+ menus. That is according to the display on my plasma. The setting for 1080p/60 is not grayed out and could be selected if I wanted, but I just leave it at auto with the same result.

Low quality HDMI switches are often a problem for some components. What is the behavior if you eliminate the switch and connect direct to your TV.

Thanks. I read it all. Same problem except it seems people there feel their issue is fixed. My issue is the same, but it is not fixed. Im sending it back. I already paid for the RMA shipping Wish newegg would spring for it since its not really my fault. Oh well. Money vs. stress...