Argosy HV335T - Anyone know anything?

Hey I'm not the only person wondering about this. Will it play MyHD recordings?

I was going to ask this question yesterday. I picked up the HV676 around the holidays for $40. I'm just playing my ripped DVDs off a USB HD on a small 720p TV, so I don't have a lot of technical needs, and it works fine. I thought the addition of the 3.5" HD capability and N wireless would be nice so I was happy to see the sale this morning. Unfortunately, despite the fact that there is next to no discussion of them on the web, they must have sold out quickly!

Crap, there goes the discounted price on the sell out!

I got the same email from newegg and wondered if it was mod-able.

If I could drop 2TB of storage, Win7, XBMC, and maybe a BD drive in place of the existing DVD; then this would make for an awesome (and inexepensive) HTPC!

If I'm not mistaking, the unit does not contain a DVD drive. However, it plays DVD folders and ISOs.

My question is, will it play Blu-ray ripped ISOs? If so, I'll buy one immediately!!! Does anyone know?

If it's based on the Realtek 3.0 SDK it will most likely support BD ISO.

Currently you can buy a few devices that will do BD ISO. In the sub-$100 price range, the ASUS Oplay HDP-R1. Firmware 1.17 includes this feature. You can get the ASUS Oplay HDP-R3 to get your wireless N if that's necessary for $30 more. You might be hard pressed to stream a BD ISO over wireless though. It's possible, but I would recommend wiring it up directly if possible. The wireless version does come with an card reader built in though which is not included on the R1 version.

For a bit better support for subtitling and other features, you might want to look at the Xtreamer or PlayOnHD. These are bit more expensive though. Both have pretty good support and regular updates. I would say the Xtreamer has a better GUI interface.

It's designed to be a settop box so your ability to mod it is fairly limited. Assuming it's based on the Realtek 3.0 SDK, out of the box it will make an 'adequate' HTPC. The interface certainly isn't as polished as XBMC but it will play your movies and music.

I've only seen one video of the GUI for the Argosy and somehow they made it look worse than the one that Realtek gives you. At that price range you're better off getting the Asus OPlay.

Will any of these boxes play TS files from a MyHD tuner card in HD? I was also looking at the WD Live TV HD.

Wow, nice to see someone else out there with a MyHD card!

My only requirement for a media player is that it will play files recorded by my MDP-130.

But I think all players can handle .ts files, right?

Maybe we should throw this question in the HTPC section.

Sounds like the MyHD files are TP, and these just came back online at New Egg. I just don't see if this will play a TS or TP HD file.

Doesn't say whether it will play .vob files. Anybody know?

It's impossible to get onto Argosy's website...

Priced very tempting, but I can't find any reviews. Hard to say how it will performed given that the company cannot even produce a correct PDF file for their user manual and FAQ links on their web site.

How can you trust the product firmware to be bug free when they can't even produce a PDF file correctly?

Well its back in stock at NewEgg for those early adopters who could then report back

I thought I had a problem downloading the pdfs from their site until I noticed they were zip files.

Their website says it does.

Looks like it should do the VOB's

MEDIA SUPPORT

Audio Support
MP3, WAV, OGG, WMA, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital®, DTS®

Video Support

MPEG-1(MPG/DAT), DVD Folder(IFO)/DVD ISO, MPEG-2(MPG/VOB/TS/M2TS), MPEG-4(Xvid/AVI/MP4/MOV/M4V), H.264/AVC/AVCHD(AVI/MKV/FLV/ MOV/M4V/TS/M2TS), VC-1(AVI/MKV/M2TS) , WMV9 (AVI/WMV/MKV), RM/RMVB(720p)
File Extension AVI, MKV, MPG, VOB, IFO, TS, M2TS, MOV, M4V, WMV, FLV, RM, RMVB, ISO

Photo Support JPEG(baseline), BMP, GIF, PNG

DVD Folder DVD Menu/Audio/Subtitle/Angle Selection
Xvid Subtitle Format IDX/SUB, SRT, SSA, ASS, SMI

Music Slideshow
Music playback during photo slideshow

What about the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+? I hear that can handle BD ISO. Do any of these players handle BD ISO with menus? That would be the selling point for me.

I have the Popcorn Hour A-110 on the living room 52" LCD and the WDTV on the bedroom LCD. I can't stand the WDTV but love the Popcorn Hour which seems to be able to take anything (format-wise) I throw at it.

I am tempted to pull the trigger on the Argosy if it is going to be better than the WDTV or if it will be a good alternative to the Popcorn Hour.

The lack of support/information really has me pulling back though.

doesnt seem to have 5.1 support.

It doesn't decode the DD or DTS, but should pass it through HDMI or the optical output.

If it plays DVD iso's and can get 5.1 channels through HDMI in raw /pass through mode it should be a good buy-see Newegg has a discount coupon up to Feb 10.Hopefully it will also play multichannel dts wav files through the coaxial digital out into the receiver .Will let you all know

Where did you find the discount coupon?

Used dealcatcher
http://www.dealcatcher.com/search/Argosy

then select the HV676 link for the coupon

That's the wrong model.

I love this one enough that I am going to order a 2nd one.

I put a 2T drive in mine (Beware that formatting the SATA drive to NTFS took more than 12 hours via a USB cable and Vista.)
This is my first Video Box and compared to my PS3 & HTPC, it makes life very good, no disks to swap, no long waits for an OS to boot.

It is not a very classy menu system, but it works great for a $90 toy.
Only problems I have had so far after a 5 daZe of playing with it are:
1) You must disconnect the computer USB cable before you can turn on the playback mode.
2) After uploading files, The Hard Drive could not be accessed in the Menu, I needed to shut down the unit (press and hold the big blue button for several seconds) then when I powered it back up, it would access the drive.
3) It DOES NOT recognize Blu Ray iso format.
It does do remuxed m2ts files but you loose menus and chapters.

Being new at ripping discs to HD, I may be missing something, and it would be good to hear from anyone who has gotten around this problem.

Standard DVD iso's work great.
I have not tried uploading my HD DVD's yet.

For video output, I use the composite output for testing and the HDMI for 1080P TV.
I have not tried to see if both work at the same time. (Useful if you run 2 boxes cuing up one while the other is playing)
I still need to try it on my 720P Projector, but I assume it will work fine there also.

Audio output is OK via the stereo output, Excellent through the HDMI into my 5.1 system. I have not tried the optical output.

And lastly, MP3's play fine and you can browse through your photo album while the audio player is running.

How about linking up to a NAS or other PC's on a network?

I don't serve video over my home network, so I have not tried that feature.

I now have about 50 DVD's & 4 Blu Ray's on it and have only used about 25% of the 2T Hard disk. I just hope the HD never crashes on me.