Viewsonic NexTV VMP75 (has Netflix & Web Browser) - Page 6

Well, it could not be without flaws. I noticed that it has problems with some video files it reports as just MPEG4. Here is video information for such file which doesn't play smooth but jerky:

I did notice a little jerkiness when played in vlc as well. It's probably more noticeable when played on a big screen. So I'm not sure if this is a player problem or video just encoded that way.

It might be the low bitrate.

Yes, it will display thumbnail or icon (depends on the mode) for the jpg file even on network share. For example, in the "big thumbnail" mode in you case you will see two thumbnails - one for the picture and another for the movie and the movie is going to play only if the focus (cursor) is on the movie thumbnail. If you move cursor to jpg file the movie stop playing and mkv file will show generic movie thumbnail. And I said it's going to play the beginning of the video? I just checked and it looks like you can watch the whole movie like that . At least I was waiting long enough and it was still playing the movie.

The "big thumbnail" mode doesn't allow enough space under thumbnail itself so if the name of the file is long you won't see full name there, but it shows it at the very bottom of the screen along with the 'file number/total number of files' count.

Thank you for your answer. I'll try to analyze other files I noticed some problems with and post the results if I find any correlation with bitrate.

Okay, so I'm holding the remote in my hand right now. Which button does that? I've only had about 20 minutes for play with it so far, read the manual and didn't see any mention of it.

Set up was fast and easy, and it hasn't crashed and died on me yet. So it's got the Popbox beat already.

A few questions: it recognized PlayOn and let me browse through the listings on Hulu, but when I tried to play something it said format not supported. Anyone else try it yet? PlayOn through my PS3 has this issue occasionally, and it's usually a network problem. I guess I'll try it again later.

Some unused buttons on the remote that the manual lists as "reserved": One of them is "Record"? Interesting. Wonder if there are any future plans for that.

I'm off to play with it some more. First impression is very good.

The 'INFO' button does it when you browsing files. I was just pushing buttons and discovered that.


It does not support flash so you might need to enable trans-coding in PlayOn.
(Technically it supports .flv container if content is encoded H.264/AVC. I guess, this is as close as you can get to flash. Not sure how YouTube works so.)


In earlier version of the manual from Viewsonic website only 'FUNC' was "Reserved" and 'RECORD' was "Record streaming video being played into HDD."


Glad you like it!

Does anyone with this unit know whether it supports PGS subtitles when playing back the m2ts file from a ripped Blu Ray?

PGS subtitles are not listed as supported. To be sure I can test it for you if you give me a file to test.

Looks like I ran into my first problem. I click on Netflix, it says "Start Netflix", then goes to a black screen and doesn't do anything.

EDIT: I did a reset under settings and it's coming up now.

Same happened to me last Saturday. I thought it's broken, but during a week it started exactly like it should according to the manual. So I checked it just now and it started again normally (I still don't have it activated, even a trial). It seems to me this has nothing to do with the unit itself but more related to the Netflix servers being busy and device not being able to connect. So, try it again a bit later.

BTW, have you updated the firmware?

I think I have the latest firmware, that's what it tells when I try to do the internet update, unless there's something newer available on the site.

Just watched an episode of Spartacus through Netflix and it's working fine. Added a bunch of stuff to my queue, closed out, and went back in and it came right up this time.

I'm only on the free trial right now but this may convince me to actually pay for it.

Can it handle high bitrate files streamed on a wired LAN?

Look at test results here

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post19000204

The highest bit rate I tested was 30mbps and it played perfectly. If you can give me an example with the higher bit rate I can test it.

Can you try this one?

http://streams.videolan.org/misc/sample2.m2ts

Sorry for the size it is the one I could find.

Good one! 40 Mbps and PGS subtitles as well (according to the MediaInfo).
BTW, the size is not a problem, I have FiOS.

I put the file on my server, on a system drive. It's single, 7200rpm, 2.5" Seagate HDD. The player is accessing the file over the network. Server and the player are connected to the same switch, Trendnet TEG-S80g (Gigabit, 8-ports)

Video played perfectly, I don't see any stattering at all.

There are 4 audio tracks, first is DTS-MA, was down-mixed and played fine. Other track are AC3 and the played fine as well. When you switch audio tracks "on the fly" during playback the clip sometimes is re-buffering.

Subtitles. There are 6 tracks according to the MediaInfo. I was enabling each track at the beginning of the clip, during all these fancy logos playing, and played with each track to the very end of the clip.
Track 1 (English, dialogs only) played fine.
Track 2 (English, dialogs and sounds) played fine.
Track 3 (French ?) played fine.
Track 4 (Spanish ?) played fine.
Track 5 didn't show anything.
Track 6 shows only 'FRANCIA - 1641' (on the top of the screen, when embedded text 'France - 1641' shows at the bottom) and nothing after that.

The noticeable difference about PGS subtitles. Supported subtitles show as letters with outlining and allow to change the color combination (white/black, black/white, etc.), the font and position. The PGS subtitles (at least in this clip) show as just white text, no outlining that is why the letters look "fat". All my attempts to change color combination, font or position didn't make any difference. But they are perfectly readable.

Thanks for the test! The fact that you couldn't adjust color, font, outlining etc. of the subtitles makes sense because PGS is a graphical format, so those subtitles are essentially a bitmap.

Hoary, search on Google for NMT DVD5. You will get a link to a P2P protocol file.. This is one of the legal ones you can download (has test files for various scenario). The whole suite is approximately 3.5 GB, but you get quite a number of test files.

The test suite has streams going all the way upto 90 Mbps for you to test.

I've seen my same two issues listed here but no real answers/resolutions for them

I have another Media Player on my network that works flawlessly viewing all my shared files/folders and it plays PlayOn without issue

I've had the VMP75 for 3 days now and can't seem to find the right combo to make the same shared media and PlayOn work on it

It will list the name of my PC/Media server under "Network Shared Files" - and it lists "PlayOn (PCs' name)" under UPnP - but clicking on the PCs name under network shared folders gets a "No available file to play back" -- and clicking on PlayOn under UPnP shows all the content/shows/episodes but gets a "File not supported" message

The VMP75 will play all of the HD/BD rips of ISOs and MKVs from a USB connected HDD - but no luck over the network and no luck with PlayOn either

Any suggestions to resolve these two issues would be greatly appreciated

I'll look it up, thank you!

I would recommend to start troubleshooting by shutting down the PlayOn and making VMP75 able to access the network shares. Once you have this accomplished, try to bring the PlayOn up again and configure it.

It seems to me that VMP75 has some kind of priority configured somewhere in the firmware for the UPnP devices and this could interfere with it ability to access regular network shares. Here is why I think so.
I started with just regular network shares which I setup on a system running older version of the windows (pre windows 7/windows vista). Didn't have any problems accessing network shares from the start.
I also have a laptop running windows 7 and I noticed that it was showing VMP75 in the network browser as UPnP device. I right-click on it and and got a menu which gave me an option to allow VMP75 to access the laptop using UPnP. I activated it and got access to media files on my laptop which were under my user name in my videos, my pictures, etc. BTW, cannot access mkv files this way, they just do not show up.
Nevertheless, I noticed couple of strange things after I activated UPnP access on that laptop. First, when I'm browsing network shares on my system with the older windows and decide to get out to the main menu by pressing 'back' button on the remote, I'm getting to the UPnP menu, not the Network Shares menu even so I started browsing from the Network Shares menu. Second odd thing, when I turn on VMP75 and the only system is up at that moment is the windows 7 laptop, then if I turn on the system with the older version of windows, that system does not show up in the Network Shares menu for quite a while. I'm not sure what is going on and I guess I have to read more about windows 7 and how it presents itself in the network.

Thanks for the reply/advise Hoary

I have tried to configure the shares w/out PlayOn running, to no avail

This is the strangest issue I've seen for a long time

I talked to Viewsonics' tech support and after a long while on the phone the tech had no idea what was happening and said he would confer with his superoirs and get back to me later that evening - I heard nothing from him so the next day I contacted them again with the case # and was told they were still 'working' on it -- I finally got an email that said to upgrade to the latest firmware (which I had already done, and told the phone tech so) - and if the frmw update didn't fix the issue send it in for repair or replacement
Well I certainly didn't want a 3 day old VMP75 repaired or possibly replaced with a refurbished one - so I arranged for an RMA where I bought it and ordered another one at the same time
I'm going to keep the 1st one on hand until the 2nd one arrives so I can keep trouble shooting it and then see how the 2nd one acts when it arrives - but I have a feeling it will act the same - if so I'll RMA it also and maybe order another Partoit Box Office, it functions flawlessly - as I was hoping the VMP75 did also to take advantage of the Sigma chips' features and the built in internet content, which does work fine

I'll double check your sharing advise again, but it's kind of a "been-there-done-that" scenario - who knows maybe I'll stumble onto a fix - and maybe I do have a defecive device - we'll see in a few days when the 2nd one arrives

I keep you posted if anything fixes my issue - and when the 2nd one arrives

Thanks again

gmd024

What OS are we talking about? Is your system running Windows 7?

Yah - sorry, I should have mentioned that - Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

I have my theory on that matter but I have to test it first on my system. I'll do it tonight when I get home and post an update. The OS I have on my laptop is Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

Great - I appreciate the help

OK, here is an update.

As I said earlier, my laptop has Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit installed. I created a new standard user, created a password for it. After that I shared a folder, contained a few avi files, with that user giving it just a read-only access. I turned on VMP75 and was able to access that folder through Network Shared Folders in the menu without any problems and played some videos.

What we are dealing here is the authentication protocol mismatch. I hit that problem before, when tried to access shares on a stand-alone Windows server 2003 from windows 7 computer and was able to fix it. That is why it works for me now.

First, how to fix it. All we need to do is to change one value in the system security policy. In Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise the following should work. Go to 'Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Run' (or win+r - click on 'r' while holding 'windows' key). The new small window pops up, 'Run'. Type in it 'gpedit.msc' and click 'OK'. New window pops up. Navigate to: Computer Configuration > windows settings > security settings > Local Policies >security options > "Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level". Change the value to "Send NTLM response only". You have to save and restart the system in order for change to take effect.

For Windows 7 Home Premium the procedure is a little more complicated as it doesn't have the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc). I can write it down later if somebody with that version will get the same problem.

Brief technical details. NTLM is Microsoft authentication protocol used when no Active Directory domain exists ("workgroup" network). Some additional info can be found in wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLM . Windows 7 by default configured to use strictly NTLMv2 but VMP75 appears to understand NTLM (aka NTLMv1) only and this is what that change is about. If you using your computer in a corporate enviroment, this could lead to some problems, but for home use this should not affect you.

Thank you for the info, but unfortunately that didn't work for me. I followed you instructions, created a new user, made the change to the group policy and rebooted. Went back in to make sure the change saved, and it did, tried to access my Network Shared Folders and it prompts me for user name and password. I used the creds of the account I just created and log in failed. I used my account and my admin account and they failed also. When you made the change on your machine, did the VMP ask for log in credentials when you access the shares?

Yes, it did.

I looked through the log of changes I made and found the second one. Try to change "Network access: Allow anonymous SID/Name translation", set it to 'disable'.

Looking through the log I see that I changed them a few times back and forth, but so far this is the only two changes I made.

It was already set to disabled.