Netgear NeoTV 550 - Page 2

No, I have not played with a Dune. I tried to order a PCH C200 when they first came out, and they told me there was a problem with my credit card. NOT! My credit card works just fine. I think they just had way too many orders on day 1. I never tried to order one again. I looked at the Dune but just before I was about to order one, I got asked to beta the Neo.

The best thing I like about the Neo (and previous Netgear products) is the ability to create playlists on the fly. Pick a song and it starts playing. Keep searching your collection, find another song, select OK and it is added to a queue. You can build an entire playlist like this and then save it if you choose. This was a feature I had never seen on previous media streamers. You could always continue to search, but if you hit OK, it would stop play of the current song and then play that song. I love to be able to queue up many many songs at once just by browsing my collection. And now with the Neo, they have finally encorporated Gapless Playback. A long requested feature.

When you are browsing movies by Cover Art, pressing OK on the movie will then take you to a new screen, where the cover art is dimmed and stretched to fill the whole screen. The media info is then display (Movie Title, length, rating, synopsis, etc..). Pressing OK on that screen then brings up the detailed MediaInfo, just like the program MediaInfo displays. In fact, I'm sure they have licesnesed MediaInfo for this purpose. Personally I find this background can be distracting depending on the cover.

The NeoTV will display ALL your photos, media and music in one of 3 menus (Photo, Video, Music). Regardless if those file exist on different shares. However, there is an option called Live Folder Browsing, which does allow you to browse your shares just like you would on your PC. For photos well organized, this might be your best option.

Hello buffalofloyd

Thanks...very helpful. I like what I hear.

So, just to clarify, the NEOTV will just show ALL of my photos in the standard viewing mode? wow, that would be overkill...definitely need folders to manage photo viewing

Also, I assume the default music view is just an artist name, with album subdirectories...correct?

Thanks again for your extremely helpful comments

We'll probably get a new firmware this Friday. Let me do some checking on exactly how the photos are working. I typically just put my SD card in my TV and use that to view photos. I'll play with it this weekend and give you an update next week.

You can view music 8 ways to Sunday. By Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Decade, etc... Again, you also have the Live Folder Browsing, which if your music is organized by Artist/Album/songs, then you can navigate it that way as well.

Well, it's Beer-30 and my holiday week is starting!!!! Enjoy the weekend and catch you on Tuesday.

Nice to see that the NeoTV 550 is going through extensive beta testing.

I had been in touch with Netgear PR, and as you probably know, they shield us press guys from the actual engineers who can give proper answer to our queries.

This is the final set of questions / request for info that I had sent to the PR around 10 days back, but am yet to get an answer from them (maybe they wanted to send it along with the review unit, who knows!):

(i) MKV container with DTS-HD, DTS-HR, TrueHD audio streams (NTV550 only)

(ii) MKV files with audio header compression (both 550 & 350)

(iii) Support for PGS subtitles in MKV container (both 550 & 350)

(iv) Support for forced subtitles (very common in M2TS containers) in MKV. (The forced subtitles are present usually in streams with multiple subtitle tracks) (both 550 & 350)

(v) Extent of support for MKV chapters (even some high end players aimed at the enthusiasts have very poor support for MKV chapters, such as the HDI Dune players -- also based on the SMP 8642 and the TVIX players -- based on the RTL 1283) (both 550 & 350)

(vi) Extent of support for stylized subtitles (SSA and ASS) [ http://www.matroska.org/technical/sp...itles/ssa.html ] (both 550 & 350)

Can you comment on the above questions as a beta tester who has been with the product for the last 6 months? Sample files for all the above scenarios can be easily had by Googling. If you require any stream for a particular test, let me know.

Anyone? The new sage appears to be the ONLY player that can be used as a transport.

Hi, I can't answer this, but I just wanted to understand what you are asking for.
What are you asking for by "source-direct"? Untouched video?

Yes untouched video, 480i for ntsc dvd, 576i for pal dvds, 1080p23.976 for blu-ray films, 1080i for concert blu-ray, 1080p50 for uk documentary blu-ray etc. with no processing/scaling/deinterlacing/colour space conversion/etc.

This has to be done automatically based on content not manually via a setting.

Ability to disregard EDID and force all resolution/refresh rates also required in my case, but not required by most.

Actually, this is termed as 'native frame rate' by DViCO. It is definitely supported in TViX Slim S1, which I have been evaluating over the past few weeks.

Edit:

There is a master switch to turn on native frame rate. So, in the setup, you can indicate that 480i should be output as 480i, while 720p can be set to be upscaled to 1080p and so on. Basically, the setup menu provides all combinations which need to be setup only once.

You are correct on the Slim S1, I was following the thread on this player for this very reason (native frame rate) but if I'm not mistaken TviX still insist on crippling their players with bd-lite (or whatever it's called) which is why I have crossed it off my list and subsequently forgotten all about it.

Their implementation of native frame rate sounds spot on though. I wish netgear follows suit. /pats WDR3700 while typing this

The BD-Lite is a problem because they just don't have the Blu-Ray license (none of the Realtek streamers do, AFAIK).

Also, I don't see any media streamer with a Blu-Ray license costing less than $240 (the cheapest of the latest Dune series with that feature), other than the upcoming NTV550. But, Netgear is a big company, and I am not sure a company of such size will try to devote time to cater to the requirements of enthusiasts like us :|

Correct on the Realtek which is why I avoid them.

The new sage costs $149 and has a bd license. I will be buying either the sage or the netgear whatever is best, cost is of no importance as these cost peanuts compared to what I spend on my htpc. (stopped counting at 2K)

I don't think the Sage has a Blu-Ray license (it is based on the 865x processor which makes it ineligible for that according to Sigma Designs). Only Sigma Designs 864x products have Blu-Ray licenses AFAIK..

I read in a review on geektonic that the sage hd300 will do chapter and language support from bd iso, but not full menu support. So it sounds like if you are not using the sage as an extender to a box running sage tv and an external player, but rather as a standalone media streamer, then only the netgear will give you full bd support.

What exactly is BD-lite?

If BD-lite means: 1) it will do simple menus for, say, selecting episodes of a TV-BD; 2) read the playlist files for those titles authored as multiple .m2ts files; 3) properly handle forced subtitles in the as-ripped BDMV structure; but 4) not do BD-Live -- then that is probably enough for the majority of users.

There are many interpretations of BD-Lite, but the one that most streamers claim as BD-Lite is that clicking on the ISO plays back the largest M2TS file in the STREAM folder.

Some streamers like the TViX Slim S1 have support for change of audio language / subtitles, but no BD-Java support. Maybe this should be termed as 'Advanced BD-Lite' or 'Custom BD-Lite'.

Unfortunately, there is no standardised terminology here.

OK, if so that is a pretty "cheap" interpretation. Even my $100 Seagate FAT+ (recently selling for $65) can be considered to do BD-lite under that definition, since it plays BD.iso and allows selection of audio and subtitle tracks.


I kind of had that impression. For me, that means the term BD-lite has, for all intents and purposes, no meaning.

Thanks for the reply.

Just so I'm perfectly clear on this, you have BD.iso's sitting on your Readynas and you're streaming them through the NeoTV 550 with 1080P and bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS HD MA through HDMI? I just want to make sure you aren't talking about BD's off an external BD drive (for that I'd just get another PS3) or an external USB/eSATA HDD. If so, this sounds like the solution for me seeing as I already have the Readynas.

Thanks,

Well, yes and no. My BD iso's are sitting on my ReadyNAS. They do stream to my Neo. However, my audio connection to my receiver is optical.

I just assumed it had (although have been known to be wrong in the past) when I read comments suggesting full bd playback with menus etc.

Anyway I got confirmation that the sage while bitstreams lossless codecs it can only decode them to 2ch pcm which is unacceptable so it is out of the game.

I can't wait until people on here get their hands on the 550. Until then most is speculation as manufactures refer to generic terms like bd playback while crippling the player in any possible way.

I know the sage can playback bd with any dvd hd which I already have which can support your claim of no bd license.

Robkwil61....was there a new firmware version this past Friday? Did you have a chance to play with the photos? Can you select music to play during a photo slideshow?

I think I read there was a planned launch in October, but that seems unlikely unless they nail down the firmware really soon, right?

robkwil61...one more question for you (sorry!)

This box pulls metadata from the internet to populate album art, etc. right? That is great, but i'm wondering if you can disable it if you've already done that with Mymovies, etc. (which I haven't yet!).

I'm asking because I can imagine there will be some errors in any automated process, and if I've spend time cleaning a database myself, i'd rather use that.

People already have. Well, one person has. See here: NETGEAR NeoTV 550 (NTV550) review.

It's quite a long read but highlights seem to be full menu support for blu-rays, passthrough or downmixing of the major hd audio formats. Plus plenty of other things that are not on their previous streamers.

So, it looks like I'll be upgrading again

Skro... sorry, there was a new firmware this weekend but with the holiday, I did not get a chance to play with photos. To busy prepping for my Sunday party and too hung over on Monday. But you can do slideshows with music.

Just like the 9150, the Neo uses .TAG files. So if you've already configured your MyMovies to generate Netgear TAG files, you're good to go. Netgear plans to release a new software package called Movie Manager that will pull the meta data from internet sources and create these .TAG files. Hopefull the new software will work better than the current "Tag Tool".

Very interesting and positive review. I think I'm sold!
As the reviewer states, precaching would be nice. The "phone" interface for remote control looks really clunky this early, but I'm sure that will improve and would be a very nice addition.

i really can't think of much not to like about this, especially if they get Neflix/Amazon onboard.

Anyone know of a nice, quiet, slot loading external BD drive? I can plug that into this and get rid of a blu-ray player.

Excuse my ignorance but what would that give you? You can't rip directly from the bd drive to the Neo if that's what you're thinking of doing

Hi,

But I could use it as a bluray player for rented discs, right?

Hmm, possibly. According to the specs on the netgear website you can. Perhaps robkwil61 knows the answer for sure?

That is the concept. However the current firmware does not support it yet. As Netflix/Amazon is also not currently supported.