Netgear NeoTV 550 - Page 203

How is your ISO connected?

I use a share on a Windows 7 PC for my BD ISO files. There is a wireless bridge between my PC and my 550. I was having some stuttering problems. The 550 Network test showed a throughput around 38 Mbps. I relocated my base station and bridge using a 5GHz N connection and throughput is now over 75 Mbps. No more stuttering problems.

I also have all audio formats set to bit streaming. I find this eliminates other problems with the 550.

Yea, mine is a wired connection and I have never had any problems with 100s of other iso/bdmv I have played.
I think there is something weird about Expendbles 2 playlist. Have not tried ripping just the right playlist to bdmv.

There does seem to be something defective about the Exp. 2 BD.

I have a wired connection from my Win7 desktop in our office to a Gigabit hub by our TV, I used to use a 5ghz bridge but had stuttering issues when serving to my PS3 which I used before the 550.

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^^
What throughput does the Network Test on the 550 show?

Is the network test in the Netgear software for configuring the share?

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^^^
go to
settings
network
network test

I will check in the morning before work and post.

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Does the NETGEAR NTV550 have BD lite or does it only have full BD menus when playing BD ISOs? I'm looking for a small portable player to play my BD ISOs. I'm looking at the PopBox V8 and the Netgear. Since the NTV550 also does full menus that would be nice if it also has a BD lite option. And since it's cheaper than the V8 right now it seems like a pretty good deal.

only full.

15 minutes on tsmuxer will get you the lite version though.

Thanks. At least now I know it's only full BD menus.

But that would be 15 minutes times 1500+ BD ISOs. Over 375 hours.

Ran the test sorry for the delay. My folder tests ran between 45 Mbps and 75Mbps.

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After watching a full menu ISO BD ran test with better result- 74-76Mbps consistent

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This should be OK for most Blu-Ray rips. The 45 Mbps could be marginal at times and result in stuttering. If you were getting 60Mbps or more I wouldn't expect any stuttering at all unless there were something strange about your rips.

One problem could be file fragmentation adding extra seek time when reading the file.

Could be, only seems to happen with select titles (only when doing full menu ISO). When I take those and convert to main movie MKV then no issues at all, its weird. Just a quirk though and can live with it for being able to have my library 100% digital and letting me ease the use of my BD player for 3D and rentals.

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I own 4 NeoTV 550 units and just love these... have owned them for over 1 year now. My #1 requirement was full menu BD ISO support, and no other player I have found (yet) does this.

However I have had one issue that is very annoying, and wondering if it's just me. It seems that my units will randomly lock up on boot up and I have to unplug and replug back in to get it to boot up properly. Sometimes it is more frequent, and I get so frustrated that I just unplug it after each use. This time I go to plug it in and won't boot up... just get rapid yellow flashes on the LED. What is even more odd, is that all 4 units are now doing this. I am running the original base firmware (on purpose, I have my reasons) and so I tried updating to the latest versions on all of them and still nothing, can't boot up at all.

Anyone else having these issues?

Never had that issue. I can't believe these are $90 now. What a steal! Wish they would come out with a 3d one. Why anyone pays PCH and Dune prices is beyond me.

mulox, it is possible that the capacitors in yours died. Another thing you can try is leaving them unplugged for a day (this worked for a Dune player I read online - bad cap - eventually replacing the cap would fix it).

I am having a problem with the SD card slot not working anymore in one of my neotvs (I bought two when they were $90 from B&H).

With that said, I use my Dune Smart player for everything now - although it does have issues with seamless branching on some discs unless I turn off bitstreaming and let the Dune decode the audio. The NeoTVs I have stutter over the network frequently, but they seem to work fine using attached hdd. Guess we can't win them all hehe.

Thanks maxleung... bad capacitors crossed my mind, but what are the odds that all 4 of them are bad? And what's even stranger is that all 4 decided to misbehave at the same time, and they are in different rooms of the house. The main NeoTV that I use in the home theater room that gets 4 hours of daily use is connected to a power strip, which is plugged into a $300 APC backup battery that has line conditioning. Could this in some strange way hurt the unit? I have heard crazy things happen to comcast catv converters when connected to anything but the wall outlet, but not sure why, or if this applies to other electronics as well. The other 3 NeoTVs are also connected to UPS batteries (smaller, and no power strip in between).

Assuming it is a bad cap, how hard would it be to replace the cap on my own?

Yeah who knows? For all we know it could be a bug in the firmware that disables the neotv after a certain day! (geez I hope not). You could also be running into a known issue where you have to disconnect the ethernet cable FIRST before powering them on.

If it is a bad cap you'd have to figure out which one to replace and that is something I do not know how to find out - although you could open it up and check for bloated/leaky caps. Difficulty in replacing depends on whether or not you can solder and if you can read and interpret symbols on the circuit board.

Try seeing if it boots normaly with no ethernet attached and report back.

Hmmmm.... well, I actually ran across this issue about 1 year ago (on all 4 units). I pulled my hair out troubleshooting and even Netgear support was not helpful, even after escalating to tier 2. They did replace my main unit. In the end, I decided that since there was nothing I really needed in the newer firmware releases, that I would just keep them all on the original factory image.... and they have played fine now on factory firmware for about a year.

Now that the problem is back, I just don't know. I tend to lean more towards electrical/capacitor, since the issue starts with:
1. When I power it on, it won't boot up
2. Then I unplug after each use, and plug in just before watching as a workaround. But then after 2-3 weeks of doing that workaround, nothing works and it just won't boot up at all, even with factory resets

Now that all of the units have been unplugged for 3 days... I will see if I can get one to boot up tonight... first without ethernet/hdmi connected to it.

Well, after the units started acting up, I did unplug everything and let them sit for about an hour, and then only put the power plug back and none of them would boot up. What I would get is the flashing yellow with the usual Netgear splash screen on bootup, and then green for 1 second while it attempted to display, and then a blank/black screen and continuous flashing yellow for over 5 minutes.

However, after 3 days now of sitting unplugged, I did the same test and now all 4 of the units power on and work fine! They behaved as if they were new out of the box and forced me to run initial setup again. So it seems something is building up in them over time... which is why I tended to lean towards the capacitor theory. Actually, I did get the "your netgear has crashed, do you want to send data to netgear" and then it ran setup.

BTW, dumb question. I am running the original 3.0 stock firmware... and I came across a new 3.2.27 version (not published on netgear's downloads). Can I flash from 3.0 to this version, or do I need to flash in succession by first flashing to 3.2.16, and then .27?

Mulox, did you try wildchilds suggestion to try booting with the ethernet cable unplugged? Some people have had a problem booting with DLNA support activated on the Neo.

Also, I'm pretty sure you can just flash to the latest firmware.

Harry

Thanks for the tip! Of course I am fine now, as I did boot without ethernet... just not sure if that was the issue all along, or if waiting 3 days did anything to help.

Next time I have this issue I will make sure I unplug the ethernet before booting up to see if that fixes it.

Flashed to 3.2.27 from stock 3.0 with no problems!

Hi Mulox,

This is what I almost think, after some "rough" experimenting:

When you first power-up the Neo, the LED flashes yellow. I think that the firmware is fetching EDID data from the display at this point. If the Neo hangs here, it may be a display problem. When it gets past this point, it throws up the splash screen.

When the LED starts flashing yellow the second time, I think it is initializing the network. That would include fetching an IP address from a DHCP server, and accessing the configured shares. Since all four of your Neos were not working, I would suspect a network problem, such as your DHCP server being down.

Take this all with a grain of salt (or maybe a whole box of Morton's), as I have not verified any of this yet.

Thanks Mark... as someone with background in IT, that theory actually sounds very logical. Now I am actually eager to see it happen again, just to confirm this.

As I mentioned before, I hav been running stock 3.0 for over a year now, because my needs are basic (stream content from my NAS). Now that I am on 3.2.27, I decided to try some of the things that were known issues before, like playing youtube. Youtube still does not work for me... I thought this was addressed?

Also, I see 36-bit color is now an option... what do I need to be able to use this... does my source content have to be in a certain format, or does it just come down the electronics (my Onkyo and LCD projector)?

Hello,
I want to buy this player as a Christmas gift for my Dad. But from what I read from Newegg's feedbacks, it doesn't support "some European languages. Asian characters are not supported at all and after trying to go through two level 2 tech supports, the answer was they don’t have plan currently to support them. As is if you have Asian file name or subtitles in SRT text (UTF8) format, it only shows as blocks or nothing at all."
Is that true?
My Dad loves movies a lot, but he also definitely needs foreign subtitle.
Thank you for your prompt reply.