Netgear NeoTV 550 - Page 204

This media player has been discontinued, and there will be no more support for it.

Are there any apps like YouTube available similar to ntv300?

I just pulled the trigger on this. I wanted a small media player to use with my BD ISOs that I can take with me. I really wanted something that could handle full menus and BD lite but I figure it's a steal for the price. So I can forgo the BD lite. Although at home I will still use my PCH boxes and my Boxee Boxes.

It's $5 cheaper now. How do you like it Aaron?

It's still in the sealed box. I haven't had a chance to mess with it yet. And of course the price dropped. $85 with shipping is a steal. I thought the price might start going up. I didn't expect it to go down more.

Price has been around $85 for awhile on this thing at Staples.com. I scored a couple for friends with some $25 off coupons and for their basic purposes It has been fantastic. Is it what it was advertised to be? NO. But what it does for $80 or less is pretty damn good. I am currently on vacation in San Diego with one hooked up to my vacation TV!

Why didn't you tell us when it was still at staples?

Are you all streaming from a pc or locally via USB? I am using NFS for another 3D streamer mede8er 600x and works great so wondering if this works ok with that as well meaning no stuttering or drop outs on 2D iso or mkvs? I'm asking because I see the device is Not gigabit Ethernet.

I read on Amazon that someone had issues with Dolby True HD on a mkv file. Is this true bc most my 2Ds are mkv and even though most movies are DTS vs True HD. It would be nice to know.

As far as the boxart movie info etc. if you have the XML n text files from using another device like the mede8er 600x, does the neotv 550 just use those same files or does it have to use its own scrapper to pull in new files?


Thanks
Edited by kikkoman - 12/29/12 at 9:35pm

Gigabit Ethernet is not needed for playback of 2D BDS ISOs. Their bitrate will never exceed 54Mb/s. I have not opened my NTV550 yet but my Popcorn Hour C200, using 100BT, is rock solid with playback of any 2D BD ISO. Both boxes use a Sigma 864x series chip so I would expect a similar playback experience from the NTV550.

i use wired enet and never have a streaming issue. just standard windows file sharing. no need for nfs.

i do bluray iso/bdmv 99% of time, so dont have much experience with mkv. it would not surprise me if there were some issues though. my wdtv was better at mkv files i believe.

I always had issue with mkv with my neotv 550 but none with straight iso rips...

I only do MKV for DVD movies. I rarely rip any BD movies with MKV unless ClownBD or AnyDVD HD has issues with the particular movies I am trying to rip, which doesn't happen very often.

^ ^ ^

Thanks everyone for the above. I know it's easier to try to keep one format for everything, but I've been using 2D's with mkv's and 3D's with iso's. I usually keep 3D's as iso's to keep everything the same whereas I am not too picky with my 2D's. Also want to keep the space down, so I may have to stick with mkv's for both formats. But since the neotv 550 does full bd menu support, it is easier to rip to iso, I suppose. I guess a few GB's for each movie is not too big if you have terabytes of data.

Need to find out how to get my Win 7 to recognize my 3TB drive attached externally via a Dock, but I think I read I have to install it internally as a drive first for it to recognize correctly, then only can I pull it out and use it externally. Anyhow, I'll need to read up on that for sure. My external 3TB Seagate backup drive works just fine though in its own enclosure. I'm probably just missing some updates on the PC.

Thanks,

 

how about 24bit, 96Khz 5.1.. some DVD-audio rips come over like this.. can anyone confirm the 550 will play those?

Just got my 550. What a buggy POS!!!

I mainly got this device as a cheap way to stream 5.1 flacs, reading from a network share.

I've played with it for about 3 hours and have experienced the following:

-4 complete freezes requiring unplug/ power cycling
-it finds one SMB share, but not 2 others shared out in the same way on the network
-numerous playback audio cut outs
-numerous reversions to stereo on 5.1 flacs, requiring playing another flac and then going back to the first one which now magically plays back in 5.1
-iOS app does not work, nice bonus feature
-horrible and confusing GUI

The only semi reliable playback mechanism was via attached USB stick

I'll give it another night, but right now it looks like this steaming pile of crap is going back to amazon.



Was hoping I wouldn't have to get a $500 Oppo to get 5.1 flac streaming, guess I'm back to saving for one.

I still haven't opened mine yet. Although I need to do it before the weekend so I can use it at my GFs house.

I agree

Not me. I already had a NFS share setup for my WDTV equipment so it saw my shares right away. I added another share for my 5.1 24/96 flacs which also took three minutes to accomplish. Everything played without a hitch. Disclaimer: I have not run the thing for long enough to say for certain that I am bug free. From my limited time last night, everything worked.

My only error was using the volume control on the remote. When turned up all the way it just makes the sound distort. Leave it at 0db.

I hope that you guys get your bugs worked out. It seems to be a great product when you consider it price!

There is a setting to prevent the Volume buttons from doing anything.

Xekester

I just set mine up. Setup was a breeze. It found all my shares over SMB and NFS with no issues. It actually scanned them extremely fast and quickly setup the cover art. Much faster than any other media player I had. I've tried a few BD ISOs and it has played them with no issues, at least the few minutes I messed with each one. It was just like sticking the disc in the BD player. This is faster than my C200. I might need to try selling my C200 and pick up another NTV550 instead. I'm upgrading to the 3.2.27 firmware right now. So hopefully I don't have any issues after the update. It came with the 3.2.16 firmware.

Not surprised you like it. It does bd-iso/bdmv as close to perfect as you can get.

As far as the other guy, who told you this was good at flac? Not me.

no, it wasn't you. if you look 7 posts up (on this page) you'll see i quoted another user who did. there are numerous other posts on here about flac usage well.

 

i'm not blaming anyone, BTW.. some people seem to have had a decent experience with this box, plenty of others have not, i'm in the later camp.

 

-the other guy

I played around with mine some more last night. It was very solid. The only thing I need to check is how well it works when connected directly to a TV, since that is how I would use it at my GFs house. My only real complaint is that it does not have a BD lite option so you could start playing the movie right away. But I knew that before I bought it. Also it doesn't have a back lit remote like the PCH boxes. For playing full BD menus, the NTV550 has been better than my C200 with everything I tried last night. It was noticeably faster. If it had BD lite menus it would make the NTV550 almost perfect for me. I'll use it some more for the next few weeks and if I have no issues I think I will sell my C200. It seems like they are selling for some decent prices. I just need to find an extra power supply I have lying around for the C200 if I sell it. Although by the time I decide to get a second NTV550, the prices will probably be back higher or it will be sold out.

Yeah, it definitely seems like a very polarizing piece of equipment. I count myself lucky because with the rips I've been playing, the only issue I've encountered is certain m2ts files where the playback time is jacked up, showing 99:99:99. That means I can't scan forward/backward, or have it resume the movie in the place I left off if I stop it.

Anyone encountered that and have a fix? If not, I can live with it.

aaron,
$79 for the neotv at jr.com. We use our neotv 550 for traveling all the time. No issues at all when hooked up directly to a tv. The only caveat is make sure the volume is set at ZERO on the neotv and leave it alone as it gets "wonky" and/or will distort if pushed to higher levels...

Thanks.

I got mine for 80% blu-ray playback and 15% internet radio and 5% photos (in terms of time used). Never had an issue with any of those features. Youtube doesn't work, but I have a real computer for that. For $90 (price at the time) I bought 2 of them and have been satisfied. It was a pity they killed it off. I have a older Readynas NV+ feeding it. I wish the support that the NV+ still gets was applied to the streamer.

Is there some way to hide the features that aren't used?

Although I am extremely disappointed by the 550's poor Internet Streaming support, for playback of local files is the best I have used. I have absolutely no problems playing FLAC 5.1 files... they play just as if I had a DVD-Audio disc in my Oppo.

Because of the outstanding FLAC supprt and DVD/BD ISO playback, I find it hard to move on from my 550 although my Roku gets more daily use for streaming from Internet sources (Netflix/Crackle, etc).

If someone could get the 550 working with Plex Media Server, it would replace my Roku.

I've had the 550 for some time now and have had great luck with it. All of the sudden I'm having some issues accessing DVD ISO files on the video wall (all videos section). For some reason, when trying to play a DVD ISO the player is saying it cannot play the format or access the location. However, when I go to folder view, the files show up and play fine. Has anyone had this issue? I'm current on firmware.

It has been a great player for everything HD (BD and HD DVD). I rarely watch DVDs, but this problem has me confused.

Try a reboot. That worked for me. If that does not work and the problem is accessing files over your network, try re-running network setup. Static IP may help as well.