Netgear NeoTV 550 - Page 205

For any of you that have ripped your DVDs to ISOs, when playing back, does the visible image sit in the middle of the TV screen with both black bars on top and bottom? That's what I get such that I need to zoom in on the image to fill the 16:9 screen, thus losing the menu visbility that is native on the NTV550. Seems really weird. Doesn't make any difference if I'm going direct into my Sony LCD or through my video processor to my Samsung LED. I've tried all combinations of the setup otpions in the Netgear for screen size. Blu-ray ripped iso files are just fine. Must have something to do with the encoding of movies at the lower resolution on DVD?? Any help would be appreciated. Using DVDFab BTW.

Hi Jkscherk,

It depends on the authoring of the DVD. If the DVD is authored to show a wide-screen movie on a 3:4 aspect-ratio display, then the DVD image is filled with black bars on the top and bottom, and these bars are valid picture areas to a player or TV. Since the player or TV intends to show the whole image, and doesn't know that the top and bottom are black bars, it will center the 4:3 image in the 16:9 display, and then fill the sides of the display with its own black bars.

In effect, the DVD (the disc, not the player) is providing the top and bottom black bars, and the player or TV is providing the bars on the sides.

Since Blu-Ray is authored for 16:9 aspect-ratio, you don't have that problem. The 'zoom' control on my TV is the only solution I have found.
Edited by MarkHotchkiss - 1/21/13 at 1:46pm

Like the other poster mentioned, you were likely watching a movie in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, no way to fill a 16:9 screen unless you want to cut the left and right side off and 'zoom' in.

I only watch one DVD for my child (over and over and over... and it is 4x3 and plays fine.

Is there any advantage to the new Netgear NeoTV models over the older 550? I'm primarily looking for FLAC music file playback capability.

Hi,

I have a 550 connected to a Standard CRT Tube television,

when playing BD Java Menus, I have a problem with the sound, the movie sounds very strange and the sound is very very low, I need to put the volume to maximun to be able to watch the movie.

If I play the .m2ts file in the Stream folder of the BD it works perfectly video and sound

anyone has anyidea why the sound is failing when playing the movie using the BD Java Menu ?

Thanks.
Edited by consubtitulos - 2/7/13 at 2:28pm

Does anyone know if the slingplayer app announced for the neo tv products also applies to the 550?

Hi EKBSRK,
No. The NTV550 doesn't support any apps at all. The affected players are the NeoTV (NTV300), NeoTV PRO (NTV300S), NeoTV MAX (NTV300SL), and NeoTV PRIME (GTV100).

Thanks Mark
Thats a bummer.

JR has a new one for 50% off, if anyone is interested.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Netgear-NeoTV-550-NTV550-Ultimate-HD-Media-Player-/200894892125?pt=US_Internet_Media_Streamers&hash=item2ec644c85d

I was going to say it was cheaper at Amazon, but I see that the ebay one has free shipping while on Amazon J&R charges over $6.50 for shipping. So with shipping added, the price is the same from J&R from ebay and Amazon.

It was $80 free shipping a few days ago.

I recently bought an NTV550 mainly to stream music to my home theater/music setup from a computer that’s in another room.

I like the “Browse Cover Art” feature, but find the constant “line-by-line” and “page-by-page” reloading/refreshing of the cover art images to be a bit annoying. (i.e.: First you see the generic folder images; then. they are then sequentially replaced by the album covers.)

So, I bought a PNY 8gig class 6 SD card to use as the “Image Cache”.

With the SD card, what kind of performance should I be seeing in the speed that cover art is displayed?

Most of my music is in the .flac format with cover art included within the “Tag”. I had expected that, with the SD card, most of the reloading/refreshing would disappear. However, even though the NTV550 seems to have accepted, and is using, the PNY SD card, the cover art images are still reloading/refreshing “line-by-line” or “page-by-page” exactly as they did before. – For example, even after I have let all the cover art in a “Genre” load, it still needs to refresh “line-by-line” when I scroll through it. And, if I leave that Genre and then return to it, all the art has to reload/refresh all over again.

I don’t know why, but… > I also have some folders of individual, untagged wave files and in these folders I place a “folder.jpg” pic to provide the cover art. For whatever reason, once the NTV550 loads the images produced the folder.jpg pics it retains them very nicely. – Once they load, I can navigate away from them and if I return to their folder they pop up immediately without any visible reloading/refreshing. I’d really like to get the images from the flac files to display fast like the that!

Thanks for any input!

Dave

(Fwiw, the 8 gig PNY SD card was $3.50 at best buy yesterday.)

Hi Dave,

I suspect that the NeoTV is slower when in needs to fetch the cover-art from within the music files. I don't include the cover-art in my FLAC files, but instead I depend entirely on 'folder.jpg' files. I set it that way before I had the Neo, so that the cover-art is usable when browsing with Explorer on a Windows machine. I'm not seeing the delay that you are seeing on my Neo, probably because the Neo doesn't have to open the music files to fetch the cover-art.

Maybe, in addition to the cover-art in your music files, you could also add 'folder.jpg' images to the folders containing the music files (assuming you have your albums in separate folders). I suspect that the Neo is faster reading JPGs, as it doesn't have to parse the metadata just to find the cover image. I believe that a 'folder.jpg' file overrides the image in the music file.

Hi Mark. Thank you.

First, it turns out that I may have been over optimistic about the performance of the cover art derived from my folder.jpg pics. If I leave them, view another genre’s cover art, and then go back to them, they do need to go through the reload/refresh process again.

After reading your post, I did try adding folder.jpg pics to some folders containing tagged .flac albums to see if there was improvement. These folders apparently already contain a very hidden folder.jpg file because every time I put one in a folder I get a Windows message box saying something like: { Do you want to name the new file “folder.jpg (2)”? There is already a “folder.jpg” file in this folder }. I say very hidden because even when I tell Windows to “show hidden files and folders” no such file appears. Anyway, I did put “folder.jpg (2)” pics in all my Jazz genre folders (a small collection) just to see what would happen. Well, it didn’t really seem to change much.


Are you saying that you never see the generic folder images changing into the actual cover art? That when you open cover art for a genre or folder all the actual cover art immediately appears?

Also, are you using an SD card (or USB device) for the Image Cache or are you letting the NTV550 fetch the cover art directly from you computer?

Thanks,
Dave

Hi Dave,

I just tested the cover-art on my Neo, using 'genre' as you did, to get a more accurate feel. It is as you said, although it loads fast enough that it doesn't bother me.

When I go into a genre for the first time, the icons are all the default-blue images. It takes about two seconds for the whole screen to change to the correct art. If I then leave that view and then come back into it, the art is correct and does not need to reload. If I go and look at other covers and then come back, it may or may not need to reload. I guess that means that it can hold only a limited amount of images at a time.

I'm using an 8 gbyte USB stick for an image-cache, plugged into the back. I was never able to get an SD card to work in my Neo. I will try with and without an image-cache later, and try to see if size does matter.

Your 'folder.jpg' issue is strange. Maybe it's something that the newer versions of Windows does, or maybe it's done by your ripping/downloading/music management software. My music sits on a Linux NAS and I'm still using Win XP to manage it manually.

When I browse folders for videos sometimes I get 'no video found'...

anyone encounter this problem and a fix?

I can get it to work sometimes by turn off the unit both on the machine and at the power supply . Would love to find a way to reliably find the videos.

My Netgear neotv550 stream from a shared folder on a win7 machine on a reliable gigabit network. I have other media players on the network running smoothly.

neotv550 is on latest firmware.

Thanks for any help.

Thanks Mark.

OK, so I tried a 4 gig USB stick and it was significantly faster than what I had been experiencing with the SD card. Maybe not perfect, but I could probably live with it.

Not wanting to give up on the SD card, I used Windows to re-format it. (FAT 32; same as it was out of the box). It’s faster now, but… it’s inconsistent. While browsing through my largest Genre (only 145 albums), in certain places it’s at least as fast as with the USB stick, but then, in other places (within the very same Genre directory; with exactly the same kind of files; and, with the same kind of tagging.), it’s too slow just like before. Very confusing.

Anyway, I’m still thinking about it. I guess I’ll end up using the USB stick, but I think the SD card might be a slightly more elegant way to go, if I could only get it to work correctly.

As to the hidden folder.jpg files, my music is on a Win7 computer. Maybe it has something to do with Win7 or its implementation of Windows Media Center? I know that all my embedded/tagged cover art shows up perfectly in WMC and WMP. (As you no doubt know, I did have to install some stuff to get Windows to be flac capable.)

Thanks again!

Dave

I connected a 4 port usb hub to the front usb port and another 4 port usb hub to the rear usb port.
When I go to folders, it says front usb 1,2,3,4 and back usb 1,2,3,4, is there any way for neotv 550 to display the drive name rather than just front usb1,2,3 etc??
For example my external hard drive is named seagate 2tb, so when i connect it to the front usb port, I want to see seagate 2tb when i click on folders rather than front usb.

Having been a NEO early-adopter mid-2010) and just written a couple of Tag processing programs for my own use I can tell you to give up on the SD card slot. I've tried every combination of card & format and while it may work for a while, it will eventually fail.

I'm currently using the rear USB port with a Sandisk 8GB but have also had great luck with a Kinston 8GB. My Kingston 4GB seems faster but I think it's my imagination. Formatting to Fat32 8192 bytes seems to work the best. My genre lists usually display cover art in less than a second - roughly a blink of the eyes on both movies (ISO-mostly Folder JPG) and music (FLAC-TAG -imbedded).

I have encountered the situation you're talking about but it has been extremely intermittent and mostly I've attributed it to server/computer processing on the other end. All my music & movies are accessed over a gigabit network. Once every couple of months I clear / rebuild the image library and that may be helping also.

As I mentioned, all of my movie images are in the folder right now but one of the reasons I wrote my tag processing program was to make it easy to move them back & forth between the Tag & the Folder. From the limited testing I've done so far, there doesn't appear to be a noticeable speed advantage between the two but I can let you know what I find out.

As for the hidden file problem, that would be a strange one. You can do a right-click Properties on the folder to find out how many files are there (seen or unseen).

Marty

There was a question a page or two back about the "mystery" of the recently added list. It appears the NEO is looking at ISO creation (in my case) date for some reason. I initially thought it was TAG related or the internal tag date (the TDRC frame) and I still think that may be a tie-breaker. Anyway, the NEO doesn't seem to pickup ISO date changes unless you turn off Windows indexing for the actual ISO file. I was able to move movies up & down the recently added lists by turning off indexing, manually changing the ISO date, and doing a NEO Re-scan.

Not sure this actually helps anybody in any meaningful way.

Hi Mark. Hi Marty.

Yeah, I gave up on the SD card and when I went back to the 4 gig USB stick it seemed even faster. It now usually takes one second to load a page of 30 cover art images. This is good; very good; no speed complains at all right now.

I’ve seen enough, little (temporary?) quirks while setting it up that I’m definitely holding off on any real celebration, but... I’m really diggin' this NTV550 right now! – As I said earlier, I bought this NTV550 primarily (almost solely) because I needed to stream music from a computer in another room. At this point the NTV550 is better than I had hoped for. And for $80 - Wow! We’ll see if this keeps up.

Fwiw, it does great gapless playback, but not for .wav files. – Because my .wav files just happen to be the ones that most need gapless playback, I’ve already started converting my .wav folders to flac. (with Nero)

As for my hidden “folder.jpg” pics: First, I don’t think this has anything to do with the NTV550 in any way whatsoever. Second, while they stay hidden after I tell Windows to show hidden files, they do appear when un-checking “Hide protected operating system files”. They’re usually 200X200 and seem to only be in folders representing ripped CDs (I used Nero), but these folders have all been associated with various media programs too. – I haven’t had time yet, but at some point it may be easy to figure out the most common denominator.

Thanks for the help!

Dave

Anyone here have problem with either:

"error: can not access [network pc/shared folder]"

or

"no video found" when browse network folder.

I get one of these two errors maybe 10% - 20% of the time when turning on the NeoTV550....very annoying behaviour.


Any suggestions sincerely appreciated.

This might be a hint. Does it only happen when you first start to browse?

The only time I see this problem is if I try to browse on one of my WinXP machines when the drive is spun down. If I try again in 20 seconds or so, after the drive has spun-up, everything works fine.

For some reason I never have that problem with my Synology NAS, even when the drives are spun down. The Neo simply waits. It must have to do with the status that Linux sends back as opposed to what WinXP sends back when a drive is not spinning.

Thanks MarkHotchkiss. Yes it usually happens when I first turn it on...but i doubt its because of the drive in sleep mode. Once I get the error message I have to turn the machine off (+ power supply) and wait a minute or two and sometimes it will find the files. If I don't turn off the power supply i could be there for 1/2 hour and nothing will happen.

I have had the problem but always when I forget that the PC is in sleep mode. I do not have to power off (pull the plug) Unless I pause a movie and the PC drops into sleep mode while the movie is paused (obviously my own stupidity and/or bad memory). Windows does not answer and network requests unless your adapter is set to Wake-On-LAN and even then it's an "iffy" proposition.

I still don't have a reliable solution. I know that when it's working I still have to wait 3-5 seconds for the hard drive on my windows 7 to " wake up " so I don't think it's a hard drive sleep issue.

Don't know then. Any chance you Power Settings are at fault? Usually they are determined by the manufacturer & I know in the case of HP (laptops) the default hard drive spin-down is 15 minutes. I've changed mine to 1 hour. That's not the sleep timer, it's the HD spin-down timer.

Hi Murf, To add to what Marty said, some "green" drives have their own built-in spin-down timer. I have some WD drives that spin themselves down after a while when the host stops accessing them. I never figured out how long, but I think it is somewhere around half an hour.

As I said, I've only seen this problem when the drive was spun down. And then, only on my Windows machines and never on my Linux machines.

My pc are on all the time but the media drives are sleeping most of the time because it's not being access. This is not a problem for the other media players around the house or the Neotv in the past. Even now, when the Neotv see the drive it still have to wait 3-5 seconds to wake up the drives so I don't think it's a power/sleep issue. I've tried accessing the media drives from my pc first to make sure it's not sleeping before turning on the Neotv...but at times the 'problem' still there.

Thanks anyway Marty913 and markHotchkiss. I thought this is a common issues with the neotv. I guess it's more hardware specific to my unit as I found the additional power off at the wall help alot...now it's like 90% reliable as compared to 50% before I discover the 'total power off' technique.