eGreat R6B new RTD1055 chipset Player

Nice unit- but how much more would it have cost to add a network port ($2 maybe?) ....
Really don't understand who the manufactures think the target buyers for this unit would be without network connectivity? Certainly not college students- cause they just plug their USB drives into their laptops directly to play media, and most home users that have/want media players want to stream from a NAS/server.... so that leaves ?????

Same as the R6A, but without LAN and esata?
Or maybe a sample - pre production piece made for a show?
We 'll find out in a while when they add it to their website...

1. RTD1055 is simple version chipset from RTD chipset factory,don't support network function.
2. Not sample, this item has been mass producted by Egreat already,just mainly for Chinese market first.,maybe will upload onto their website soon.

Oh joy-yet another unobtainable not so Egreat piece of junk-btw-who in the heck sends all of the pictures every time someone starts a new thread on Egreat? BTW-I do love my EG-R1-it's used way more than my WD Live.

spec from Egreat,for your reference:
 Appearance using plastic and aluminum by drawing technology, add the shielded enclosure, Ultra-thin framework, good heat sink;
 Gilded PCB technique, assured good quality.
 Support playback TS、M2TS without interval;
 Bookmark;
 BD simple navigation; multi subtitle and audio track switch; chapter selection function;
 External subtitle can be adjusted, e.g. Subtitle size/color/position/display time;
 Time seek during playing, including two method: time jump and time scroll bar;
 Support slide show with music background,
 Turn on/off by remote control;
 Support file copy/delete.
 Support DTS CD;
 Support APE+CUE;
 Support movie cover function;
 HDMI 1.3;
 USB host x 2, support charge mobile phone with protection.
 RTD1055DD+ 400MHz CPU, 128MB FLASH, 128MB DDR2.

All,

The 1055 is a great chipset, it's a very stripped down and low cost chip with a focus on good performance with low power consumption - which is why you see that they are trying to measure the player with a temperature gun... I assume there is no fan inside either.

I can provide some English interface photos if anyone is interested, from a pre-production sample of our 1055 player that's due to hit the market in the next 2 months (will probably miss the Holiday shopping season...). The UI is a big departure from the 1073/1283, with quite a bit of effort put towards making the interface more intuitive and not so much computer-derived. You can tell by some of the photos already posted by gamepc, but the actual menu items can be more interesting. The UI is still not as nice as say that of a Dune, or Boxee, or XBMC, but all of the Realtek player vendors will have a much nicer SDK/Reference to build their firmware from compared to what was available for the 1073.

Realtek positioned the 1055 as a low cost solution and they really mean it: it's a capable chip in terms of video/audio performance but if you want network or SATA support you will have to pay for a higher end solution. We had to build a SATA-USB bridge in order to add a internal 2.5" drive bay to our player.

A poster asked a very pertinent question: who would buy a player without any network capability. The answer is actually quite a lot. Most people who bought a media player did so because they don't want to have to deal with their computers when watching a video. To them, setting up a share folder or running a UPnP server software does not give them the warm and fuzzies. Also, most installations do not have access to a hard wired LAN connection, so WiFi is the only option. But given the streaming limitations of even 802.11n when it comes to higher bitrate 1080p videos, using WiFi brings a lot of frustration. Dumping videos into a hard drive and playing it back on a stand-alone media player remains the most reliable and drama-free way to view high quality digital content. And keep in mind, 1080p video doesn't mean they had go through the trouble of ripping a BD, quite a bit of our customers buy these players to play the videos from their digital cameras, most of the time just raw footage without any post processing or compression. A 1080p 30fps video from a Canon DSLR runs between 30-40mbps. That's a lot of bits.

AVSForum participants are a progressive bunch, we are much more demanding in terms of product performance and capability, and do not shy away from occasionally tinkering with a system or setting up a robust home network complete with DD-WRT bridges and etc. But as media players reach a wider general population audience, there will be more and more users who just want something that's as easy to use as their DVD player.

A lot of people want a media player as a simple way of playing video / viewing photos on their TV, just as Jack-Micca said. Networking is too difficult for most people to get working so many just use a USB dongle / portable HDD.

Anyway, my main reason to post here is to say that the specs above for the 1055 are wrong. It runs at 500Mhz and has less memory than stated above, at only 16MB flash and 128MB DDR.

The interface on the 1055 players is much improved and the players will pass 7.1 audio. Performance is reported as being very good from what I've read of Chinese reports. All in all I would expect 1055 based players to do very well.

OK they aren't a Dune or C-200, but considering they will likely play the same files, have full 7.1 audio support, have cover art, and will cost maybe 1/5 of the price, it does make you think!

There are many of these 1055 based players in the pipeline. The Egreat above is just one of lots. Coming to a quality Media Player emporium near you soon..!

Has anyone tried the "bird scenes" on this chip? What are the max bitrates for mkv and m2ts?

Another thing, when will those Realtek engineers get 23.976 fps right?

It's like all 1073 based players and irs ilk-it chokes on bitrates higher than 30 mbs.

Not everyone needs a media player with network. Some people just want to plug in their portable hdd and just watch movies. Also from the company's perspective it cuts down costs and would let the media player be cheaper. Personally I would need the wifi but different customers would have different needs.

Have you tested that, read that somewhere or supposing?
If it's indeed 500MHz it might perform better... 1073 is 400MHz...

That's true.

Cheap 1080p capable chinese chipsets have entered the media player market, Sigma and Realtek are not alone anymore. Cheaper media players, some of them portable (5Volt - 2A means you can even connect them to a USB car charger) are coming..

While I agree that not everyone needs network connectivity... for the $2 additional cost put it in there so as maybe to temp some additional potential customers.
If this thing sells for $35 with no networking- I have zero interest in it. But, for $40 including networking.... I may consider buying 3-4 of them for the TV's I have with no media players attached.

I will have players to test in about 2 weeks and will post performance comparisons. I also have players from all the major chipsets to hand for comparison.

I imagine performance will be marginally better than the 1073. Perhaps 5/4 better!

And there are network versions of this chip coming. 1085 / 1185. Google it.

Thanks iboum!
... and BTW- your comparison grid is awesome!!! http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

I dunno what kinda network connectivity you're getting...but for sure it costs more than $2.

Edit: If it only costs $2 then wireless routers would cost less than $5

Newegg sells a full 10/100 NIC for $5.99 retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833340008).
Wonder what the chip only would be bulk wholesale? Probably about $2.

That's not really a fair comparison. The product at newegg is a general purpose product made in mass quantity. The cost of development and production startup/setup is spread over a large quantity of units.

A digital media player decoder chip is a specialized design that will not sell in nearly the same quantity as a 10/100 NIC card.

This reminds me back when we were still using 3.5" floppy drives, I had a Sony branded one with me when I was visiting a metal shop. I had picked it up at a local store nearby. I showed it to the shop owner that it cost only $20. I joked with him why the simple metal enclosure he was making for us cost $60 each for 200. He chuckled and responded that if I had an order for 500,000 units, he could work with me on the price some more.

Hi Jack,
We were discussing adding a network port to this media player, we weren't discussing the decoder chip- that's why I mentioned that a full blown NIC card retails for $6.
AFAIK- when embedding a network interface IC on a motherboard or device it's the same IC as used on a standalone NIC... it's just mounted to the motherboard not a standalone NIC. So when they can retail the full NIC w/driver disk and packaging for $6 I imagine the network interface IC itself in raw trays/bulk without the rest of the NIC hardware/packaging/driver, etc would probably be in the $2 range.

Hey,

For media players, network functionality is typically integrated into the main decoder chip, rather than being an additional IC. The 1055 IC is not built with any networking features, so it's not as simple as adding a network port. When it is as simple as adding a network port, you are right, the cost can be very low. We recently released a network enabled version of our MPLAY-HD player called the MPLAY-HD Net (it took our creative team 3 months to settle on this name). It sells for only $5 more because in this case, the core decoder chip already supports networking, so we only had to add a port and the appropriate software.

I don't think prices in the computer market can be compared to those of media players, as the volume differences are staggering. In the interest of protecting their business model, all of the major solution providers use proprietary hardware and software bits and control access to their SDK vigorously.

To be frank, I doubt any media player companies out there can afford to sell the 1055 at $40 even without network capabilities. Currently the only players that can be sold at the $30 mark are 8613 based players.

Jack

Thanks for the info Jack, your posts are always very informative!

Jack, It would be great if you could let us know whether there are any differences in the physical dimensions of the 1055 and 1085. Also, how does it compare with the BoxChip F10, and does the 1055 / 1085 require a heat sink ? ( any info on TDP of the chips would be an added bonus )

Eventually found the E-Great R6B HDTV Media Player on Amazon

Amazon Link


gorgeous device, brushed metal interface at first sight, gonna share you guys a product review sooooon.

Wow, old thread.

I completely forgot about updating Jakmal's questions once we had more experience with the 1055.

Our MPLAY-HD now uses the 1055 so we now have a good amount of experience with it. With regards to 1055 vs 1085, I have to be honest that I have not seen a 1085 sample board at all. Realtek has continued to delay the release of the 1085 and some in the industry wonder if it will happen at all. I believe most of the industry's efforts is focused on working the bugs out of existing 1185 designs, which has been really frustrating. We for one will be holding off on a 1185 product until second half of this year. Companies are also debating whether consumers really want the gigabit connection and USB 3.0, both of which bring significant additional cost to a 1185 player versus a design that only offers 100mbps LAN and USB 2.0.

The 1055 situation is much more stable and mature, with companies moving onto optimizing their firmware rather than dealing with significant issues. Of course, the lack of networking makes the product much simpler, so it's not surprising that the 1055 would have an easier time maturing in the market than the 1185.

In comparison to the F10, 1055 generates a lot more heat - although it can and will run without heatsink or active cooling. While the F10 certainly puts up respectable performance numbers and provides very good codec coverage, the 1055 is even better in the tests that we've run. The F10 as you may know was originally made as a PMP solution so using it in a desktop digital media player is not playing to its strength. In a portable product, it's low power usage becomes a significant advantage.

Other than decoding performance, the media library is a key feature for the 1055. Essentially, all drives connected to the player will get merged into the media library. Have two 2TB drives connected at the same time with thousands of movies? No problem. Instead of remembering here a file is and navigate to it through the drive and then nested folders, you just do a quick search for it by entering a few letters and it's right there. To me, more so than the improvement in decoding performance, the media library is the key advantage that the 1055 offers above all other decoder solutions in its price segment.

2 new Egreat models with the new Realtek 1185 chip (gigabit LAN)

http://www.iboum.com/pr/egr12.php

http://www.iboum.com/pr/egr2002.php (with 3.5" hard drive bay)

One good thing about all these Realtek based media players (turnkey solutions), is that usually they can be crossflashed with firmware from another similar player, they are not firmware locked.

I received a new EGREAT R6B through amazon.com, free shipping through prime .Connection is straight forward. Previously I have a Brite View Cinema Mini , but I have to take it out because of crackle noises that don't exist with my other player:Patriot Box .Egreat power supply is 5V, 2A , a lot smaller than the other two. But usb port supports my WD ext pocket drive just fine without needing
separate ac supply. Everything just works. Even the remote is smaller .
So for the minimalist, it is better overall.

[quote=Jack@Micca;20421811]Wow, old thread.


Our MPLAY-HD now uses the 1055 so we now have a good amount of experience with it.
Does the MPLAY_HD Net ordered through Amazon.com also use 1055 now?
How can i tell?

Hi,

The MPLAY-HD Net continues to use the 8626H chipset from Amlogic. The 1055 does not have network capabilities. There are currently no plans to replace the 8626h in the MPLAY-HD Net.

Now i have compared the two players with 1055. I am returning the egreat r6b because it has given static pictures on two separate files. So far the mplay-hd is perfect, and i will keep that one.