Micca EP250 and EP350 - Page 9

In the file manager mode, the videos will be sorted by name and there currently is no way to sort by date.

In the media library mode, you can sort by name, file size, most viewed, and recently added to the media library. However the media library only works with the internal hard drive or USB drives attached to the player.

Additional information is available from the user's manual that can be downloaded here:

http://content.miccastore.com/sites/...s%20Manual.pdf

Got my G2 today and hooked it up after work, I'll try to give feedback as I play with it more but thought I'd give my first impressions when their fresh in my mind. Fyi, I've only tried the WDTV Live Hub before this so the only reference I have.

Physically it's not a bad looking unit, the feet are not level on the bottom of mine. Maybe by a 1/32" off on one foot so it rocks slightly. The remote doesn't have the feel of the best quality. I have a Harmony 880 so that's not a deal breaker for me and would go in the cabinet with the rest of my remotes after I program the Harmony.

I installed my 3TB WD Green hard drive, I have it wired with ethernet and running HDMI to my Onkyo TXSR706 receiver which feeds to my Samsung DLP TV.

I'm not sure what FU HO means but that's what I was greeted with powering on, if I was a woman I might be offended. The first thing I noticed is the poor remote, I had to point it directly at the unit to get it to respond. Hopefully this responds better with the Harmony and isn't related to the receiver in the unit itself. The response was mixed even when directly pointed at the unit. In the main menu it seems that pressing the up or down arrow will cause it to move up or down sometimes one icon or sometimes multiple icons which got really annoying. The icons highlight blue when your on them and then at some point some start to highlight brighter white instead which is odd in my opinion. Going left to right also had similar issues for jumping or response delay.

Setup was easy, one thing I noticed was TrueHD was misspelled TureHD in the Audio settings. Setup was done in less than 5 minutes including formatting the drive. Again the remote response time or response time as it may be was a little irritating at times as there was a couple second delay from press to movement. I transferred my first BD ISO movie via USB that contained TrueHD audio that the WDTV just could not handle. Play back was FLAWLESS which was very encouraging. Putting the movie on or off pause was another story, sometimes it would and sometimes I had to repeatedly press the button to get it to work. The other button that seems to have little or no effect is the power button on the remote.

Anyway that's my first impressions and I'll post back as I play with it more this weekend and particularly after I program the Harmony to see if some of this goes away because of a lackluster remote. If not then I'm sure I'll be sending it back because if it's a little annoying now it will become a lot annoying in the future.

Hi,

Can you check to see if the sluggishness diminishes if you move in closer to the player? If so, this would indicate a remote range problem, and if you are within a normal range (say 20-30feet), that means the remote you have is not working correctly, and we can certainly exchange it.

The player should be fairly responsive to remote inputs. The only time when it would seem sluggish if it is in the middle of doing a storage scan to index the media library. If you have a lot of media files - especially for those who keep a tens of thousands of photos on their drive, the initial scan may take a while, and subsequent incremental scans may take about a minute after power up. You can turn off the automatic scan from the settings menu to prevent scanning each time the player is turned on.

Jack, I was within 10 feet of the player so range shouldn't have been an issue. I only had 4 files loaded, albeit two of them 20-40GB in size, so not sure if that had any bearing. I'll try programming my Harmony first to see if the remote is responsible. I'd really like to keep it, it fits my needs mostly and at a great price point...much better looking UI than the Aios also. I'm sure the couple of UI issues would be ironed out in an update but if it continues to lag I wouldn't want to wait to see if an update corrects it.

Okay, I played more with this unit and the remote is definitely garbage. The Harmony improved things dramatically for response time. However with that said the "cursor" would still jump with a single button press. I think that the highlighting color was due to the fact that I had to wait for the unit to mount the drive after powering on, at least that's what I think was going on. If I turned off the scan it took about 30 seconds to recognize the media and with it on about a minute. I'm not sure what's going on with the power/standby, it's definitely flaky and would take several attempts at times to get it to respond whether by remote or the button on the front. I tried 3 HD movies with HD audio and all played excellent from the hard drive I installed. I didn't try over network so I can't comment on that.

Aside from the quality problems I think with a little UI work this could be a great little player. I'm going to send this back and look for a more polished player. The ep600 looks to have a little more polished UI but lacks the internal drive option I want.

Hi,

One trick for Harmony remotes is to make sure to make the following change:

After learning the codes, set the Repeats to 0. Click Troubleshooting on the device you've set for the EP350, and then select it responds too much or too little. Try reducing the Repeats to 0.

The default is 3, which causes the EP350 to over-respond to the code.

Hi Jack,

Looks like Amazon is OOS of the EP350. Any idea when more will be available? I was thinking of buying myself the EP350 as a X-Mas present.

I also have a question: When the unit is powered down, will it also shut down an external hard drive connected through one or both of the USB ports?

Thanks,
B-

Hi,

We'll be getting more in a couple of weeks. The last batch sold out faster than we expected, sorry for the inconvenience.

As to your question, the EP350 will cut power from the USB ports when it is put into stand-by.

Compatibility Issue W/Seagate FreeAgent Go Flex?

Have a Seagate GoFlex Desk 2 TB external USB 2.0/3.0 drive.
Plug it into the EP350 G2 and it is not recognized?
Any idea on what is going on?
The GoFlex will power up on a laptop and is recognized but will not power up and is not being recognized by the 350 G2.

Thanks..

This is a powered external drive, correct? It requires an external power supply to power on?

Does the player work well with other USB devices?

Jack,

Yes it has its own power supply that plugs into an outlet ((small transfomer that powers it up (12V output I think).

The GOFLEX works on mylaptop (USB 2.0) and my PC (with USB 2.0 connection)

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...FQLj7QodmB--qA

Plug the GOFLEX USB cable into the G2 and nothing

So do not know if the issue with the G2 or the GOFLEX?

I have close to 1.8 TB of movies on the GOFLEX.


BTW have not loaded up the @#$% software that was shippped with the GOFLEX.


Thanks,

omi

If you have 1.8TB of movies on the drive then you obviously didn't format it with the EP350. When it formats it 3 partitions are created, 1 NTFS and 2 other formats that I don't recall that the EP350 uses and I believe it needs. When you say that it doesn't recognize it are you just trying to access the media you have on it? Have you gone to the format option under setup to see it if it at least acknowledges an external drive is plugged in? Formatting it will obviously wipe out your data so you'll want to back up your data elsewhere before doing so.

The GOFLEX came pre-formated. It is a stand alone 2 TB external USB 2.0 / 3.0drive.

Did put a rew 160 GB drive in the G2 and formated it. Was able to hook the G2 and the MICCA to a laptop and transfer some movie files (AVI) from the GOFLEX to the 160 GB internal drive in the MICCA. The 160 GB internal drive works and acces to the movies worked.

The MICCA will not recognize the GOFLEX and the GOFLEX will not even power up.

If you plug the GOFLEX into a laptop or PC, the laptop or PC recognizes it, and loads it up so you have access.

The issues is the MICCA NOT recognizing the EXTERNAL GOFLEX 2 TB drive

Copy the movies to another hard drive if you have one. Take the hard driver out of the enclosure, reformat it and install it in the micca player and transfer the movies to it.

Or

If you have a network. Connect the goflex to the computer. The computer connected to the network via ethernet cable. Share the goflex via the network to the micca.

Think it is the USB cable on the GOFLEX. Have an IOMEGA USB 3.0 external drive and that cable fits the GOFLEX. Used that and it ran like a champ pluged into the MICCA. Swapped back the original GOFLEX USB cable and NOTHING.... So it looks like the issues is with the GOFLEX USB cable or the GOFLEX docking station. Will get another USB 3.0 cable and see if it will work... MICCA did read the GOFLEX and worked.

Also have an ARGOSY. Like the way the MICCA handles music files. A step or 2 above the ARGOSY.

Do like the way the ARGOSY displays video / movie content better. I like the scrolling files better than the folders on the screen (MICCA).

Argosy seems to handle ripped DVDs (video TS and audio TS folder) better and fires up automatically when you hit the folder with the DVD TS folders. The MICCA pulls up the folders and you have drill down into the video TS folder to fire up the correct TS file (unless I have missed something in the set up?).

omi

Sorry I've been away during the holiday weekend so I wasn't able to help trouble-shoot the issue. I am glad to see that the Goflex drive works with a different cable.

Hey Jack,

Will the EP950 have its own Jukebox? or can we use a 3rd party jukebox?

It's a HiMedia HD900B clone, so I expect the same limited jukebox (local, non-network files and just thumbnails, not full metadata like YAMJ, XBMC, etc.).

Hopefully it will have all the features of HD900B with subs fixed and its own jukebox....one can only dream

My guess is HiMedia develops the firmware for the EP950 on this.

Well if that is the case, I hope they fix everything that is wrong from the HiMedia on the EP950. I'm looking for a second media player for my bedroom, but I'm holding off till the EP950 comes out.

Any update on when it will be available?

I have owned a Micca EP250 since April. Works great, the unit has given me no trouble. One area that could use improvement is the music playing function. It would be nice if the unit would display the cover art from MP3's, also a shuffle or random mode is needed to make this a truly functional media player.

Hi,

The EP950 will be available in Mid December. I was just told that the availability might be moved up slightly, but I don't have a definite date yet - we typically don't like to state release dates on new products since it's a complex process and we don't like to disappoint customers in case a delay happens.

The EP250 G2 will also be available at about the same time frame. We are having some of the units shipped air freight (more $$$, much more, but gets the product here in about a week).

The EP250 G2 will be 1185 based, of course, with a internal 2.5" drive bay, 100mbps net, and be available at $10 less than the EP350 G2.

What's the specter retail price? And is it going to be available via amazon? Or any other sellers?

Hi

The EP950 will sell for about $150. We went with the lower of the range that we were working with.

It will initially be available on Amazon.com.

That's not a bad price...now the ETA?

Hi Jack any news on the availability of the EP350?

Thanks!

We got news on Monday that it's stuck in customs exam, which takes about a week to complete. We were hoping to have it available this week. But hopefully the exam will be done soon.

The EP950 will be shipped out this week from China, so we may have them early next week.

Nice price on the EP950 Jack.