Boxee Box vs New PCH A210 - need advice - Page 2

Agreed. If local playback is your top priority then IMO Dune followed by PCH are the best options

Have to disagree that the Box is primarily a internet streamer. My usage is 80% local media (full BD mkvs from a Synology or unRAID server). Internet content just adds to the value, and one I didn't expect to use as much.

Likewise my Boxee use is 80%+ local content and it works great. There are only a few glitches and issues with local content playback.

If you want BD menu support though and robust and trouble free DVD menus then Boxee is not for you.

Me, personally, I stopped being in love with that stuff years ago.

Ditto on the Boxee as a good local streamer. Yeah it has a few bugs and so does every streamer out there. I've had most of them, streamers that is, I don't have bugs. It also builds a good looking movie wall without any hassle or you can just drill down through the file listings if that suits you better. It's as solid product and has been improving steadily.

Do you still have to sign in to have it work as a local player? What about the metadata? Does it live locally or do you have to fetch it each time from the net? As I recall that was an issue earlier on. I haven't been following it, but many prefer a local player to be isolated from the net.

philip

I just don't get how you guys can like the boxee box if you care about the high def audio! The drop outs are HORRIBLE. When I cue up a movie in the theater the last thing I want is drop outs when I am watching it! I guess the interface is nice, but the drop outs are a total deal breaker for me and a few of my friends.

Dropouts are not bad for me. I watched a 100 minute movie tonight from a BD ISO. There were four, half second or so dropouts. Now that is four too many, but it not a dealbreaker to make me turn off the advanced audio codecs. Now if there were 10 or 15 during a movie that would be a problem, but three or four around half a second or so I can live with.

It's "supposed" to be fixed int he next update. We shall see. Funny tho, in reading some of the A200 reviews, that had the same type issue with audio dropout when it first hit too. Granted they are fixed now, but it took them while to iron it out too.

How quickly people forget...

All media players have some kind issues right out of the box... the true test of the brand and middle ware developers is if they address and eventually fix it and improve on features/functions that are important to the majority of their consumers... Syabas/Popcorn already has a good track record of this... I am confident Boxee Box and D-Link will get better - but for them it is still a wait and see first...

I bought an A200 about eight months after it had been on the market. VC1 video had stuttering problems and there were assorted audio problems. When I finally sold my A200 it had been out for a year and some of this stuff was still not fixed. Dune still has colorspace issues over two years since release. Boxee has been out for about 100 days, has a pile of features these other streamers can't dream of and very good local content capabilities.

Well it looks like I am going the A200 route for one of my TVs.

I was actually looking to go with another Boxee Box, but unfortunately it won't work with my older HDTV. It's a 34" Tube HDTV that only does 1080i via DVI(no HDMI). Even having the HDMI of the Boxee running thru an Onkyo TX-SR607 and then from HDMI to DVI into the TV, Boxee refuses to sync properly. The best I could do was see the bouncing boxes animated logo and it would turn to jibberish(this was even after prepping the box on another TV so to have the update and set it to 1080i).

So, I ordered an A200, which if it can't handle the HDMI to DVI conversion, can do component. I was gonna go with the A210 but the A200 price on Amazon was just too good to pass up. It's gonna be sitting next to a somewhat less than quiet Directv HR21 receiver anyway, so the fan won't be a big deal. Apps aren't a huge deal either as I have other sources for them.

If nothing else it will be nice to be able to directly compare the two

Can you elaborate on why you feel Dune is better than PCH for local playback? I'm looking for a next generation media player and trying to decide between the two. Thanks!

Next generation? All of the sigma players are well over 1 year old.

I have both a PCH and Dune (PCH A200/C200 and Dune BD Prime and Smart D1). They are all fine players. However, for me playback of my local content on the Dune has always been flawless (the only exception I encountered were audio dropouts with DVDs that was fixed). I do run into the occasional hiccup with the PCH for whatever reason (stuttering). Also, currently the PCH cannot downmix TrueHD to stereo if that is something important to you (should hopefully be fixed in the next fw update but does cause issues since my A200/C200 is connected directly to a TV). The PCH has slightly better support for mkvs (support for forced subtitles in mkvs). I don't think you can go wrong with either player, just from my experience the Dune has been slightly more stable when it comes to playing back my local content

Depending on you threshold for fan noise that might not be a good idea. The fan was the main reason I sold my A200. It was just too loud and at the time the PopBox was coming out which is fanless. But I've now sold two of those as well.

Well, if it's too annoying, that's what Amazon's return policy is for. Also, with the price I paid, replacing the case with something fanless would still be cheaper than a full blown A-210 at this point.

The A200's fan was the reason I went with a C200 and that turned out to be fine. The Boxee Box fan was also something I couldn't take. If it hadn't had that then I probably would have kept the last one I had. Neat player, but the logging in also was a (minor) issue.

The A210 looks to be a nice compromise for those looking at local players.

philip

Wow! You call FOUR drop outs "not so bad"? If any Blu-Ray player, even a sub $100 one, has such high drop out rate people are going to scream! I am amazed so many people tolarated half baked media players. May be that is the reason all the media players companies think they can get away with selling products that can not be even called beta. I tried the Boxee Box for three days and returned it. High HD audio drop out rate just one of its many problems.

That is because unlike other players on the market, Boxee Box does not have resolution botton on the remote. It require EDID info to set its resolution and most of the pre-HDMI day HDTV does not have EDID info and the box seems to assume it should be 1080P. To make matter worst, it does not have manual overide. I even tried to use a HDMI based TV to manually set the resolution to 1080i but upon reboot, it default back to 1080P. To me that is a design flaw and one of the reasons I returned it.

Four, half second or so dropouts during a 100 minute movie is not too bad for me. I still keep it set to use the advanced audio codecs. If there were alot more or they were for longer duurations, I would have dropped down to the legacy audio and I also would be using my C200 alot more instead.

I don't view any BD titles from the disc any more. There were plenty of issues with BDs in the first year of release. I had trouble with a few of them in addition the crappy quality(when compared to HD DVD at the time) of the first titles I got back in June 2006. Of course things eventually improved, but for me, there is no way I'm going back to sticking a BD in a player to watch. I only watch them from my server or from a USB drive when I take a media player with me.

For instance, I got The Incredibles BD yesterday. The first thing I did was rip it to my WHS before watching it last night. I have no desire to touch the disc once I rip it to my servers.

You should also take a look at the YAMJ Flash skin (Eversion) so see if you prefer that one over the HTML YAMJ/Aeon jukebox.

I voted with my wallet and returned the NeoTV 550 and the boxee for a variety of reasons... The C200 I replaced it with despite being out for 2 years still has issues although none as severe as the previous 2 mentioned players.

The AppleTV continues to be the model of stability. Its not as feature rich as some of the other players but has some unique features that they dont have but primarily its reliable and not bug ridden.

In terms of reliability of whats installed now.

TOP: (most reliable)
Xbox running XBMC
ATV1 and ATV2
XBMC on ION HTPC

Middle:
PCH-A110
PCH-C200
Plex on MacMini
XBMC on ATV2

Bottom: (least reliable)
NeoTV 550
Boxee Box

Well, I received my A200 yesterday and having played with it a night, there are some things that stand out.

Ease of setup. Definitely goes to Boxee Box on this one. I had some fun trying to get my shares set up correctly with the A200. The network browser would only see my 2 NFS compatible NAS drives and when I went to add them thru the browser, it would only drill down the the base NFS directory. I had to manuall add the share name to the share directory field. Also I had to completely manually enter my SMP share info for my USB drive off my router(Netgear WNDR3700). The Network browser wouldn't even see the Netgear USB drive. The kicker on the SMB drive was I couldn't enter a full path to the exact directory. It kept saying invalid. I could only go to the top level share name.

The other main issue I have is it doesn't look like I can have 1 big wall full of all my share's movies. I have 3 different drives housing my movies and TV files. With NMJ it seems like I can only open one at a time and see it's contents on the wall. If I want another share, I have to do several steps to be able to open anothee share. Is there a) no way to have all 3 shares show on one movie wall and b) is there an easy way to swap to another share from one share's movie wall?

I am looking for this to be family friendly, but having to swap shares and seeing a list of files along the way is not family friendly. After reading a bit I did figure out how to make the NMJ auto start when you selected a share. That at least helps a bit, but that having to switch shares is gonna be a problem.

Also, the A200 just seems so sluggish compared to the Boxee. I can zip around the menus on Boxee but not the A200. It is very methodical in it's movement.

As for the fan, I can definitely see why some would have an issue. If I were keeping this in the bedroom(I'm setting it up in there for now), it would be going back, but it's gonna be in an area where I don't think the fan will cause an issue, but we will see, once it gets to it's final resting place.

Don't use NMJ, but instead use YAMJ (either YAMJ + Aeon or YAMJ Flash). I believe those have support for multiple shares

Multi-mounts are coming in the next firmware (I think). NMJ v2. There are also ways to make it work today, but I believe it requires some effort.

I just picked up a boxee box, set it up in my living room, and don't notice the fan either. Not sure if I'm going to keep yet, as im still testing things out. So far, however, I'm pretty impressed. (coming from hdx900). Actually, if I didn't read your post, I might not have even known there was one in there. Now ill have to listen for it.