Mede8er Announces MED500X2 - Page 3

Yes, most usb wireless keyboards work. I am using a a microsoft wireless entertainment keyboard 7000 with mine perfectly. It is a bluetooth keyboard so I am about 15' away from it in my living room. If you go with RF, remember you will not have nealry the distance. If you have any more technical questions, i'd suggest posting on the mede8tor forum. Here is a link that is specific to your keyboard question. It shows specific models that have been tested, even some of the smaller remote sized ones.

http://www.mede8erforum.com/index.php/topic,5558.0.html

If you do purchase the MED500X2, remember to always unplug the keyboard dongle and wireless dongle if you go wireless before reflashing the firmware. If you do not, there are issues with the flash, like the wireless and keyboard not working anymore and you'll have to flash it again with them unplugged.

Thanks a lot for the info.

New firmware is finally here. http://www.mede8erforum.com/index.php?topic=7045.0

ChangeLog -- v2.0.0
1. New V2 GUI
2. New Mede8er XML Movie Jukebox with 5 View Styles and Parental Control.
3. New User Customized Background function - User can use own background JPG images for GUI
4. New Skin function -- Users will be able to download community developed skins for X2
5. New Auto View Function
6. NEW -- Audio button shortcut to Audio Player 'Now Playing'
7. New customize GUI and SUBTITLE text based fonts (loaded into flash memory)
8. New Boot to Favourites function
9. Added support for PGS subtitles in MKV files
10 Added support for external vob/sub subtitles
11. Added Icelandic Launguge to GUI
12. Added Manual IP Setup for WiFi
13. Added HDD Size/Free Space added to Setup Menu
14. Fixed Internet Browser not displaying mouse curser
15 Fixed PCIe WiFi not booting up in conjunction with large size internal HDD
16. Fixed read NTFS only internal HDD
17. Fixed read issue on some HDD brands
18. Improved SRT subtitle image quality
19. Fixed external set sub with bracked extension after file name eg name[NL].srt or name.(NL).srt
20. Fixed limit of subtitles in one folder
21. Fixed SPDIF Passthrough when X2 does not have internal EDID info
22. Fixed crash caused by some characters in mp3 tag when doing a scan.
23. Fixed pause/play problem with DTSMA on some Pioneer Amp models
24. Fixed General Bugs and functionality
25. Fixed crash when opening BDISO with unsupported BD Menu

Transmission BT - Currently updating from V2.13 to V2.42 and this will be ready early next week. It must be noted that if you have pending downloads you should complete these first in V1.0.3 before updating as the new version uses different directories.

Investigating
1. Login to Picasa account
2. Vobsub not working if made with mkbmerge 4.9.1
3. LPCM - 6CH AAC Loosing Center channel when skipping forward/back

Look though the settings, make sure you turn autoview on if you want it to remember view settings per folder, so you can set your music to music view, and movies to movie view and it will switch on the fly. Also don't forget to scan your movie and tv folders (hit menu, there is where you can also set backgrounds and change genre icons pictures in you favorites). You can also set it to boot to favorites which is nice, just make a shortcut to any places you go often by highlighting the main folder and hitting menu>set to favorites, including favorite radio stations. Also, once you scan your favorites, if you turn on jukebox view everything will be listed on 1 page (even things in sub-directories) and searchable by year, genre, star rating.
After making icon changes or background changes, make sure you shut down and then restart before really using it. It seems to glitch it sometimes after rewriting the nvmemory so sometimes shared drives won't show up among other things not working right. A reboot will bring it back to normal. Reading the new users manual is not a bad idea either, i'm sure I forgot to mention some stuff that is new.

Can anyone tell me first-hand if the X2s support HDMI-CEC in any capacity? I've found mixed reports elsewhere.

Looking for it to interface with a Denon AVR, PS3 and Samsung LED, all of which play well together.

Thanks

I don't think it does. What are you looking for it to do, auto switch your AVR when you turn it on? Control the volume of your AVR?

I leave volume at max on the 500x2 since that is the level you want to amplify anyway and I switch the source on my AVR to the input is it on when I watch movies, play music, or use it's dlna features.

Damian,

Did you check out the new firmware yet?

I don't think i mentioned this to you before, but the DLNA feature is very nice on this. It can do video as well as audio. The imediashare app lets you play a lot more streams to it than the built in podcasts in the med500x2.

Rob

Looking to get as much control as possible; everything is in a closet, out of sight. Ideally (via Samsung TV Remote) TV input-change wakes up device, switches AVR input and passes control to mede8er. As great as the mede8er seems to be, having to change to an RF remote for this device alone might be the deal breaker for me.

HDMI-CEC, talk about a fragmented technology. In a marketplace where interoperability is key, it's interesting that these manufacturers continue to develop their own proprietary implementations of the protocol. The consumer is never going to buy every component from any one manufacturer for convenience/compatibility alone. Yes, Apple is probably the exception to this rule :/

Hello (pls forgive my english, I am spanish)

I am considering to upgrade my current Gigaset hd790t and buy a Med500x2. For me show stopper is the network speed.... I am sick of video/audio drops because of the LAN speed. My speed is not bad, it is 40.000 kbps, but during a movie it drops and video stutters, very annoying

So, has anynone tested the LAN speed? I know it is 10/100/1000 (gigabit) but sometimes is more advertising than reality

If it is really fast, I will probably buy it (I also need to know if a DVB-T tuner can be added)

Many thanks

I've got the Mede8er V2, and it is gigabit. I've got not issue playing any of my movies through it. I've played a MKV 1:1 rip which was 43 gb, and it played without issues. So, I don't think it will be the Mede8er dropping the connection but your ISP speed.

I get 25 mbps, and I can have my Mede8er, in the living room, my AIOS in master bedroom, my laptop and PC playing Netflix, my xbox playing MW3 and I've got no issues with the movie stuttering.

However, I did have issues with the Popcorn Hour A-300. This one for some reason or another would stutter whenever I had my wife and two kids using the internet, and I playing a movie on it.

Thanks for the reply. It is not the Med8er dropping my speed, I still do not have it. I have the issue with my current mediaplayer (Siemens gigaset) despite my network is decent: gigabit router, ISP speed 50mbps (but AFAIK Internet speed does not matter in LAN speed)

Good to know the Med8er is really gigabit and can stream a 40gb mkv file with no issues

It will play everything perfect if you have a gigabit router and gigabit on your computer. It will not really transfer files to the player from your computer at 1Gbps speed. It is 8.5MB/s max transfer speed over ethernet from your PC to MED500x2 (MED500X2 processor limited), but for playing .m2ts or .mkv it plays perfect, even with 1080p and DTS-MA like in avatar. I used to have the regular med500x and the 100Mbps could not keep up with the fast motion 1080p and DTS-MA, but the 500X2 is having no problems. I actually think it is the combination of the twice as fast video processor and the gigabit connection. Since i bought the 500X2 and an Asus RT-N56U gigabit router I have not had one problem with audio dropout or stuttering, and I have tested a LOT of movies.
And you are right, your internet speed has nothing to do with it. It's the LAN speed that matters. The only reason that internet usage would impact performance would be if the router wasn't fast enough to handle the data transfer from other people on your LAN at the same time you are trying to watch movies.

I have read in the Specs that max speed is 8.5MB (68mb) which is fine to stream (if LAN does not have peaks) but very poor for a gigabit device. The new Xtreamer Prodigy streams at 12.5MB (100mb)

Thanks Swamibob, very helpful

No problem, I try to help when I can.

I agree if the other one can really do 100mbps that sounds better, but only for transferring to the device through the network. You have to remember, these are all Systems on a chip (Soc) that have to do the transferring, not really what they are designed to do well. 100 is not that great either from a transfer speed standpoint compared to what 1Gbps is capable of. From computer to computer I can transfer about 90MB/s.

For playing blurays, the Med500X2 is plenty fast. To me, it really doesn't matter since I am not even running a hard drive in the 500x2 anymore since it can stream everything perfectly. I only used to dump movies onto the old 500X when it wouldn't play through the network properly. Since the 500X2 has no problems, I took the hard drive out of it and just play them all from an external docking bay (thermaltake blacx 5g) back in my computer room. I do have a couple of external hard drives in case I want to take my 500X2 to a friends house and watch movies.

Also, mede8er has frequent updates and they are working on adding a lot of new features to it. They just added the movie jukebox with .xml searching and next in line to be released very soon is a new music jukebox feature to add search-ability to your massive mp3 directories on your networked drives as well as locally.

damian - Nice to hear from you again. I have been watching out on the mediasmartserver blog and on your adigitalhome blog looking for the review. I look forward to reading it. Hope all has been well and that you are still enjoying the 500X2.

Glad to hear you're feeling better Damian. Awaiting your review .

Hey Damian,

I hope you are feeling better. I almost ended up in the Hospital again due to some allergic reaction again. So, now I am not eating any bread that we've got at home since it's one of those that has a million different types of seeds/nuts on it. I at a sandwich last night, and I started having the symptoms again. Lucky, I went an got my Rx's and it went away.

The next morning my car got stolen from my drive way....I told my wife good thing we got an inside dog huh! They stole all 4 rims/tires and my stereo....if they would of ask me for them, I would of given them the parts. My stereo is like 6 yrs old and the rimsa are like 8 yrs old...the only good thing about it is I have never seen those rims in the city were I live. So, If I see any vehicles with it.... ______________________ fill in the blank.

Anyway, talking about the Mede8er. I've been happy with it, and the only issue that I've got with it is that YAMJ doesn't support TV Shows, and some types it scrapes the wrong movie poster, backgroun , about, but I can fix this manually.

Damian,
Are you sure you have subtitles turned on in the setup? There is a bug with the realtek 1185 where if you turn off subtitles in a movie, it will change the setup subtitles to off. From then on, it will be off and unselectable until you go back into the setup and turn it back on.
Rob

I haven't tried to turn on the subs via set up. I will try to do that, and see what happens. However, forced subs do not work unless I turn them on.

I have found that subtitles have to be turn turned to on in the setup or no subtitles will work with this chipset, forced or not. If it is turned to off, it always says no subtitles even if there are. It is an option that allows it to do subtitles, not an option that says if you want them to display by default or not. It is kind of screwy.
I am not saying this is your case, but I have had my own problems with subtitles as well, and it has always been that it was set to off again in the setup when I didn't realize it.

Does it at least respect forced subs (tagged as such via MKVMerge) inside MKV's?