Sony SMP-N200 - Page 2

I wish.... No, HDMI is set to [Auto]& it was the first item on my list.


Yes, it does.

On the device side, …smp2 has only one HDMI audio setting [Auto] or [PCM] no option for [Direct], on Netflix side…there is no [DD+/subtitles] or audio setting option within Netflix-App that I could find.

Smp2 seems to bitstream/decode audio from each prime channel differently, Vudu for example 5.1DD+ via HDMI &2.0 PCM over optical… Amazon 5.1PCM via HDMI & 5.1DD over optical. As long as HDMI audio setting is set to [Auto] & not [PCM].

From my experience w/Netflix II on other Players , Netflix keeps [DD+ along w/sub] within its App, actually I’m not a Fan of that! (w/exception of ATV2 5.1 DD).

When I saw “DD+ logo” on the device, few weeks ago, my first impression was Netflix II !! Hopefully an update is around the corner! Since ATV2 has been supporting DD for quit sometimes now & Sony site compares smp2 to atv2!

The SMP-N200 doesn’t have this issue. Multi channels audio from Vudu & Amazon are active w/good sound.

The Netflix app has "options"?

Try putting something from the "Official List of Netflix Watch Instantly Titles w/5.1 Sound" in your queue. When you view the description for that title on the SMP-N200, is there an indication that it has available 5.1 sound? Do you get an "Audio and subtitles" menu selection? Something similar to these (though not necessarily presented in the same style):


(The top one is from one of Netflix Webkit/HTML5 interfaces which appears on multiple devices; the bottom two are from the Roku 2). Only a small subset of Netflix titles have 5.1 sound--fewer than 600 out of 12,800. In the interfaces of the 3 devices that I own that support 5.1 sound no mention of 5.1 sound will appear in the descriptions or menus of titles which don't have it (PS3, Roku 2, Panasonic DMP-BDT110 3D BD player).

It's killing me that I can't find a review of this or any pictures of its interface online. It must be that Sony didn't send out units for review, which is suspicious; it implies to me that they're afraid of what the reviews might say about it.


The question was about the Netflix player and if what you say is true it's not applicable to the SMP-N200, inasmuch as it doesn't feature 5.1 sound in Netflix.

Hi DaveFi, I agree and here is a respond I got from Sony a couple wks ago.


And still no new Netflix software update to fix the v.2.04 problem.

That's why I will only buy these things from Amazon now, as they have such a great return policy- they take pretty much anything back and will pay for return shipping.

Well, if this box doesn't have Netflix 1080p/5.1 our next hope is the new Netgear NTV200 coming out next month- unfortunately with no external drive support it's functions are rather limited (but I won't care if it does what I need on the streaming end for $80MSRP).

What I meant by options' is something like Audio and subtitles, pull-down menu/ selection menu/ were Dolby Digital Plus & Stereo can be selected, this kind of menu will only appear if the title posted w/5.1

I've lots of Netflix 5.1DD+ in my Queue that I watch from other streaming players & non of them show 5.1 on smp2, I even looked at lot more titles just in case the 5.1 not shown for one reason or another! No luck!

I don't quite get what the ntv200 offers that Roku does not. If 1080p Netflix is important, isn't a Roku a solid and cheap choice over the Sony and Netgear?

Being as we don't know what the differences are at the moment it's kind of hard to say.

The Roku would be close to perfect if it had a VUDU player. The current hunt is for a streamer with VUDU with HDX support, Netflix with 1080p/5.1/caption support, Amazon with 5.1 support, all with bitstreamed sound. DaveFi would like for it to be able to output native 24p (much of the streaming content is encoded as 24p, and most of the players convert it to 60p without an option to output 24).

I didn't realize Troll Hunter was available from streaming. I had been waiting for it on BD but this is the type of movie that HD streaming is perfect for. Now I can take it out of my Netflix and Blockbuster disc queues.

I was really hoping to see this product have 5.1 on Netflix. But since it doesn't, I went ahead and ordered a Roku 2 last night. There is one review on the Sony Store for the SMP-N200. The review mentions Customer Support said "Netflix will be available Oct 10th". Maybe there is a update in the works??

It's actually one word, originally "Trolljegeren" in Norwegian. (I struggle to resist--and sometimes fail --correcting people who smash two word names together, like "VieraCast"; I can't recall any other instances of the reverse ).

It's a cool little movie, in the "found footage" style of Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project. It's in Norwegian with English subs--you can find it here at Netflix's site.

Sadly, the Roku 2 bug which prevents it from detecting that the title had an available 5.1 soundtrack forced me to choose between 1080p (on the Roku) and 5.1 sound (on my BD player); I choose the sound. The video was in hand-held shaky-cam style, shot by one of the characters to document events, so video was never going to be the greatest.

EDIT: IMDb states that the film cost an estimated $3M to make and has thus far grossed $254K--sad. Hopefully it does well on BD/DVD. There's a US remake planned for release on 2014, currently named "Troll Hunter" (two words ).

That "review" states that he couldn't get Netflix to work at all and that Sony customer service told him that it was coming on the 10th. That's in conflict with the reports by two people in this thread who've used it.

This is probably why there were no review units sent out; a new product which streams Netflix, the hottest and most advertised streaming service, which does not support any of its most advanced features is likely to get slammed on that account by reviewers.

Actually the good news is that it cost $3.5 million to make and made $4.1 million worldwide - although only $254K in limited release in the USA. The bad news is that Chris Columbus' company has picked up the option for a remake.

All indications point to that direction(hopefully!)..the current smp2 firmware (version M10.R.0431), lets see what the next few weeks will bring in

So far, the smp2 is very stable w/o a single glitch!!!

I purchased the SMP-N200 from the Sony website and have been experimenting with local network playback, using a Synology 710+ NAS. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the SMP-N200 will play H264 encoded MKV files on the NAS drive with NO on-the-fly re-muxing/transcoding. Playback is smooth and pause/skip functions work well, as expected. The GUI display is quick and easy to read. For those wanted more info on how I determined that my Synology NAS was not re-muxing/transcoding, here you go. On the Synology box, it gives you the capability to select different DLNA profiles for each device. For the SMP-N200, I tried both the default profile and some various sony profiles (bravia, blu-ray, etc). With the default profile, the files are displayed as "MKV" on the SMP-N200 GUI. While streaming, CPU usage is very low (<= 1%) and ffmepg is not running. With the sony specific profiles, the files are displayed as "MPEG" on the SMP-N200 GUI. While streaming, CPU usage is higher (<= 5%) and ffmpeg is running. Thus, my conclusion is that, when using the default DLNA profile, the Synology is NOT re-muxing/transcoding and I am able to play H264 encoded MKV files over the network, despite what it says in the SMP-N200 manual. Maybe I'm missing something and the Synology box is doing some magic behind the scenes, but I don't think so. So, in conclusion, I'm happy with the SMP-N200 so far.

does anybody else find it ridiculous that the Sony smp-n200 includes a web browser that doesn't support Flash? That (for me) was the only thing about this that was an advantage over my WD Live Plus but has proved to be worthless basically. I wonder (hope) there may be a plug-in update or I think it'll just be heading back...

I still can't find a single review of this thing. Fug it--I think that it's probably not a competion for the Roku 2, at all. The search for the perfect Netflix+VUDU+Amazon box continues.

it's obvious that Sony wants to keep it under wraps for awhile. Perhaps until they get everything working? Even retailers in their retailer network like Amazon don't have it yet and don't list a date for when they will. I happen to remember the same thing when they released the n100. Besides the big ones like NF, Amazon, and Vudu, etc. the other streaming choices are throw-aways anyway. A few of them only have less than ten videos in them a few minutes long each, and I've seen other "channels" that have content in them that are tech news pieces from 2008.... For internet streaming, the Roku units (1 and 2) just can't be beat.

Just got mine in the mail. Standing by to answer questions.

You can find this at Walmart for 99

Unless units are sent out to magazines for review before their release date, it usually takes time for the professional reviewers to evaluate the products, do a write-up and get it either printed or put on the internet. So it does not surprise me in the least that there are no reviews out there yet.

reviews.cnet

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-medi...-35015428.html

He didn't eactly rag on it, but he had several negative things to say about it and nothing much good. In the end he couldn't recommend it, promoting Roku 2, Apple TV and WD Live Plus as being better in different ways depending on what you're looking for.

About what I expected. Oh well.

The new WD Live box, also $100, has 1080p/5.1 Netflix, but no Amazon or VUDU.

So they did their own UI for Amazon, Netflix etc. and made them much worse?

He’s mini-review was focused on UI.

It seems that he wasn’t aware of customizing channels/Apps via [Favorite List]!! Where you can only display your Favorite channels/App on a full page… Yes, the icons are on the small side (like ATV2), but if you select the icon you get full page to display more info/options! Probably he didn’t mention “like ATV2 UI” (w/netflix small icons grid).

Although he did mention Netflix solid/good stream video quality, he didn’t play it/demonstrate it (its unusual w/review!!), In my opinion, Netflix PQ on the smp is by far better than any other streaming player (excluding PS3) that support 1080p!

He also didn’t mention much of Vudu, which offers the best instant (I mean in a sec) HDx video/audio in (1080p/5.1DD+). In all, he didn’t show any streaming.

For me, my main interest is to streaming content from Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, Hulu, Crackers, Pandora & other So, video/audio quality was/is the hunt! If only the smp could supports 5.1 audio w/Netflix, the smp will stay on the TOP shelf. (hopefully an update is coming soon).

I’m glad I purchased it way before he’s review, or I could have miss-out on Great solid streaming video quality from Netflix, Amazon & Vudu as well as total system stability w/zero issues.


Cheers!

In my opinion, the UI review part was a total exaggeration, the Netflix UI icon-grid is like ATV2 initial queue page, once you select an icon you get the content description on a full page w/large & very easy to read fonts!

The grid works well for Amazon prime since there is no Queue.

The review ignored the fact that smp has a nice UI [Favorite List] under options to customize & display only few channels. On my universal-remote I program it to start the smp by only displaying large icon of { Netflix –Amazon—Vudu—Hulu+--Pandora—Crackle..} or just select [FAV] button on remote to exit to that page, (simple navigation for family-members).

Really? It can do 1080P in Netflix?

From Dave Zatz's write-up:

His pictures of its Netflix interface (seems to be the current PS3 one):

Sony Smp-n200 UI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXxwUcUhvkE