Sony SMP-N200 - Page 3

Not bad--I'm happy to see that VUDU didn't let their product's UI be "customized", though I liked the Amazon GUI. If whoever did that wanted to produce a slideshow it would have been better to do it as a stills published on PhotoBucket or othe like--it was difficult to compare them.

In that frame of Netflix playing with the progress-bar/info overlay up, on the far right there was a little network icon followed by "29.2M" which was cut off. What was that? Some sort of bandwidth indicator?

Apparently so: http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php...6d567f#p288765

To me that seems a lot less useful than the Wii or PS3 display that tells you what stream you're actually receiving.

Unfortunately it seems to be some kind of indicator of bandwidth on the connection to the streaming service's servers and not an instantaneous indication of the current bit rate of the stream. And even if it was the latter, you're right--it'd be far less useful than the PS3 encoding indicator, since instantaneous bandwidth usage is going to be all over the place regardless of the nominal encoding bit rate; much lower than average during low complexity scenes like many title sequences and much higher than average during very high complexity scene. Also, many streaming players fill their buffer periodically, sucking it down as fast as they can get it, and then play from the buffer without reading for a while, creating big, meaningless peaks. Average bit rate of the stream over the past several minutes is interesting and can reliably indicate the overall average stream bandwidth, but the PS3's encoding report (low/sd, medium/sd, high/sd, medium/hd, high/hd and x-high/hd) is a much more reassuring thing.

Smp UI pictures .... click here … (ppsx file)

Officially confirmed that the WD does 1080P. Also confirmed that the Sony does 720P.

Confirmed officially by WD, Netflix, both?

Just noticed the SMP2 is now in stock at Amazon. I ordered one and is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. I have had a Roku 2 XS for a couple weeks now. We'll see how the SMP compares to that. I have noticed certain Netflix SD shows on the Roku are jittery during panning shots. The same shows play fine on my Xbox 360. Although HD programs play fine on Roku 2. Must be something with certain SD encodings the Roku doesn't like.

The real negative I see with the SMP is no Netflix 5.1, although I am hoping we will see an update soon. One benefit I will appreciate with the SMP is the Bravia Sync. This is one feature I have really appreciated with the other Sony components I have connected together. Makes it much easier for the wife and kids to operate.

The encodings used by the Xbox are different from the ones used by the Roku. I'm fairly certain that the Roku uses the same AVC w/DD sound encodings which appeared with the PS3 disc-based player and that the Xbox uses the VC-1 with WMA sound encodings that were used by everything (except the PC) before that.

Still, you usually see judder effects when the source they got was a 30 fps encoding of a 24 fps original, like all of the Starz Play stuff. That should be "jittery" on both the Roku and the Xbox though. I don't have any explanation for what you've seen.

Is there a link or something? I searched and couldn't find anything.


Any specific example titles?

The judder is really bad on a series my daughter watches called "H2O: Just Add Water". My daughter doesn't seem to mind, but I wouldn't want to sit through a movie with that much judder. Just out of curiosity I resumed the same episode from the Xbox and it played fine.

Ah, well that's an Australian series that's encoded at 25 fps. To get to your TV at 60Hz the player has to add frame repeats in an irregular pattern, and the Xbox may be doing it in a way that's less noticeable.

It played fine (no judder) on the smp2!

I also searched and couldn't find anything! Is there a link somewhere?

Interesting. Sounds like this is one area where the Roku 2 lacks. Although, not sure how many Netflix streams are encoded at 25 fps. The Xbox is definitely less noticeable. Good to know the SMP2 will handle these streams better as well.

Hi to all,

I have this 3Dtv the XBR-52LX900 and i was wondering if i was able to replay any 3D content trough this media player also if anybody can tell me what's the bigger size it support (mkv, mp4)

Sorry for my English, pues hablo Español

The WD was confirmed by Netflix

The SMP-N200's Netflix video capabilities was supplied by Sony.

I am returning my SMP2 after using it for a couple weeks and going back to my AT2 and PS3. Let me tell you why...

The user interface is beyond annoying. It's slow, juttery, and unresponsive. It's nice to have 300 channels, if that's your thing, but if it's not, I'd sure like to just be able to scroll my favorites. Oh, I can add them to my favorites, but it's still a few clicks away and not at all a convenient feature. I have a sony tv and would love it if it added the channel to my favorites on my tv.

Netflix and Hulu are the main apps I will be using and Vudu occasionally. I'll admit, streaming looks great on netflix, and fine on hulu, but the experience is lost. Finding movies on netflix is a distracting experience and you can barely see the movie icons on the screen. It's so cluttered with unessential flotsam that it is not at all fun to just browse the movies. The movies are ordered by genre (as one would expect) but no sub-genre and no way to view an actor or directors filmography, another minus in my book. The search feature is broken. The on-screen keyboard is literally lifted off of a cell phone interface and would be more intuitive if you had an app to use instead of the controller. Alas, there is an app, but is wonky with the SMP2. The controller is ok, but the essential color coded buttons are annoying in a dark living room as you cannot even read the name of the color requiring you to turn on a light.

The DLNA is fantastic however. Streamed and played via usb stick every show or movie I "acquired" from the internet. Rome and Sopranos looked and played absolutely flawlessly. This alone being the one stand-out feature for the SMP2.

Music unlimited. If you have spotify and/or were interested in dabbling into sony's music subscription service, this device will frustrate you to no end. I launched the app and even uploaded some of my own music. It was slow to recognize my music, it's gracenote function destroyed all my metadata so all my uploaded music was scattered willy nilly into genres and artists. Ok, not the end of the world. When you play it however, it is very slow to respond and you can't even play the previous song, only the next song. How unintuitive is that?

Sony's PS3 Netflix and Hulu apps are about the best in the biz, I just don't like using my (aging) PS3 for anything but gaming. It blows my mind that they could provide such a underwhelming piece of hardware KNOWING that they could be offering so much more.

The HDMI sync feature was also wonky. I'd be playing a game on my PS3, and would suddenly switch inputs to the SMP2 input and back again. I would turn off my SMP2 only to have it turn back on as well as my TV five minutes later.

Me and my girlfriend really wanted to like this. I love my sony TV, my PS3, my sony vaio, etc.... But this? This SMP2 just fell short in every conceivable category. It's OK in everything it does but that's hardly going to cut it and definitely not going to find it's way into my living room.

EDIT: Amazon Streaming - Amazon streaming worked fine. I actually liked that I could watch some asian movies that weren't re-dubbed. The PQ was ok, but again, the U/I for Amazon was lacking. It seemed that all the movies were just dumped in a browsing screen and it was up to you to dig the one you wanted out. Amazon + Hulu + Netflix + Vudu? How did Sony get it so wrong? My 2 cents.....

Here's a video review I came across. Watch out for the LOUD audio that drowns out his voiceover whenever he plays a video clip.

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

Download PowerPoint Presentation File (ppsx) .... click here..

Sony SMP-N200 now playback some titles from Vudu in 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus! (update ver. M10.R.0553).


Cheers!

Any more opinions on this player?

I used to have the SMP-N100 for a short period, and I did not find the annoying menus as mentioned by wanderjahr. In fact, I found that menu is typical Sony menus, and it can navigate pretty snappy. I used mainly for internet streaming contents, such as youtube and free shows, home videos and music. I returned the N100 due to:
1. The machine could not stream internet contents smoothly (buffering and green bands), probably due to weak processor in the unit. Appears that the issue was fixed in the current N200 model
2. Very limited music format supports: only mp3 and wma. I wish it supports flac as well. However, the sound quality is very good.
3. Could not get to play many of the avi files that I have, though it claims to support the format.

I am considering this unit. Key for me is Vudu support for 1080p. I also have Netflix runnign on my Apple TV at 720p. Would be great if Netflix was supported at 1080p. Does anyone know if this has been been resolved in this unit with a firmware upgrade? I guess worst case I could download the app on my PS3 and run both Netflix and Vudu from that, but as another poster had indicated I prefer to keep that at low use and for games.

I just got one of these--also for Vudu.

Unfortunately, it seems not to deliver Vudu's 1080p24 stream unmolested, but converts it to 1080p60. (Evidence: OSDs of box itself, iScan Duo and TV.) This introduces a very distracting judder into what should be a smooth stream. It doesn't bother everyone, but it makes movies unwatchable for me.

The effect may not be limited to Vudu, either, which diminishes the value of the box's broad selection of sources.

I'll double check, of course, but I think it's going back to Amazon.

Edit: Confirmed lack of 24p. A shame, since it does lots of things well, and is a steal for $60.

On second thought, though I'd really rather have 24Hz output than not, it is not a deal-breaker--especially since the iScan Duo can recover the signal. (Even the Vudu-provided app on the Oppo BDP-93 exhibits the same oversight--which seems really odd, since 1080p24 is Vudu's marquee feature.)

It certainly can't hurt to ask Sony and Vudu whether this can be fixed.

I just picked up the sony smp-n200 and overall I think its pretty good.

Two issues/questions for others with the box...

1. When using DLNA I'm just getting a list of files. It doesn't seem to look at the metaData at all. If there any way to get posters, descriptions, etc when viewing video files over the network. Perhaps it's related to the DLNA server I'm using Twoneky.

2. I'm seen hints that this box can hook up to and use a USB wireless keyboard, but I have the DiNovo mini and it doesn't work. Wondering if anyone has successfully gotten any USB wireless keyboards to work with the SMP-N200.

thanks

mal

ok i'm thinking of returning my roku 2 xs and getting this box instead... straight forward youtube streaming, vudu, DLNA, better file support from USB...

i already know netflix streaming is not 1080p/5.1 yet but my roku 2 only bitstreams DD+ so i'm stuck with stereo on it anyway since my AVR only does DD/DTS and PCM

here's my question... does the N200 decode the DD+ to PCM or send the backwards compatible regular DD stream with vudu? (because if it does there's hope for netflix if they ever update it)

also does it actually have a way to see what quality level you're streaming at with netflix because i can't find any kind of indicator with the roku

The Roku only bitstreams Dolby because it avoids per-unit licensing that'd be required to decode it.

AFAIK, only the PS3 and Xbox players have an indicator like that. The Sony will tell you what the current connection speed is (not the current bit rate of the stream you're viewing), but that's not a clear indicator of quality level.

and from what i've read DD+ is supposed to be backwards compatible with DD receivers but it doesn't work that way on the roku

which is what i'm asking about the n200 is does it either stream regular DD (like my ps3 does) or decode the DD+ to LPCM

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...1&postcount=17