*Official* Xtreamer Sidewinder 3 thread

Ahhh, the power of an xstreamer product! You went from "pretty happy" with it to "going to return it" in a little over 12 hours. After all of the broken promises and lack of support for their product line I would never own one of their products, although I do like reading reviews!

They have really good marketing (or overstating features) to attract new customers. Plus they are backed up by a big company I think.

For features to be fixed or added later, it depends on the SDK (Software development kit) of the RealTek chipset they are using... if other media players with the exact RealTek SoC has that feature and its working, there is a good chance it will get fixed or added. The bad thing is if other RealTek players have unsolved problems, there is a good chance this one will have the same RealTek unsolved problem issues...

Xtreamer 3-4 years ago shook the world by coming out with cheap pricing media players and that was how they got their customer base and built their brand... but now there are many competitors that come out with the same or cheaper pricing so they can't really say they're the lowest or cheapest anymore...

Right now it is hard for the media player brands to get new customers - because the Rokus, Apple TVs, WDTV Lives and other lower priced media streamers are less than $100 are grabbing the general consumer market- at least here in the USA...

They seem to be more oriented towards Europe. Their US pricing and support, even worse from Canada, does not bode well for sales over here. There are players that will do more for less and are supported. The thing is when you read their ads it just seems like they have great products and ideas. It might be worth it to buy a product on one of their wish lists. Otherwise it's really a hit a miss thing. If it doesn't work then there's a good chance it will never work.

They really are masters of the ad campaign though.

philip

would you mind doing a quick review & screenshots for us? how's the UI, navigation and stuff?

i recently got the 3rd gen wdtv and most probably need one more of these boxes. A great fan of the first xtreamer(it did everything i needed) so deciding whether to get xtreamer SW3 or just another wdtv...

thanks mate

EDIT:On a side note, (I might be completely mistaken here) but I feel putting android in these boxes don't add much too the value. Like my top scores would be for a intuitive UI design, minimal bugs, fast operation. But that's me, i don't use the tv for internet. Perhaps those who do might be completely delighted with the android on xtreamer thing. But yeah I agree at least for skyping it would be good but to be honest that remains to be seen because i'd imagine things to clunky if the app is not designed for large screen? just my 2cents..

Why not use SMB? My unRAIDs (and WHS) are setup for NFS and SMB. I use NFS for my Boxee Boxes and SMB for everything else.

Agreed, why not use SMB? I got one of these a couple weeks ago and have had good luck with it so far. Even high bit-rate 3D mkv content works perfectly with it. I tossed a hard drive in it but am considering taking it back out as I have all my content on a ReadyNAS Pro 4 anyway. I thought maybe the internal drive would be useful for jukebox or some other settings but it doesn't seem so and it's not really worth the extra heat to have the drive spinning in the unit.

hmm from what i've read online, NFS has been known to be a more efficient protocol & thus might translate to higher throughput. But that being said, even in my setup I use SMB as it generally works ok and easier to set up. But in cases where nothing else can be improved(range etc), changing from SMB to NFS might allow that high bitrate 1080p to be streamed..

I have not really ran into any 1080p content that I haven't been able to stream smoothly over SMB yet. That said I am streaming from a ReadyNAS Pro 4 with load balanced dual gig ethernet so that likely gives me a higher throughput than average. I'll try the NFS setup to see if I can detect and appreciable differences.

that's great. Yeah i guess on wired ethernet you should be fine with SMB. I forgot to mention earlier my setup is a wireless one. With SMB it does 720p beautifully. Managed to get a few low bitrate 1080p files to play but the rest usually stutter. it's here i feel that perhaps NFS might be able to give that extra throughput. But I've yet to test it out as my NAS is unable to do NFS out of the box(Synology USB Station2).

guys check this out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpvLM...1&feature=plcp

they have said they'll release the sw3 version in the next few days...
so far from the video i must say everything looks robust!
this just might change my next purchase to sw3 instead of the wdtv!

Tempting!! This is my other contender: Bluetimes Coopa 3550B....
Does the sidewinder 3 come with 512 or 256MB of memory. I see both figures mentioned on the xtreamer site.

Does it have a graphical interface built in?

philip

Philip, did you look at the youtube-movie?

Yes I did. I just wasn't sure if that was a shipping version, a beta version, etc ... I am simply a little leary when it comes to that company. If they shipped with that interface then that would be neat.

philip

Me too, their over-marketing and under-delivery is infamous. But, I have a Sidewinder 3 coming to try out. Got lucky & found a used one on eBay for $101 shipped, so not a huge risk. They just released firmware 3.5 for it. Will compare to PopBox v8/PCH-A300 for 2D playback & jukebox, and to HiMedia HD900B for 3D ISO playback.

That should be an interesting comparison. I've read there's still a few issues with the new jukebox. I've also been reading in the PopBox and PCH forums and they have there own issues as well and been taking a long time to try to solve them.

I think it applies to all players that if it doesn't work the way you want when you get it don't hold on to it hoping it one day will. I've seen numerous posts of disappointed people for just that fact for all players.

I very much agree! I had one of the first WD HD TV's, which refused to play some formats. I am reasonably happy with my Sitecom, but it doesn't pass-through DTS MA en Dolby HD. I ordered this Xtreamer, also because of the 3D support, a nice to have for my Samsung D8000. I'll report back here when I can get my hands on it.

So, my SW3 arrived yesterday & I had about 1/2 hour to test it out. Need to spend more time this weekend.

It has a nice form factor. The remote is so-so though, with buttons & labels tiny. The buttons are also laid out unintuitively.

First thing I did was update to latest 3.5RC2 firmware. Although the stock UI is nicer than other Realtek 1186-based streamers (HD900B, EP600G2), I found it a little sluggish. It doesn't help that I need to point the dang remote directly at the SW3. If I sit at an angle, the remote won't communicate. Went into 'Settings' and made the necessary changes for 1080p/24 & hd audio. But, just couldn't get Xtreamer Live to enable, even after multiple attempts. A pop-up appears asking you to press '1' to accept the terms of service, but pressing '1' does nothing & times me out. So, I haven't been able to try out any of Xtreamer's exclusive online content areas.

How's 3D BD-ISO playback? Nice. But, no different than HD900B or EP600G2. In fact, pressing 'Menu' even brings up a similar pop-up menu with options for subtitles, video settings, go to, etc. While there is a L/R swap in there for titles like 'Rio' & 'Drive Angry' (where you get synch issues if you don't invert), there no playlist selection for titles like 'Cars 2' & 'Toy Story 3', where the wrong playlist (one with Spanish lettering, credits) play by default. The HD900B/EP600G2/EP950 & other 1186-based streamers have updated their firmware since launch to use BD-lite to allow you to select different playlists. For now, you're stuck with the SW3 picking the largest/longest playlist, even if it's the wrong one. Also, if you enable BD-lite in 'Settings', you can't access 3D. You'll get a warning saying your display doesn't support 3D.

How's HD audio? Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD MA bitstream just fine. Tried the new 2D 'MI4: Ghost Protocol' ISO w/TrueHD 7.1 & 3D 'Rio' animated feature with DTS-HD MA 5.1.

The main reason I decided to try out the SW3 was to get a sort of HD900B & PCH A-300/PopBox v8 in one... as with firmware 3.5, the SW3 now supports a proper jukebox, something none of the other 1186-based streamers can do as far as I'm aware. So, this will be by next test once I figure out how to build a jukebox via the SW3.

Looks like a new firmware is out for SW3: 3.5_RC6.

Got mine today also. Updated to RC2 also did it via the menu, which was not the correct way, but succeeded in the end), and connected a cheap mini wifi-adapter, which workes perfectly!
Player works great with hd-audio, and 3d movies. Found out just now how to get the jukebox-display, which is very nice! You just have to search for the film data, and store it. Would be nice to do this for the whole disc (maybe it's there, but haven't found it yet), and it is obvious that you should give your films the correct name. That makes it much more easy to find the correct info.
I will try a mini BT keyboard as well, as it looks this device has BT built in (?). So more exploring to do, but very happy so far. And RC6 is here, so will give that a try as well somewhere this weekend.