POPCORN HOUR A-400 is coming soon - Page 31

Originally Posted by Brajesh 

I'm getting this as well. After finally spending my first two hours with the A-400, I'm very disappointed. Posters for movies are missing from NMJ detail view even though they show fine in wall. Most 3D ISO's stutter and/or freeze after a few minutes to 15-20mins in via SMB. Via USB 2.0, they play, but if I skip ahead several chapters, they stutter. I'm debating if I have the patience for this as Mede8er's 1000X3D is solid enough to stick with.

Originally Posted by Gurux 

I'm sorry halfelite but you attitude isn't any better. The people who are complaining here are the people who spent their hard earned money to buy an unfinished, full of bugs, severely underperforming product. You are mentioning Apple but there is a huge difference between Syabas and Apple: Apple's products might be seriously overpriced but they deliver 99% of the time. Apple would never release such a poor experience, a product that is supposed to play movies over a network but it can't connect at a decent speed and is incapable of playing plenty of modern formats fluently.

Hence I said If he wanted plug and play an apple system might suit him better then Buggy try to play everything media players, This is no hate towards apple there model for work withing its own ecosystem is excellent. There are two types of people for media players the ones the try buy and drop it if not to there liking and the ones that sit on it and complain over and over, As you say its there hard eared money so why not give it back for a refund or sell it and move on.

I don't see why me, the paying customer, should put up with this. I am buying neither a written promise, nor a box of components and I am certainly not investing in Syabas' welfare. I am simply buying today a network media player and I expect it to tick today all the boxes mentioned on the product page. Any undelivered feature is a lie and therefore should be treated as such. Syabas, Dune, Med8er and all the others should only release fully working products, with properly tested hardware and stable firmwares. TV's, cameras, computers, phones - they all follow this rule. There are occasional problems, yes, but they are the exceptions to the rule. In the world of media players however it seems to be the other way around.

I would love a bug free player but its never ever ever happened and you learn to deal with it.

I also find pathetic the excuse that "the others have the same problems". A company should strive to deliver, not to find precedents.

What company does strive to be the best, You work with what you can get, its almost impossible to get a bug free player trying to support every setup and every file

Now to speak about A400, there are no guarantees that the network performance will improve - you say there is new hardware and a new Linux driver - can you guarantee that the issues will be sorted, cross your heart and hope to die? No. Can you guarantee that the high definition audio stuttering will get sorted? No. Can you guarantee that the VXP processing will eventually be more than a feature on the box? No. Can you guarantee that the 3D ISO will work flawlessly in a reasonable amount of time? No. You assume that things will get sorted but to what extent, you don't know. You are telling us that it's not only up to Syabas, it also depends on Sigma's SDK. What if tomorrow we will find out that certain hardware issues prevent this player from delivering any of the above features? History proves that there has always been an excuse for this sort of failures and to this day A300 has not delivered what was promised. What makes you believe that A400 will be any different?
Last but not least if the Sigma SDK is immature, if we're still in alpha testing stage, if we don't even have a clue about the new chipset's real life capabilities and limits (and I emphasise not a clue), why release it?
Again I have no grantee do you see me telling people to hold onto to it might get better or do you see me telling people Hey if it dont work drop it and move on, I dont tell anyone to hold on to a player. Sure I might be up front if you are not willing to work through bugs to drop it and move, If you are a person that likes to tinker then tinker and dont complain.

WHy not keep it in a lab and test it thoroughly before releasing it? Why the rush? Is it because of the Christmas shopping season? Would that excuse everything? You wanted it, Santa delivered it ho ho ho?! We're actually not quite there yet, we're still working on it, we have no idea at this point what will work and what won't, remember, it's a new realm, never explored before and of course we didn't do much experimenting before selling it to you because we were busy with plenty of other things, like shipping the damn thing and advertising features which we have no idea whether they'll ever come to fruition,but you tell us what problems you encounter and then we might be able to help. Just buy it because it's new, nobody else has it, it might work, it might not but it's the first of its kind, it's an exclusive product, you won't find it anywhere else and we need your money.

Same reason Nintendo U launched missing a lot of its functions people like to get the rush of money its just business practice, How many cell phones release early saying they will get the next android OS and never do its just how electronics are.

And then you have the guts to bully the early adopters, here and on your own forum. Unbelievable!

If you think its bullying then im sorry, things get lost during typing in a forum, I just try to be straight up, If its your hard earned money dont complain on a forum every 3 hours gt out and do something about it, be it try to work through the bugs, Be it return it for a refund, or put it up on ebay, last I checked couple A400's on ebay were going over retail price they could make money back on not liking the product to go and test a different one to see if it works for them, Nothing rubs me the wrong way more then someone that constantly complains and does nothing to help the situation them self. We have all bought things we regret but why keep the regret if the firmware gets better in a couple months buy another one then

Originally Posted by Gurux 

I'm sorry halfelite but you attitude isn't any better. The people who are complaining here are the people who spent their hard earned money to buy an unfinished, full of bugs, severely underperforming product. You are mentioning Apple but there is a huge difference between Syabas and Apple: Apple's products might be seriously overpriced but they deliver 99% of the time. Apple would never release such a poor experience, a product that is supposed to play movies over a network but it can't connect at a decent speed and is incapable of playing plenty of modern formats fluently.
I don't see why me, the paying customer, should put up with this. I am buying neither a written promise, nor a box of components and I am certainly not investing in Syabas' welfare. I am simply buying today a network media player and I expect it to tick today all the boxes mentioned on the product page. Any undelivered feature is a lie and therefore should be treated as such. Syabas, Dune, Med8er and all the others should only release fully working products, with properly tested hardware and stable firmwares. TV's, cameras, computers, phones - they all follow this rule. There are occasional problems, yes, but they are the exceptions to the rule. In the world of media players however it seems to be the other way around.
I also find pathetic the excuse that "the others have the same problems". A company should strive to deliver, not to find precedents.
Now to speak about A400, there are no guarantees that the network performance will improve - you say there is new hardware and a new Linux driver - can you guarantee that the issues will be sorted, cross your heart and hope to die? No. Can you guarantee that the high definition audio stuttering will get sorted? No. Can you guarantee that the VXP processing will eventually be more than a feature on the box? No. Can you guarantee that the 3D ISO will work flawlessly in a reasonable amount of time? No. You assume that things will get sorted but to what extent, you don't know. You are telling us that it's not only up to Syabas, it also depends on Sigma's SDK. What if tomorrow we will find out that certain hardware issues prevent this player from delivering any of the above features? History proves that there has always been an excuse for this sort of failures and to this day A300 has not delivered what was promised. What makes you believe that A400 will be any different?
Last but not least if the Sigma SDK is immature, if we're still in alpha testing stage, if we don't even have a clue about the new chipset's real life capabilities and limits (and I emphasise not a clue), why release it? WHy not keep it in a lab and test it thoroughly before releasing it? Why the rush? Is it because of the Christmas shopping season? Would that excuse everything? You wanted it, Santa delivered it ho ho ho?! We're actually not quite there yet, we're still working on it, we have no idea at this point what will work and what won't, remember, it's a new realm, never explored before and of course we didn't do much experimenting before selling it to you because we were busy with plenty of other things, like shipping the damn thing and advertising features which we have no idea whether they'll ever come to fruition,but you tell us what problems you encounter and then we might be able to help. Just buy it because it's new, nobody else has it, it might work, it might not but it's the first of its kind, it's an exclusive product, you won't find it anywhere else and we need your money.
And then you have the guts to bully the early adopters, here and on your own forum. Unbelievable!

Originally Posted by Gurux 

First of all Apple made one mistake and everyone jumped for their jugular: Maps. Cook came forward and apologised and the person in charge of the software division is currently looking for a job. Before that Jobs had to deal with the dreaded antennagate. He came forward, he acknowledged the problem, he offered free bumpers or money back, no questions asked. Which is why I do buy Apple products, I have a Macbook Pro, an iPad and an iPhone. For some people I would count as an Apple sheep (and you actually made quite a derogatory reference to Apple above although you would have a lot to learn from them) but in truth I respect a company which respects me and acts honestly and responsibly.


What Did I say bad about apple? I just gave them praise that the apple ecosystem is an amazing piece of work.

Instead of boasting and telling people "they don't have a clue what they're talking about" you should maybe voice down your tone a little bit and try a more humble approach because at this point there is absolutely nothing to boast about. This player performs, at its launch, worse than last year's A300 which is quite a performance in itself (but unfortunately not a positive one).
I am not the squeaky, moaning and groaning type and I am a bit of a geek like all of you on this forum. But please do not insult my intelligence by telling me that my average, standard and 100% working gigabit ethernet switch is the culprit for these network problems when my average, standard and 100% working gigabit ethernet switch has performed flawlessly for a long time and it has delivered a solid performance with anything in my flat apart from your player. And I have quite a few networked devices, some seriously expensive and finicky.

Why are we calling it my player? I dont work for PCH I am a user like yourself, Again bufferbloat is a strange problem and can happen to any switch, I explained what it is why it does it, Its nothing against your switch, The way the switch runs its own buffer contradicts the way tcp/ip is supposed to run and will fill up the switch in turn causing bufferbloat, This is not just a switch problem, network settings of device connected to a switch can also influence this behavior. Its a condition that when if met can have a crippling effect. Its nothing bad on the switch nor is it bad from a hardware standpoint. Say the PCH is saying wait im overloaded drop packets, then your switch says wait no I dont need to drop packets I will just store them in buffer, And the PC sending the files never gets the memo that HEY the pch cant keep up I need to drop some packets and slow down, Dropped packets is how tcp/ip judges speed, That is why when you first start a transfer across networked machines the speed at the very start is usually very fast then starts to level off. as one machine says hey I need to drop some packets lets slow down.

I would have been happy to invest in a work in progress if I would have been warned that this is a work in progress. That's why we have for instance Kickstarter projects, people come up with ideas, they ask for financing, people contribute whatever they want and if a product is eventually delivered, everyone has something to gain. A400 however is not a Kickstarter project but a supposedly fully featured, high end, top of the line product.
Now on the product page one reads:

With VXP Video Processor, your viewing experience will never be the same
The Popcorn Hour A-400 features an all new Sigma Designs 8911 dual core 800MHz CPU with 512KB L2 Cache with VXP Video Processor, bringing video quality to the next level. By offering a best in class video processor for deinterlacing, scaling and image enhancement, separate video post-processing is no longer required.
Inaccurate, most of the features are missing and it's actually Sigma and not Syabas who might or might not pay the licence to activate the full chipset capabilities (supposing that A400's hardware VXP implementation is fully capable of delivering the above features). At this point Syabas has no idea whether Sigma will do so or not so the above statement is at this moment in time a blatant lie and there are no guarantees that it might not be quietly removed in the future, like we have seen before.

Again what would Sigma have to pay for? Sigma Owns VXP they Bought out Gennum in like 2008 taking over everything VXP they dont need to pay licensing on anything[, You are correct in Syabas has no clue what Sigma will bring unless they have some sort of contract

3D Movie Support
Now Supports Blu-ray 3D, MKV 3D, 3D Side-by-Side and Top-and-Bottom content.
No it doesn't! The whole forum and its dog told you that it doesn't, it fails miserably, it's a joke, it's unwatchable, forget it.
And these are the two main selling points of the new product. Moreover, to have a player that in all other respects is not even at A300 level, it's twice slower and severely crippled by the worst network performance we've experienced since dial-up, and to continue to tell people they don't have a clue what they're talking about, stick with it or sell it on eBay, is sad. It is really sad.

Until People either try to sort out there network issues or wait for a fix there will be problem with this. There have been people that have played 3d flawlessly, SBS/TAB work correctly just the higher bit rate packed frames of iso files, Which again some people have played fine, others have not. The DTS-HD issue was confirmed and no one has denied any of the bugs that can be confirmed.

I gave the steps to help mitigate network issues and the same person that has been talking about RAM in the player again attacked it for having to little when packets should not need to be buffered how our said work around works. I have went over the player itself USES no RAM yet it keeps being brought up again. I took my free time playing with the PCH to find optical network settings I did not take my time to come and share the information to just have people troll on that hard work, it does not leave a good taste in your mouth. I could go silent drop all my knowledge and workings to make this player better if it would make people happy.

Originally Posted by Gurux 

To finish this, and I promise to finish this here and now because I have better things to do with my time and money, I will tell you that I am a fairly high end user. I have a 3000£ audio network player (Naim NDX), I have a Weiss DAC202 and a Naim DAC and other similar toys. I have an audio system that delivers, I want a video system that delivers and I am happy to pay the price. I would pay 2000 - 3000£ for a player that offers everything that is promised here, flawlessly, at the best Bluray PQ currently available from high end disk players. It's not that I can't afford a high end Bluray player or Bluray's, the problem is space - I can't bother to have a huge collection of physical disks anymore, I had a wall of audio cassettes, a wall of CD's, a wall of DVD's, I have learnt the lesson, I have a big QNAP NAS now and everything is stored there safely. I need a video player capable of accessing that treasure at gigabit speeds. I have my Naim NDX (soon probably the NDS) to deal with the 24/192 audio recordings, I want a similar video player capable of accessing my Bluray ISO's, be it 2D or 3D.
For now, until someone comes with a better machine, I would pay twice or three times as much for A400 if it would deliver the whole set of advertised features. I'm keeping an eye on the future high end player from Dune, that is exactly the kind of thing I want in my setup. I would pay a fair price for proper video processing, for high end video quality, for a jitter free digital BNC audio output (which supports the full 24/192). But as far as I know there is no such a machine. Until someone builds one I will keep A400, not because I trust Syabas or because I am happy with it but because I am curious to see what happens.

Originally Posted by Gurux 

Until someone builds one I will keep A400, not because I trust Syabas or because I am happy with it but because I am curious to see what happens.

Originally Posted by aaronwt 

Using NMJ Navigator on my tablets has been awesome.

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland 

A media player that can be controlled via IP (my iPad) is a requirement for me. The A-400 is the first one that I am aware of that has this feature. I want to access my music files (MP3, WMA Lossless and FLAC) and play them without having to use a video monitor. It appears the A-400 will do this, true?
.

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland 

A media player that can be controlled via IP (my iPad) is a requirement for me. The A-400 is the first one that I am aware of that has this feature. I want to access my music files (MP3, WMA Lossless and FLAC) and play them without having to use a video monitor. It appears the A-400 will do this, true?
My video requirements are for ATSC compliant TS file playback (MPEG-2 & MPEG-4) and it is assumed it will do this without problems, true?
I do not mind putting a disc (BD or DVD) in the player so BD rips is not a concern at this time. If they squash most of the bugs in regards to BD rips people are having then that would be a bonus feature I may use in the future.

Originally Posted by robnix 

You want a Sonos then. None of these media players can do what the Sonos system can do for audio in the home.

Originally Posted by Gurux 

Halfelite, thank you for that, I will look into it.
GusGus748s, thank you kindly. It's pointless to continue this. At the end of the day halfelite is right, we got it, the player failed to deliver and this is irrefutable. But we have indeed two options - sell it/send it back or stick with it.
If we send it back, the story ends. If we keep it we might as well offer feedback and try to work with Syabas and not against them to turn this stray cat into a roaring lion.
The reason for my anger was different: first of all Syabas and their team tried to systematically minimise the flaws and failures (which is understandable), discredit the persons who complained, adopt a forced positive tone although, as halfelite admitted above, at this point nobody actually knows what to expect from this new chipset because someone didn't do their homework before releasing it. While certain issues with certain Bluray images might be excusable, after all nobody can check everything, you would have expected something as basic as Gigabit performance to be picked up instantly. Failure to do so is a really bad point in my book and speaks volumes about Syabas' testing standards and capabilities. I am also cross because at this point some apologies would be in order and maybe a small print on the presentation page to say some features are expected to arrive at a later date, some are unstable and some are in an early alpha stage.
But we need a better chipset. We need new, better players. And we need competition because only the competition will deliver better products at fair prices. For all its flaws, A400 does break the monotony of endless 8642 players and because someone was greedy and wanted exclusivity, there is currently only one, probably very small, team working on the software side of things. If they will eventually deliver everyone will win - Sigma, Syabas, us and the competition who will hopefully have a fully working SDK / firmware by the time they are allowed to manufacture their own products. So investing in A400 now is in a way equivalent to investing in the future, we all know times are difficult, there is a lot of pressure from all sides, the market is shrinking with the advent of LoveFilm, Netflix, Apple and the likes. This is the reason why I will hold on to my A400. Even if it fails it will at least be a step in the right direction and the next generation should benefit from the current experience. If we don't pay the money now there won't be a next generation, be it Syabas, Dune or Mede8er. They might all deserve a punch on the nose but if we do want a better player we have to suffer, waste money and cope with endless frustrations. The companies who would have the money, power and infrastructure to deliver a high end, no nonsense video player will never do it - they want us hooked to their streaming businesses.

Originally Posted by GusGus748s 

I completely understand what you are saying. When I got into the niche of ripping movie, streaming and using media player....well it sounded awesome. I first tested the A300 because it had everything I wanted on paper. Once, I received and tested the player it was another story. It's was sad to see my $80 dollars Pivos AIOS media player work better than the A300. I had my high hopes for the A400, but as Damian mentioned before PCH didn't disappoint at providing an unfinished product. That's PCH's history and it probably will never change. However, the PCH-200 / 210 work pretty good so if we give them a couple of years....who knows it might be one of the best media players.

Originally Posted by Gurux 

Or a future Dune with 8910. Or Mede8er. Or... The main thing is this chipset, which was rumoured to see the daylight next year, if ever, has finally been released. It has, at least on paper, all the capabilities we need. Now it's just a question of implementing it properly and working on the software. It's unfortunate that it was left to Syabas to work on it exclusively, a wider availability to more manufacturers would have probably reduced the time needed to fix the problems significantly. Of course there might as well be hardware issues, we have seen Revision B's before. Again, more manufacturers working on it would have certainly made a difference. But at least the cat is out of the bag and meowing.

Originally Posted by jcfay 

Well, after reading a few of these posts it seems like overall folks are quite disappointed with the 400 . I currently own the old a200 and a c200 and am thinking of upgrading, and I do love the idea of being able to use my iPad/iPhone as a controller for the media jukebox. But it's sounding like the 400 is still not performing well at all for most - is that a correct conclusion? I need to upgrade at some point and would love to keep my NMJ video database that I've spent countless hours building up over the last couple of years, but the only way to do that is to stay with PCH and the 400 looked great. Perhaps in 6 months it will be where it's advertised? Is the A300/C300 series any less buggy?
Thanks (as always) - Jon

Originally Posted by dbone1026 

If you are a happy a200/c200 owner there is no reason to upgrade to either the 300 or 400 series currently. Let's see where the A400 is in the next few months and if Syabas/Sigma can fix the nasty bugs on the 300 series. Or I guess a better way to put it, if you feel inclined to get a 300/400 just get at at first as a secondary/backup player to your 200s until you are sure it can competently replace.

Originally Posted by jcfay 

Thanks, Dbone. I'm not so happy with the 200 series right now actually. Since I have a very large video library, and have been using the NMJ db software (although I use Rom's NMJ Toolbox software to edit it, if you're familiar with that), my video wall browsing experience is REALLY slow. It takes a minute or more just to load a section of my video wall, and then has to reload after 375 titles. They play just fine (although my A200 also has the buggy noisy fan issue, although I don't use that player much for that reason). So I'm not happy with the 200 software, and figured that would be fixed with an upgrade to the 300 or 400 as well.
But I think your logic still applies - I could pick up the 400 and try it out and wait for PCH to generate patches/fixes and then in a year or so I could swap them out. But then I wonder - should I just move to another brand that is less buggy? Would a switch to Dune or something, even though I'd have to rebuild my massive vid library, be worth it?
I am still amazed that so many years into computers, hardware and software, we all still have to deal with these sorts of BS issues...

Originally Posted by Wryker 

I'm going to run the AIO Eversion on my A400 since I have >300 BD rips on 10 drives. We'll see how it goes!

Originally Posted by halfelite 

toolbox was released NMJ now supports multiple shares if you want to stick with NMJ, All though its a little buggy at the moment

Originally Posted by Wryker 

If I use Eversion will I be able to use the ANdroid app?
I've seen some conflicting posts on NMJ and that it supports multiple drives but not USB, SATA, or SD card connected.