Wireless Player Requirements

[spotfek]

Hi,

I have what I think are fairly simple requirements.
Currently I have a cheap ellion 520c divx player which I use to watch scene released tv episodes downloaded off the net. I have to burm them to cdrw and have no real issues with playback on the cheap dated player (apart from high action scenes stuttering)

I am sick of having to burn first and therefore want a wifi player, what is the best recommendation? I am thinking of the Buffalo LinkTheatre (UK Model) will this provide me wifi access to TV Eps mostly in XviD sitting on my hd with flawless playback on a widescreen crt 28" tv?

Any advice is much appreciated.

[SeeMoreDigital]

There are a few devices that offer wireless connections. Some have DVD-ROM drives, some don't.....

I personally have the UK version of the ADS Media-Link, which works very well

Anyway... here are a few (non DVD drive based) devices that seem to work OK: -

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=87751


Cheers

[spotfek]

Thanks for the advice, i ordered the ads media-link, btw should have asked first but how is sharing done? do you have to use the server it comes with or can you use upnp server such as twonkyvision? Can you browse by folder structure?

[SeeMoreDigital]

I've only used the server software it comes with the device - which is based on Syabas's stock software.

If you have any success with other server softwares or find ways of hacking/adjusting Syabas's software, please let us know


Cheers

[spotfek]

Well I went and bought myself the ads media-link, unfortunately for me it was supplied without a remote control so was utterly useless, they couldnt tell me when i would get a replacement, they spent a week trying to find out if it was actually supposed to come with a remote, the fact you cannot use it without one didnt seem to make any difference to them so it is being returned.

I am tempted to buy it elsewhere although i was a little surprised there was no scart socket, i guess i could live with a svhs -> scart adapter. I like the size of the device, means i can put it ontop of my tv.

My question is shall i just grab it elsewhere or is there anything new and exciting on its way? It has to be wireless, btw seemoredigital, do you use this ads wirelessly? is there any problems with buffering? and can you explain a bit about how video files can be organised and selected from the device?

Cheers for any info!!

[SeeMoreDigital]

What a shame your ADS Media-Link experience wasn't more positive!

I can confirm that the device does indeed come with an remote control (which is listed on page 1 of the instruction manual, in the "package contents" section).

You also get an A/V cable (3No phono to 3No phono lead) and some units were released with an composite phono-to-scart adaptor.

The device offers YUV component video output and RGB+composite video output, so it is possible, with the correct adaptor/cable, to connect via RGB scart.

I did test the ADS "wirelessly" with several 720x576 encodes at different bit-rates. And it seemed to perform just as well as if it had been "hard-wired" (via EtherNet - which is my preferred method of connection). The results of my tests can be found here.

Depending on how well organised the media files are on your PC's hard-disk drive (my "media drive" is sub-divided into Audio, Video and Pictures), the ADS should have no problem accessing files!

As media streaming devices go it not bad... not bad at all at all. I'm not going to say it's perfect because I don't think any device can please all of us, all of the time. I currently have mine hooked up in our bedroom, to an Sony 20" stereo TV (via RGB scart). It's also plugged into an CD/Radio/Cassette midi hi-fi players.

I have a friend, who bought one a few weeks after seeing mine. He went completely nuts and uses it to serve "audio only" files to his "mega" 2Ch amplifier. It's connected via electrical digital and he uses an 7" wide-screen LCD monitor to see/access the files... he's even programmed his Pronto remote... for "ultimate control".... But he's got more money than sense


Cheers

[spotfek]

Well i already gave in and bought from somewhere else, (dabs) I liked the size of the box, and my requirements are pretty small, ie be able to play downloaded scene released xvid tv episodes off the net wirelessly.

Im not interested in audio as i already have a roku soundbridge which is a great piece of kit, all it needs is to support a lossless codec natively and im done hopefully!!

[spotfek]

Can you give me a link to the kind of adaptor i need to provide the best possible connection, (excluding the dvi output)

[nwpsys]

SMD, sorry if I have missed this in any of your other threads on the ADS, but does it handle packed bitstream OK ?

Thanks,

nwpsys

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally Posted by spotfek

Can you give me a link to the kind of adaptor i need to provide the best possible connection, (excluding the dvi output)

Sorry, not off-hand... because I make most of my own leads.

But here's an example of a "RGBscart(with audio)-to-phono" lead I made some time ago. However, you would require an "Phono-to-RGBscart(with audio): -

Originally Posted by nwpsys

SMD, sorry if I have missed this in any of your other threads on the ADS, but does it handle packed bitstream OK

Yes, packed bit-stream works fine, although it did seem to stutter on XviD encodes generated with AQ (Adaptive Quantization) or VHQ... I'll have to look back and check exactly which implementation it did not like


Cheers

[spotfek]

Well the new box was delivered today, unfortunately my bad experience continues. I have installed the server software but it is using 99% CPU Usage, when trying to connect to the server on the media-link it hangs for a while then says cannot connect to url etc, I think it is timing out because of the high CPU usage. Have you got any advice? Im running windows xp Professional.

[SeeMoreDigital]

When my Media-Link is up and running, via an 100Mbps ethernet connection through an hub, my PC's CPU usage is hardly affected.

If I have time tomorrow I'll connect the device to my TV in the lounge, which is next to the PC and carry out some tests for you....


Cheers

[nwpsys]

Thanks for the feedback on the PB, SMD. I'll have to check some of my my files with gspot and see if they have AQ or VHQ set ... hopefully it can detect these !

nwpsys

[spotfek]

well finally I am up and running, I uninstalled java and reinstalled the server software and its all ok now. Plenty of vids play fine, I have found that a few videos are badly out of sync, for example the LOL release of season 5 six feet under episodes 1 & 2 are fine, yet episode 3 is badly out of sync although plays on my pc. Have you had many sync issues? The box is starting to live up to expectations now apart from this sync problem. Incidentaly the same file had the same sync issue on my old ellion 520 divx player, I was hoping this one would handle it as i assume it has a more moden chipset in it

Any ideas?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Great news you've managed to get the ADS working correctly now

With regard to your sync issues... it would seem this can be an hit and miss situation, with a lot of hardware devices.

I have some MPEG-4 SP and ASP with MP3 audio files that are in-sync on my ADS Media-Link but out of sync on my Pioneer DV-575A and vice-versa. Some files with more than one audio track work fine on both devices, some don't!

That said, I've often found de-muxing and re-muxing the files streams with AVI-mux helps.

Generally speaking, when generating "back-up" encodes (within the .AVI container) I prefer to stay away from ASP implementations (even B-VOP) altogether. I always use a min of 2-passes with CBR MP3 audio or the original AC3 stream.


Cheers

[spotfek]

Well I recently decided I wanted some sort of redundancy for my media files and it was a tossup between buffalos terastation and infrants ReadyNAS, even though the ReadyNAS has the better spec/performance I just could not justify spending all that extra cash so settled on the Tera and the slow transfer speeds.

The tera has the option of running a media serving soft called PCast and one of my biggest issues has now been solved, namely that i kept getting page lockups when browsing through the menus.

The PCast software only seems to allow you to run Video files, but that is all i use the device for. Few other limitations but the fact this runs on the Tera and gives me better performance is a huge plus!!

My last issue is that i am getting stuttering on parts of some files, strangely the intro to some dvdrips of the first series of Tru Calling. I am yet identify if it is a high bitrate scene the chip cant handle or a network wifi bandwidth issue although I am pretty certain its the former cause it happens during the intro on even single episode.

I think i will try with it hardwired just to make sure.

I still cant believe there is no player that performs excellently, I am now banking on xbox360 to be hacked up and hopefully replace the ads player, will at least give me an excuse to buy one.

[Shinigami-Sama]

I;d say for the ulitmate player like you said would be to get a laptop with wireless and a niffty s-vid-ish connector like mine, it can handle copment so that would do for a while and it;d have no trouble with buffering and decoding I would imagine but theres a bit og expense with this one but..