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Television Media Entertainment Hardware

Review: Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player 145

Posted by timothy from the who-needs-to-leave-the-house dept.
atkulp writes "The convergence of PC media with the home entertainment system is something that has been promised for several years now. Tech-savvy computer users can easily have gigabytes of music, images, and video on hard drives, locked away from the living room setup. Many of us are looking for a simple solution that will allow our stereo/TV equipment to simply become network devices so they can consume any shared content. On the surface it sounds like a simple proposition - yet few devices can achieve this goal, and of those even fewer do it well. Some people resort to just plugging a computer into their setup so they have all of the features and media support, but finding good 10-foot interfaces can be challenging." Read on for atkulp's review of Oritron's networked DVD player to see how well it meets the all-in-one ideal.

I tried a computer-based setup and found that my wife and younger children had trouble figuring it all out. At that point I decided I needed to wait for a hardware-based solution that would work well without requiring a clunky computer near the TV.

Enter the Oritron

Having decided that nothing was available yet, you can imagine my excitement when I saw a networked DVD player in early October. This was the Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player, also known as their On Media DVD player. This unit plays many audio and video formats -- even photo/JPEG discs. Where it really shines, though, is in its ability to play streaming content over the local network. It can switch between DVD and network content with the click of a button, and is very flexible in supported formats.

What does it do?

But what can this device actually play? Through the disc slot it plays DVD/+-R/+RW, audio CD/-R/-RW, VCD, SVCD, and CDs full of JPEG images or MP3/WMA music. Over the network, it plays MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, JPEG/TIFF/BMP, MP3/WMA, and most AVI files (DivX and XviD for starters). Yes, that's right, it plays DivX over the network! You may ask why it plays AVI-based files only over the network. This is due to the interesting way that the device handles video: any format that is not handled natively is transcoded on the fly on the PC-side. This is why there is a system requirement of 1.2GHz for the PC (though one of my On Media server boxes runs just fine with a 1GHz Athlon). When an AVI file is selected, it converts it to television resolution on-the-fly. No need to pre-convert your files. This means you can watch full-quality on your laptop and desktop (with the higher monitor resolutions), and TV-quality through the unit from the same file. It will not stream DVD's (encrypted or not). It also won't stream a VCD/SVCD per se, but will stream the actual MPEG streams that are encoded for VCD/SVCD when named properly. No proprietary video formats such as Real, QuickTime, or Windows Media Video will play. I do wonder though, if someone were to write appropriate AVI-style codecs for them, if it could be managed somehow ...

The player's interface is mostly well done. I have some complaints that I'll get to in a moment, but overall it works well. Upon first turning on the unit, the player's LED display greets you with "Hello" while the TV shows the logo. It then checks for a DVD in the drive and if present immediately starts to load it. At that point (or if there is no DVD) you can press the On Media button on the remote to switch to network content. (Actually you must wait for this sequence to complete. You can't turn it on and right away press On Media.) The LED display switches to "Online," and lets you browse servers. The next time you switch to On Media mode it will go straight to the last server selected. Going back to the server list is quick and easy. Once a server is chosen it provides options for Pictures, Video, or Music. Selecting one (with the arrows and OK button on the remote) provides you with options for Folders, Playlist, or All. "Folders" shows you all folders on the shared PC. My complaint here is that it flattens them out. All folders appear at root level, which will affect how you name them. "Playlist," of course, lets you select pre-made playlists of files, and "All" shows a single flattened list of all files contained on the server for the chosen media type. Selecting a file starts the media playing.

Music plays, without any fancy visualizations, right on the menu screen. The bottom shows the title information, but you can still continue navigating to other media while it plays. MP3 music can play during a photo slideshow (this is not true of WMA however). Video plays full-screen with media information during the first few seconds along the bottom, or when needed using the Display button. Forward/Reverse works in ten-second intervals (which is also true of music), and no DVD-style slow-mo or zoom options are available. The quality is great, though. Transcoded DivX files look like DVDs (based on source quality of course), and lower quality clips play at the best quality possible. I have played full-screen and widescreen and all ranges of quality and I have never been let down by this unit. It works as advertised.

How does it work?

The unit needs to be plugged into your LAN. Instead of providing a CAT5 outlet on the back, it has a PCMCIA slot for a 16-bit wired or wireless 802.11b card. This is not the same as CardBus, which is 32-bit. You must get a 16-bit PC Card and it must be one on the company's approved list. This includes D-Link, Orinoco, Linksys, NetGear, and Microsoft products, so it's not too difficult to find. Best Buy had both the wired and wireless version of the LinkSys cards and may well have had other offerings as well. I was glad they chose this route rather than custom-branded cards at high prices.

I tested the unit with both wired and wireless cards (both from Linksys) and am pleased to report no difference in functionality. I have DHCP setup on my network, and after plugging in the wired card it just works. There are network options screens to enter static information but I didn't test those. After plugging in the wireless card it showed me a list of wireless networks in the vicinity and a simple selection got me online. It supports WEP security (wouldn't want to type all that from the remote though!), and both infrastructure and ad hoc configuration. The wireless option only supports 802.11b, but due to their method of streaming this is not a problem and the content is smooth.

PC setup is a breeze. You install the On Media software on any PC containing sharable content. Sadly there is no non-Windows support. This may be in part due to the complexity of real-time transcoding and the Universal Plug-and-Play used for network communication that plugs into the associated Windows services. Of course there's no reason why ports of the software couldn't be made, but it would not be a simple translation most likely. Once the software is installed you must select folders to scan for content. This can take some time the first time. In addition to crawling through all the folders you choose, it generates TV-friendly versions of all of your images. This is the only case where it must change a format in advance (let me stress though, it never changes any of your original files). The photo resizing is a good thing. I have a 4.2MP camera and I popped in a CD containing full-size photos. It played them all without a hitch, but there was a noticeable delay as it resized them. This is avoided with the streamed photos due to the pre-sizing. The player does not automatically rescan your folders, however you can set a schedule for it to do so. I use this so any files recorded by my PVR are added to the shared files list for easy viewing. The only downside is you can't setup schedules per folders, just one scheduled interval (though it can include as many folders to scan as desired).

Something nice about the network implementation is one PC can serve multiple units, and one unit can connect to multiple PC's (though only one at a time unfortunately). In addition, on the PC side you can see any connected players in the server interface. Since the player's network settings allows you to rename it you could see "Bedroom," "Living Room," etc. based on your setup.

I called the support number before even getting the unit to get some questions answered. The service people were knowledgeable and didn't take too long to answer, but English wasn't their first language. An attempt at more information via email didn't yield much more information, but they responded within a day. If you dig into their websites and manuals you see references to Koss. I'm not sure if they are manufacturing or supporting the unit, or some other role. I just found that interesting.

Pros:
  • Well laid out remote with hotkeys to jump to music/video/pictures
  • All the A/V in/out connectors (composite, S-Video, component, digital and 6-channel audio)
  • Wide range of streaming content with smart choice of transcoding
  • Easy network setup for wired or wireless environments
  • Great quality of all supported media - you wouldn't know it's streamed!
Cons
  • Would be nice to play even more content types (Ogg Vorbis, Real/QuickTime/WMV)
  • Remote feels too light, makes you wonder how tough it is
  • Server could be more flexible with scheduling options.
Conclusion

There are a number of things I would like Oritron to work on, but they aren't showstoppers. More granular forward/reverse, remember position in file if you turn off the unit during a movie, and even better choices for navigation would be nice. They make it clear that the unit is firmware upgradeable, though, so some of these things will hopefully be remedied in the future. The actual network-side of the unit is handled by a product called NetPlay which is licensed by Digital5, a company that just creates and licenses network DVD options for other companies. They will be forced to keep innovating to compete with other, similar offerings, so hopefully we will all benefit.

Overall, I would highly recommend the NPD3117. It's what I've been looking for in most areas. I believe there is even more that they could do to make this unit perfect but it's the closest thing I've seen yet. A great unit!

Some technical notes:
  1. As noted above, the AVI streaming only works for certain AVI types. The On Media website lists the exact FourCC codes that are recognized. I'm not sure why there is the FourCC restriction though. Since it uses the codec to transcode the video it shouldn't care what type of file it is. It has occurred to me that by being creative with codecs one could create interesting hacks that would be streamed to the unit. VNC, static internet portal (headlines, weather), internet music, and web cam streaming come to mind. Email me if you are interested in discussing further...
  2. According to a company spokesman, server software and firmware updates are coming very soon. According to the same person, certain features (like internet radio) will only be added to future products (I hope they don't forget about their early adopters!). Some "logical next step" features like an integrated web browser probably will not be made available due to interface/experience concerns. They want to position themselves as industry leaders in this area so expect more devices to come in the future.
  3. The server software only imports media from local fixed drives. I wanted the ability to also import/play DivX content from local CD-R's. I solved this by mounting the drive into an empty NTFS folder. Now it just scans that folder like any other folder. There is a brief stutter when starting a video from CD, but then it plays as flawlessly as other media.
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Review: Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player More

Review: Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player

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  • no carbus (Score:1, Insightful)

    by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) *
    means no 802.11a/g

    If it were an audio device, 802.11b is fine, but for streaming video you really need g or a.

    • Re:no carbus (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      did u read what hw said? it transcodes so u dont need all that bandwith dumass.

    • Er, wha? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )
      If you can't stream 640x480 compressed video over a 802.11b conenction, you have serious issues with your setup. I do this at home all the time.
    • Not really. The only DVD's encoded at a rate that come close to the transmission speed of 802.11b are the Superbit encoded titles. These DVD's have a bit rate of ~ 10 Mb/sec.

  • Seriously... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OtakuHawk ( 682073 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @01:54PM (#7488008)
    It would probably be cheaper just to buy some 700mhz celeron, and set it up as a media player, give it a good graphics and sound card, and install it behind your TV.

    • A Celery 700 to play multimedia? Surely you just, Mr. Feynman!

    • Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by smashr ( 307484 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:59PM (#7488332)
      It would probably be cheaper just to buy some 700mhz celeron, and set it up as a media player, give it a good graphics and sound card, and install it behind your TV.

      Funny, because that is just what my $150 used XBOX accomplishes for me. It cost me nothing to mod the xbox (besides two solder points) and now I have a device that can stream just about any format from my PC (xbox media player), in addition to a myriad of other functions. Why would you pay more for this DVD player when it accomplishes that much less?

      • Don't forget, if one is to go down to software etc or funcoland and buy one used, one needs to budget $160 in order to get the xbox, remote control kit, and the advanced av pack, to get a reasonable set of outputs - and that's just s-video and optical audio. You can order other AV cables but then you have to pay shipping, so it's six of one, yada yada.
      • so what os/software do you use to stream your stuff? is it the multimedia distro of linux that boots on the xbox?

        • Re:Seriously... (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          It's probably a distro built around MythTV [mythtv.org]. MythTV uses a very very similar frontend/backend technology. It's a PVR, a DVD player, a transcoder, MP3 player, and it makes julienne fries! I've been following the project, and I know that there's an Xbox front-end version. Of course, to do the PVR stuff (Myth's bread & butter) you'd need a backend PC with a TV tuner card or two, and a stiff bit of processor...

    • Re:Seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uradu ( 10768 )
      > It would probably be cheaper just to buy some 700mhz celeron

      The Oritron is $169.99 at buy.com. You'd be really hard-pressed to build a complete minimal system for this price, unless you already have a lot of the components. Plus you'd need an IR receiver, either off-the-shelf, or home-built.

  • Low End DVD players (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BlkPanther ( 515751 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @01:56PM (#7488016) Homepage
    It seems that the best innovations and most features, in DVD players now come from the small
    "cheapo" DVD player manufacturers.

    I would imagine this is due to the fact that they have a smaller *perceived* market share, than the big boys (Sony, Phillips, Panasonic, RCA, etc), and they are trying to temp users from those company's share.

    On a side note, this makes me wonder, how deep the penetration is for these off-brand players. Are they flooding the market, and just innovating for the hell of it, or do these features really make a difference in most consumer's minds?
    • Fortune Magazine reported in their November 17, 2003 issue that Apex is currently the leader in market share among all DVD player brands. It has 15.4% of the market; second-place Sony has 11.8%. Even cheaper brands of DVD players, with shelf prices as low as $35, threaten to take away some of that market share.

      Players capable of streaming content off the network, recording television [crutchfield.com], or doing anything else over and above playing DVDs are a niche market. Until they can compete with a $35 basic DVD playe

    • Re:Low End DVD players (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @03:03PM (#7488352) Homepage Journal
      Well, they ARE generally cheap POS devices. There are a few exceptions but I'd advise against buying the cheapest or first item available with XYZ functionality anyway.

      I think the "big guys" are trying to refrain from adding too much too quickly, letting the small ones add features that the RIAA/MPAA might bitch about (DIVX/MP3) so that they can serve as lightning rods.

      I think they have a very good size market share simply on affordability, it is easier to convince maybe five people to buy $50 player vs. one person buying a $100 player. They also use cheaper decoders and video amps, but the difference may not be apparent on the cheap TVs most people own.
      • One thing I forgot to mention is that the big brand names value their contracts with the DVD forum, the many chinese-made brands might be made without any concern or even without licencing.

        I really can't say that any of the Chinese players are following any of the contracts, I doubt that a set-top player is allowed to have a network port or expandability that allows one. I think the **AA organizations are more concerned about online trading than set-top players to persue the issue, they just might be "sli
        • And for all the reasons you've listed, the OP is exactly right that most of the innovation nowadays comes from small players. One more reason we're seeing so little innovation from the "big players" must be their sheer size and bureaucracy. Ten, fifteen years ago when Sony was God and every new device they released seemed like magic, technology moved more slowly than today. Back then a lot of the magic was still done in hardware, and let's face it, these guys do know hardware. But with so much more computin
          • Sure, what you end up buying at Wal-Mart will still come from some large company, but will often have been started by a small guy.

            Not necessarily so: I first saw both Apex and Oritron DVD players at Wal-Mart.
    • I bought an Oritron DVD player once and it barely lasted longer than the 90 day warrantee. Perhaps they model themselves after Microsoft when it comes to innovation.

  • There's a better one (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:03PM (#7488060)
    ...on scan.co.uk. It has a built-in 80GB h/d and can play Oggs out of the box. It doesn't play WMAs, but that doesn't bother me because a) I don't have any and b) it will do on the next firmware update, apparently.

  • I would have to say.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:05PM (#7488074)
    I would have to say that the reason for lack integration of pc media with existing living room setups is due to the fact that much of the PC media is 'illegitimate'. How can big corporations, of which many have ties to entertainment industries, endorse this trend, without being a thief of their own assets?

    • Good point! The unit can stream pictures, music, and video. Generally pictures are legit, music is often legit (don't jump all over me...), but video (at least movies) is pretty rarely legit. I have a computer acting as a PVR so some of my content is TV, and I have home movies on there as well. I agree that the big companies expect most content to be illegal so they don't want to help it. As much as I hate the talk of DRM, its one saving grace may be that convergence devices will really come out of the

      • I don't know that "rarely" is the right word, but I also don't have any evidence to back that up either; however, I think you're underestimating the amount of people now using their PC to master movies off of their camcorders.

        I could definitely see myself using something like this to preview the editing on my daughter's second birthday party we just had, and make sure that all my changes make sense to my wife or family before I commit it to DVD or VHS.

        -9mm-

  • Transcoding MPEG4 seems like a bad idea. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:10PM (#7488097)
    Transcoding is a huge waste of quality, and of resources (both processor cycles and network capacity). There have long been players like the KISS that just play DivX movies straight from disk. Now if they just got a network interface, that seems like the sane way to handle the situation. We are living in a time when a cheap CPU can decode DVD-resolution MPEG4 using only passive cooling. There are no real barriers to decoding in the living room.

    So, nice try but no thanks. For now, small form-factor PCs are still a much better idea for home entertainment purposes.

    Why can't manufacturers get it right and make a simple interface for a networked living room device that decodes video based on MPlayer codecs (that are extensible) and can also record, TiVO like, on a hard drive or (even better) to a drive on the network? Or, best of all, stream video to a good computer on the network with a lossless codec, where it's buffered it and converted to 1-pass Xvid in real time? Come on people, the technology for all this is available. There are no barriers of legality. Just make the good stuff already.

    • Re:Transcoding MPEG4 seems like a bad idea. (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:18PM (#7488136) Journal
      There have long been players like the KISS that just play DivX movies straight from disk. Now if they just got a network interface, that seems like the sane way to handle the situation.

      You mean like this one [scan.co.uk]? Or, slightly cheaper, this one [scan.co.uk]?

      • Re:Transcoding MPEG4 seems like a bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)

        by antiMStroll ( 664213 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:49PM (#7488283)
        Better yet is LiteOn's LVD-2001 which plays AVIs, Divx, MPEG4, MP3's, DVDs, etc, etc and has a front loading memory card reader for displaying jpegs. I paid $169 CDN. It's still a bit clunky but the firmware (linux!) is easily upgradeable and appears to be under active development. A new one was released just two days ago to improve Divx 3.11 performance and support the .srt subtitle format.

        • LiteOn LVD-2001 (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Rob Simpson ( 533360 )
          Yeah, they just released a new version that (among other things) supposedly improves DivX 3.11 playback. (The other versions and Xvid played fine, but 3.11 was jerky.) Unfortunately, it sounds like there's still a problem with it being zoomed in automatically for MPEG-4, so you have to adjust the screen or stuff will be cut off the top and bottom. Hopefully I'll be able to get through to their server soon so I can try it out myself. There are some comments about it on the NCIX forums [ncix.com].
      • It's true that there are versions of the KISS with a network interface, but note that there is no support for network protocols like Samba/NFS or the like.

        There is a special Windows-only program available from KISS that sets up a dedicated "server" for KISS devices. AFAIK the used protocol is proprietary and very, very limited.

        In other words: The ethernet version of the KISS is useless for people with a Linux server.

    • Yes the Kiss have all the described features. One problem is that they use a sigma decoder chip that is not very powerful. Thus you cannot go fast forward/rewind with picture, and divx 3.11 does not run smoothly.

      The Philips DVD 737 uses an own Philips chip with much more power. It does not suffer from such problems.

    • I agree with you about what it could be. MPlayer codecs would make a lot of sense. Even with just a 5GB hard drive for updates you could do a lot. Transcoding seems to be a good next best thing though, since the player can handle more formats than it ever needs to know about. Transcoding takes surprisingly few resources on the host computer, and the quality looks great. I would have been even happier being able to play more content from the built-in disc slot, but honestly if you have space on your net

    • Maybe Microsoft could sell an Xbox without a DVD-ROM in a smaller, plainer case with XP media center on it, for about the same price as an Xbox is going for now. Then if you wanted to add a dvdrom you could go get one that was USB or something. (USB is already in the current design, I see no real reason to do anything better. You don't need high-speed devices on an appliance.) They could support digital cameras, both still and video, it could be a big seller. If you implement IE then along with the securit

  • OK - How Much? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:13PM (#7488110)
    Nice review. Without mentioning the price it's not that helpful. There are some awesome machines out there, but you pay for all those extra features. How much do you end up paying for this one?

  • umm link (Score:1, Troll)

    by Zebbers ( 134389 )
    a nice review
    but no link?

  • A Few Gotchas... (Score:5, Informative)

    by InnovativeCX ( 538638 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:18PM (#7488139)

    I'll admit, if the product is all that the review makes it out to be then I would be very interested. Cheap, too--it's selling [buy.com] for $169.99 + free shipping. Of course, you still have to add in your connectivity of choice, but regardless, a more than reasonable price considering some of what I've seen from similar media delivery companies such as Escient [escient.com] and SonicBlue [sonicblue.com].

    Unfortunately, it seems that it's only a nice deal if you can get it to work. Three reviewers [reviewcentre.com] over at Review Centre are a little less than satisfied:

    "Oritron NPD3117 networked DVD player is a very unreliable product. The first one I had, it stopped working after two weeks. I couldn't get the DVD door to open reliably...While playing DVD movie, the pixel would just break up all over the screen. The service center was no help. They did replaced my breaken unit. The second unit broke after one week."
    A second author had difficulties with networking:
    "Had to return the first Oritron NPD3117 DVD player because networking did not function properly. Second player sent worked for a month and then would not turn on properly with wireless network card."

    The third review seems to be quite pleased with the product. Overall, it sounds like a nice player, but it suffers from poor implementation (or at least Q/A in manufacturing). It would be nice, however, if they were able to get these issues resolved. However, if problems such as these are as prevalent as they appear to be, my money if perfectly content with rotting in the bank until something slightly more functional appears on the market. I can only hope the promised firmware updates will help to alleviate the glitches.

    Rule No. 153: You cut the fat, you cut the flavor.
  • they might as well have called it the
    Oritron NPD1337

  • MediaMVP wants to hear from you.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by clueless123 ( 643205 ) * on Sunday November 16, 2003 @02:29PM (#7488194)
    If you are interested on viewing your computer media via TV you should look at hauppage's MediaMVP it goes for abot $80 bucks, the box's OS runs linux ( http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-6466_7-30543929.html )
    After asking hauppage about linux support I got this response:
    - - - - - -
    Dear mynamehere
    Thanks for your note.

    The MediaMVP currently requires a WindowsXP or Windows2000 system. Even though our MediaMVP product development was done under Linux, the "server" part of the system is currently only running with Windows.

    There have been a ton of requests for Linux servers, and our engineers are seeing what we can do to support a Linux server. When we do, we will post a free update on our website.

    Ken Plotkin
    Hauppauge

    - - - - - - - - - -

    Personally I would buy a couple of them in a sec if it supported linux (where all my media is located)... The point here is that if we let'em know that there is a demand for linux drivers/software they *will* make them.. (hopefully before xmas) So, if you have interest on this kind of a device for linux, send them a nice email at sales@hauppauge.com

    • Re:MediaMVP wants to hear from you.. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The MediaMVP is definitely a neat product for the price. Very easy to set up and works well so far. I have two complaints so far:

      1) it seems to be a bit picky about which types of mpeg streams it will play. I have had no trouble playing mpeg1 files that I created for the purpose of making svcds. However, I have not had any luck in getting it to play any mpeg2 files. I believe, however, that this is because of my newbie skill level in creating such files.

      2) It would be nice to be able to start playi
  • What I want to do for my media center (whenever i can afford something worthwhile) is have a nice, cheap box (perhaps a G3 or a linux box, G3 preferably, but it wouldn't be as cheap) with a huge hard drive, a dvd drive, a sweet sound card that's worthy of DVD's, and a nice video card that has the outputs I need for whatever tv I decide i want. Then I can use the computer to host all my media files (no need to have them on every computer) and serve as a DVD/CD/whatever player. As a bonus, it should be able
    • I think the Telly from Interact might do this (http://www.interact-tv.com/products.php)

      Discussed earlier here:
      http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/16 /008235 &mode=thread&tid=129&tid=188

      I'm seriously considering buying one of these even at the hefty $900 price.

      I'd like to see some more up to date feedback on this

  • XBMP (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hacker1 ( 241868 )
    Whats wrong with XBox Media Player?
    • Ummm, how about it's illegal? At least, the binary is 'cause it's built with pirated versions of the Xbox dev kit...
    • Despite the lack of interest on the part of the slashdot mods the X-Box is easily the best solution. It comes standard with a 9gig hard drive which can be easily upgraded and after modding is a very acceptable Dvd player which supports many forms of media. It can in fact be modified to run Linux, for slashdotters who are up in arms against corperate developed software, it even supports simple networking and Samba.

  • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I wasn't able to test HDTV resolutions due to my setup. The player has component video output and the manual states that it supports HDTV resolutions, but that may only be DVD -- not streaming. I just don't know.

  • 3 Mb/s limit - and prices (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Movie quality is dependent on the bit rate of the video (which cannot be greater than 3 MB/sec). " link to article on dvdrhelp.com [dvdrhelp.com] Buy.com has it for $169 link [buy.com]
  • That unit sounds pretty sweet, but I really want PVR to be an integral part of the next system that I buy/put together.
  • It would be a tad more expensive, but it does everything the combination of this DVD player and an existing computer can do. Even the ones with fans (and you can get fanless EPIA boards) are pretty quiet. There is a MPEG2 decoder onboard. Unfortunately the decoder doesn't work under Linux (yet) but if you don't mind running The Evil OS (bwahaha) everything is 100% ready to go.

    The board+cpu is sold together and can be installed into a case yourself, or you can get barebones systems inside little cases cheap

  • NPD3117 ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by makapuf ( 412290 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @03:15PM (#7488430)
    given the target audience, HXR1337 would've been a better name.
  • Ok, there's that small matter of the DMCA, but with a small amount of work an XBox can be turned into the best media playing device around. Some of the features:

    - Dolby 5.1 and High definition and progressive video support through component connection options
    - DVD, VCD, SVCD, MPEG1&2, DivX, XViD, Ogg, MP3, RM, Quicktime, WMV, TiVo, Shoutcast, JPG and many other formats
    - Remote control available
    - Built in 100BaseT, with optional 802.11x
    - SOFTWARE UPGRADEABLE, with multiple applications already availabl

    • I like the XBox and PS2-based media players, but then you have a console with joypads plugged into as your entertainment hub. Just my preference, but I'd rather have an device that fits into the setup. Having the network connectivity in an actual DVD player means no funny looking devices by the TV (I don't own a console already).

      • With the Xbox you can use the remote control, and some of the newer universal remotes offer the xbox controller as a DVD player. The apps need to support it, but the major ones listed (media playing, and DVDs) do support the remote.
        While I prefer the controller, the remote will work and if everything else in your setup is dark colored, it will fit in fairly well.

  • Why is doing this with a PC so expensive? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strider3700 ( 109874 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @03:28PM (#7488504)
    I've wanted to replace my Current receiver with a nice PC based solution for awhile now. I'm well aware that I'll have to build it myself and that isn't an issue.

    My complaint is The PC based inputs are so expensive. My current receiver cost me $300 a couple of years ago. It has 3 video inputs and 5 audio inputs. All of them are RCA jacks if I remember correctly. It has a radio tuner, and the amplifiers and 5.1 surround decoding. Basically your typical lower-midrange receiver.

    I can't find a single PC card with more then 3 audio inputs for less then $1200. I don't remember ever seeing a video card with more then one input.

    Why aren't these pieces available? Radio cards can be had for $70 fairly easily but the other, more important parts I can't locate. I figured I'd go with external amplifiers to simplify things and that will work out just fine.

    I figured for $1000 I should be able to build a PC based receiver that doesn't require fancy menu's or anything tivo like, just a simple LCD interface and a remote. It appears that I'm wrong.
  • Is it easy to change the region codes so that I can play non-north american dvd's? Is it done (like most other dvd players) by using the remote and entering codes or change a selection in the menu system? I like the idea of a simple to use networked player as who wants a noisy computer in the living room, and people who can't use a computer tend to find remote controls hard too (especially if there are three of them. To get ordinary people to use computers and networked appliances, they should be easy t

    • I searched for region-free and Macrovision codes and wasn't able to find any yet. Forums seemed to have plenty of Oritron codes though (none worked on this model), so maybe new codes will surface soon.

      As for your comment on the noisy computer, that was my point! I had that setup for awhile. It was loud and ugly. I could have hidden the unit, but the interface was too clunky. There are ways to improve the setup but I just wanted something drop-in-place.

  • I have got simlair system made by Danish company Kiss Technlogy [kiss-technology.com] few months now. My product is Kiss DVP500 [kiss-technology.com] with ethernet adapter. With that I can listen internet radios, play files from my Linux server [sourceforge.net] (officially only Windows server from Kiss) and ofcourse play DVD discs, CD's with audio/mp3/avi/jpg/real/... content.
    It's excellent box but only with bad user interface design. But you can upgrade it when ever Kiss publishes new software versions.

  • Gateway's Version (Score:5, Informative)

    by aredubya74 ( 266988 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @04:02PM (#7488715)
    ...is known as the Gateway Connected DVD Player [gateway.com]. It's the exact same system as the Oritron, right down to the (Windows-only :( ) streaming server. It's currently retailing for $199, and includes a Gateway-branded 802.11b card (I think it's a rebranded D-Link card, judging by the antenna casing). Given Gateway's superior rep for service, I felt a little more comfortable buying this unit over the ones from GoVideo and Oritron.

    Pros: Audio and video playing works exactly as advertised (even low-bit MP3s sound great), transcoded video works nicely, wireless works with WEP (although you have to enter the key in 24-bit hex through the remote).

    Cons: Library support highly lacking (can't shuffle playlists, only plays alphabetically through an album), plays some DivX files as audio-only (haven't figured that one yet), aforementioned lack of OGG/AAC/QT support.

    And why buy it? Can I build a PC with quality audio for $199? Nope.

  • My quick review... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16, 2003 @04:27PM (#7488877)
    I have tried the NDP3117. Here is what I thought of it:

    1) For MP3's or JPEGS it works great.

    2) For MPEG2, the video quality is good as it just streams it straight from the PC to the DVD player.

    3) For any video that is not MPEG2 it sucks. On a 3 MBit/s MPEG4 file my Athlon XP 1900+ was not able to always keep up with the transcoding. The final video quality was shit compared to watching the same file on the PC.

    4) You can only stream stereo sound. Even when I used .avi or .mpg files which contain a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, it always got downsampled to stereo.

    5) Navigating during a movie sucks. THere is no way to skip ahead to a specific point in the movie.

    6) The PC software installed easily and did not install crap all over my computer. However, the interface for adding media to your library is kinda crappy.

  • my gateway player (Score:4, Informative)

    by marshac ( 580242 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @04:34PM (#7488925) Homepage
    Like a lot of slashdotters, I had a computer connected up to the TV to play music and videos. My desktop PC died, so I repoed the TV computer for the time being. Still wanting to have movies and music on my TV, I bought the gateway connected DVD player. I love it. For $199, it was worth every penny. I bought the wired version of the player since I didn't think that the 802.11b wireless connection would be fast enough for some movies....All I know is that the specs say 3mb/sec max.... using the wired version, I have played videos with a higher bitrate than that. The video output is better than my PC could do, and the DVD player itself is excellent. I did check out the player that sparked the parent article, but got the gateway one instead... So if you're in the market for a networked player, check the gateway player out. There are also several other non-DVD video playing options (one of which runs linux I believe... and no, they probably can't be hooked together in a beowulf cluster) out there.... shop around, you might be suprised by your options.

  • Same as Gateway Connected DVD (Score:4, Informative)

    by crt ( 44106 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @04:53PM (#7489016)
    This product appears to use the same software/firmware as the Gateway Connected DVD player (which is retailing for $199 now). I've got one, and it's really nice.
    Pros:
    -Fast user interface to navigate (compared to say, the LinkSys network box which is slow as dirt)
    -Includes progressive scan DVD player (no DVI-out though)
    -Supports all kinds of video formats (with the latest firmware update)

    Cons:
    -The streaming app is poor in many respects - for example, you can't easily run two instances on the same machine to seperate content into two servers (e.g. one for me, one for my wife). It would be nice of the architecture was more open
    -It organizes files by ID3 tags (album, artist), not by folder structure on your hard drive. That means if your files aren't tagged well, the UI is useless, and if you have a lot of partial albums, it's a pain to navigate. Expect to retag your library if it isn't already done well.
    -No support for building a play-list on the DVD player - you can only play a single album/artist, a single song, or an existing playlist - no way to build up a queue of songs/albums on the fly.
    -No way to change the sorting within an album - it sorts by song title, not track number, and plays in sort order. In the latest software you can work-around this by having it display filenames (which usually include track numbers, thus sort correctly), but then the names are so long you typically can't see the actual song title.

    One final feature I wish it had - live streaming of the audio output on the PC to the DVD player, so that (for example), I could fire up Rhapsody and listen to it in my living room.

    Altogether a pretty cool product - hopefully they'll address some of these issues in future firmware/software updates. If not, I may end up reverse engineering the networking to see how difficult it would be to create an alternate player.

    fyi - They are using ffmpeg for all the transcoding that is mentioned, so it probably wouldn't be too difficult to replicate that aspect.

  • I just wish the commentary had said "Windows Only" early in the article so I could have bypassed all the cheerful hyperbole about how great this thing would be if only I switched to Windoze.

  • just buy an xbox, you are probably watching illegal downloaded content anyways (do people really care about the crap on the net and stupid idiodic videos of their kids doing retarded crap?)

    Just get an xbox with a mod chip, throw in a bigish harddrive and XBMP and you are about to have the best dvd / divx / ogg / wmv / etc. player you've ever used. Get the component / hdtv kit and fill your pants.

    Or you can be a lame "legal and free until I die!" and wait for some half crap linux solution to come out. O
  • What about the Gateway Connected DVD Player [gateway.com] I picked up the wireless version of this last week... works pretty well... I only hope they improve the software side to support more than just mpeg format.. it looks like it is planned though.. going by what options are greyed out on the setup menus. Anyone know who really makes these?
  • That solves the 'clunky' PC problem you described.

  • Some other options (Score:4, Informative)

    by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @07:20PM (#7489768) Homepage
    • Prismiq: www.prismiq.com
    • Xbox Media Player (requires hacked X-box): http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de
    • Neuston: http://www.neuston.com/EN/mc500.asp
    • Hauppauge MediaMVP: http://www.hauppauge.com/html/mediamvp_datasheet.h tm
    • Qcast (for the PS2): http://www.broadq.com/qcasttuner


    I'm using the Prismiq and the XBMP. Both have advantages, both have issues. Anyone have any other recommendations?
    • I've looked at the sites for the various options listed above. What I would really like to see is something priced like the MediaMVP that lets me stream from one box to the other with little setup. That is, I'd like to take RCA plugs in (or, S-Video, or Coax for that matter), out to ethernet, over the network, and back to a second device which comes out as RCA plugs. I'm sure I could take a couple of computers and make it work, but I'd prefer a lazy, supported-by-someone other-than-me solution.

      (In my pa
      • I don't think it does it now, but the PrismIQ is planning to, and the Hauppauge may already. They're working on integration with Snapstream. And since Snapstream can pause liveTV, etc, you could probably rig something using either of those two boxes.
    • who the hell modded this funny? is there something here i dont get?
  • I have looked at and rejected this unit before because of the hidden restrictions.

    http://www.onmediadvd.com/onmediadvd/FAQwhite.h t m# Technical%20Questions

    What media formats are supported?
    The following formats are supported:

    AVI
    BMP
    ICO
    JPEG (must be larger than 108 by 171 pixels)
    M3U
    MP3 (bit rate must be greater than 80 kbps)
    MPEG (must not be greater than 3 MB/sec)
    PCT
    PLS
    PSD
    TIFF
    WMA (bit rate must be greater than 48 kbps)

    I wanted to be able to recoed and stream video from my desktop PC to the TV, but it's can
    • Thanks so much for finding and passing on this info! I was on the verge of buying this unit just now, based on the review and the $169 BestBuy price, but luckily decided to read people's comments first. Apart from music, my primary use for the unit would be to play my collection of several thousand Old Time Radio mp3s, almost all of which are under 80 kbps. This would have been a major disappointment.
  • This is despicable...

    Who's got shares in Oritron ?

    A real reporter would have at least cited the name of similar products like some comments did.
  • If you already have a PS2 with a network adapter, you can do the same thing using GameShark Media Player. It's software available at EB Games and Fry's. The requirements for the computer are pretty basic and it works with Mac, Windows and Linux. They're regularly releasing updates for the newest codecs and the forums are answered by company employees. Check out www.broadq.com

  • PC-based systems don't *have* to have clunky, complicated user interfaces. I've been fiddling around with this stuff for about a year now, and what I have at the moment (apart from the noise) is about as good as one can reasonably get.

    I'm using Freevo [sf.net] to provide the user interface, along with a simple IR receiver and remote for input. I went with this rather than MythTV [mythtv.org] because the latter involves the extra administrative overhead of a database -- with Freevo, I can simply drop files into a directory an

  • I have had mine for a month, and it has just suffered catastrophic failure. Blinking unreadable LED display, won't respond to any buttons.

    Hopefully Buy.com will replace it with a working model. It was pretty cool while it worked.

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