Media Streamer Platforms Roundup
by Ganesh T S on June 13, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- Gadgets
A majority of the consumers in this market have been spoilt for choices since they come from a HTPC background, and stress their media streamers to the limit (even beyond the officially supported specifications). Sometimes, they are pleasantly surprised by some available unadvertised feature (like the TrueHD bitstreaming in WDTV Live, which wasn't part of the initial specifications). Most of time, though, various limitations start showing up, both in terms of hardware capabilities and software support. These are dealt with in the reviews of the individual products. The end consumer needs to look at his requirements before choosing a media streamer. In addition, reviews on the net should cater to what the market really wants, and not rehash the marketing speak from the companies. Anandtech is working on creating a comprehensive suite of test streams to identify the capabilities as well as shortcomings of the various media streamer platforms. Towards this, we have identified the following features which differentiate the various platforms, both from a hardware as well as software perspective.
- Audio & video container support (MKV / MP4 / MOV / AVI / FLV / WebM etc.)
- Video codecs (H264 / VC-1 / Real Media / VP8 etc.)
- Audio codecs (Dolby / DTS / FLAC / Ogg Vorbis / WMA Pro / HD Audio - Decoding / Bitstreaming)
- Multiple subtitle formats
- Interlaced video streams in different codecs
- Specific video & audio codec quirks (such as weighted P-frame prediction & unreasonable number of reference frames for H264)
- Maximum video & audio bitrate
- Maximum video frame rate
Readers are welcome to suggest other aspects which need to be added to this test suite.
While this roundup article may not have an analytical conclusion, I will bring it to a close by listing out the platforms which we will closely follow in the coming days with respect to the above features:
- Atom + Ion / Ion2 [ x86 + Nvidia custom HD decode engine ]
- Mediatek 8520 Series [ ARM11 + Mediatek custom HD decode engine ]
- Sigma Designs 86xx Series [ MIPS + Sigma Designs custom HD decode engine ]
- Realtek 1073/1283 Series [ MIPS + Realtek custom HD decode engine ]
- Nvidia Tegra2 [ ARM Cortex-A9 + Nvidia low power custom HD decode engine ]
- Samsung S5PV210 [ ARM Cortex-A8 + Samsung low power custom HD decode engine ]
- Telechips TCC89xx [ ARM11 + Chips&Media Boda series HD decode engine ]
- Intel CE4100 [ x86 + Intel custom HD decode engine ]
Stay tuned for exclusive analysis of the capabilities of each of the above platforms from Anandtech in the near future!
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Stokestack - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
An oft-ignored product category is that which streams content FROM your cable or satellite box TO your computer. I don't really care about watching crap-quality compressed video on my big TV, but I would like to watch shows from my cable box on a laptop in my kitchen or home office.Please include products that perform this task too. Thanks!
ganeshts - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
Stokestack, yes, we are working on covering these devices too, but in a separate series of articles in this very section. Do you have any particular devices in this category that you would like us to review?Stokestack - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Thanks for the response.The first product that comes to mind is Slingbox, and that might even be overkill for just viewing stuff around the house. I don't really care about transmitting stuff over the Internet to watch remotely.
Another appears to be the HAVA Platinum HD TV Device.
And, uh... those were the only ones I could find. I guess this could be a very series.
Stokestack - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
SHORT series, that is.Hubble70 - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Hauppauge HD-PVR over component up to 1080i / digital audioBlackmagic over component and HDMI up to 1080p
Avermedia over component up to 1080i / analog audio
nexox - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
I've got a Popcorn Hour A-110, and I'm nearly entirely impressed with it. All it really needs is a much better menu system. I'm hoping that the Popbox fixes that, if it ever comes out.I'd like to point out one of my main concerns with these sorts of devices, which the PCH series handles, and which many others don't: NFS.
I understand that lots of people use Windows with the built in CIFS file sharing, or even UPNP/DNLA, but honestly those protocols are pretty weak when compared with NFS (especially over UDP on wired ethernet.) Since I don't use Windows, NFS is the natrual choice, but I've found little information on whether most of the current generation of media renderers support NFS well or at all.
And lots more people than just Linux users would potentially benefit from NFS - many of those little NAS boxes people like so much can do much higher performance with NFS than CIFS or UPNP, which means higher bitrate video, less skipping, and better wifi performance.
ganeshts - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
Yes, NFS is one of the best network sharing protocols. The WDTV Live also supports it in the custom firmware. We will add this to our testing methodology for reviews:(1) Network / Local file system and communication protocol support.
daskino - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
however it is only the original WDTV that supports NFS the the Live and the live plus and the next gen wdtv oes not support true NFS olny by CIFF interceptorModeverything - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
This looked like a really nice streamer for only $88.http://www.brite-view.com/cinematube.php
DieterBSD - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
ganeshts writes,> DVI and DisplayPort are not aimed at the multimedia market. DVI is unable
> to carry audio signals, while DisplayPort connectors are not present on
> TVs / AV receivers which are common parts of a home theater system. Like
> it or not, home theater enthusiasts seem to be stuck with the HDMI
> standard rather than the royalty free DisplayPort
My point is that many people already have a TV/monitor/display/projector
that does not have HDMI, so they might not care if a streamer has HDMI
or not. I've read plenty of complaints about HDMI, apparently the
connector likes to fall off. What counts is if the streamer has the
outputs the user wants/needs. Unfortunately there are quite a few
these days: RF, composite, s-video, component, DVI, HDMI, displayport.
A computer monitor might require the so-called VGA, and there are
at least three varieties: separate H & V sync, composite sync, and
sync-on-green. Streamers aren't just useful for the main TV, people
might want to use one with an older TV in another room.
Then there is DiiVA:
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/4/22/eth...
http://admin.virtualpressoffice.com/SupportingDocC...
Unfortunately I haven't heard of any products with DiiVA. :-(
Stokestack writes,
> An oft-ignored product category is that which streams content FROM your
> cable or satellite box TO your computer. I don't really care about watching
> crap-quality compressed video on my big TV, but I would like to watch shows
> from my cable box on a laptop in my kitchen or home office. Please include
> products that perform this task too. Thanks!
An excellent idea, although I would suggest making these a separate article.
nexox writes,
> I understand that lots of people use Windows with the built in CIFS file
> sharing, or even UPNP/DNLA, but honestly those protocols are pretty weak
> when compared with NFS (especially over UDP on wired ethernet.)
And do the boxes support NFS over TCP? (Older implementations of NFS
were UDP only.) Personally I'd like to see something better than NFS.
Too bad that popularity seems to be inversely related to quality.