Media Streamer Platforms Roundup
by Ganesh T S on June 13, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- Gadgets
This segment of the market is dominated by two main semiconductor companies, namely, Sigma Designs and Realtek. Now, Nvidia has jumped into the fray with the Tegra 2 chipset. Undoubtedly, the most famous products using the Sigma chip are the WDTV and the WDTV Live. However, the most powerful ones are the Networked Media Tanks (NMTs) such as Popcorn Hour's PCH-A110 and PCH-C200. With some add-ons, the PCH-C200 can also be considered as a media streamer / Blu-Ray player combo. A slew of media streamers using the Realtek platform have been released in the last few months. The most famous one is the Asus O!Play series. Other interesting offerings include the Xtreamer and the AC Ryan's Playon! HD. The Boxee Box was revealed to be based on the Tegra 2 chipset in CES 2010.
At the end of 2009, Sigma Design had two generations of products going into succesful media streamers, namely the 863x and 865x / 864x series. In all probability, the 865x and the 864x are from the same silicon, with the DRM segments and some video processing units disabled in hardware in the slightly underclocked 865x series. All the products have a MIPS32 processor, with the 863x series sporting a 333 MHz version, while the 865x and 864x sport 500 MHz and 667 MHz versions respectively. The standard USB, Ethernet and SATA connections are available in all the three SOCs, with the 864x also supporting SDIO. In addition to the usual acceleration for H264, VC-1, MPEG-2, DivX and MPEG-1, the Sigma SOCs also supports China's H264 competitor, AVS (864x and 865x only). The only missing piece is support for RMVB. With dedicated audio DSPs, audio codec support is also excellent. Depending on the end-product (whether a hard drive is included in the unit or not), power consumption may vary. While the WDTV (which uses the 8635) has an operational power around 8W, while the WDTV Live (which uses the 8655) has an operational power around 7W. On the other hand, the PCH-A110 (using the 8635) with an internal hard drive has an operational power of 15W. The PCH C-200 (which uses the 8643) is also rated for for a typical operational power of 15W. However, with internal hard drives and the optional Blu-Ray drive, the power draw may momentarily go as high as 70W.
Though Realtek has had multiple generations of SOCs geared towards this market (RTD1061, and now RTD1073 / RTD1283DD), they have not been as successful as Sigma Designs. The first well-known player using Realtek was from Asus, namely, the O!Play HDP-R1. This uses the RTD1073. Xtreamer, which made waves within the media streamer enthusiast community, when it first arrived on the scene, claims to use a specifically designed RTD128x (the 1283DD), which is nothing but a overclocked version of the RTD1073 with probably some unused PVR functionality built in. From the media streaming viewpoint, the technical capabilities of all these products are the same. The RTD1073 utilizes a 400 MHz MIPS32 host CPU with hardware support for decoding Real Media videos. Realtek provides connectivity options similar to the Sigma Designs SOCs. The Asus model goes one step further and exposes one of the SATA interfaces outside the unit as an eSATA port. The Realtek SOC happens to be not as power efficient as the Sigma SOC, with the Asus O!Play's operational power weighing in at a little less than 10W.
One of the hotly discussed upcoming media streamer is the Boxee Box based on the Tegra 2 chipset. The SOC is based upon a much more powerful dual core ARM Cortex-A9, with a ARM 7 added in for host processor purposes. Standalone, this would beat the MIPS processors in the Realtek and Sigma Design chips hands down. However, Nvidia's HD decode engines have so far been restricted to the PC space, which do not call for a low power implementation. As yet, it is not known what shortcuts have been taken by Nvidia when implementing the decode engine in this space. It has already been reported that high bitrate videos are not supported. How will it stack up against the decode engines of Sigma Designs and Realtek? It will be known soon enough, once the Boxee Box lands in the hands of the reviewers.
Yuixx was one of the highly anticipated local media streamers which never saw the light of day. Based on Intel's CE3100 platform, it represented Intel's one and only shot in this space. Intel has since come out with the CE4100, which is one of the first platforms on which Google TV will run. Though Intel hasn't had much success in the dedicated media streamer market, they now seem to be succeeding at integrating their chipsets into other consumer electronic devices such as TVs and Blu-Ray players. The yet-to-be-released Amino Freedom media streamer is also based on the Intel CE4100. It will be interesting to see how the platform will fare when it reaches the hands of the consumers.
In the meanwhile, the battle between the Sigma and Realtek SOC platforms will become very interesting in the near future. Will Sigma bow down to the requirements of the Asian market and include Real Media support in the future? Will Realtek's roadmap include SOCs with support for dual HD decode? How long will Realtek take to deliver a SDK as stable as Sigma's? It looks to be a pretty busy year ahead for the two companies as they try to encroach upon each other's market share and try to stave off future competition from Nvidia in this space. Sigma already seems to have taken the lead over Realtek with the recent announcement of chips which are 3D enabled.
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agold80 - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Could I put in a request that you test subtitle languages that are Right to Left oriented, like Hebrew? there is quite a market for HTPC and Media Streamers in the middle east but companies support for RtL languages has been less than stellar and is something that often even their technical support finds hard to give a straight answer about.beginner99 - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
I would also test network capabilities. Support for wireless or wired, limitations, connection stability and so on.I would say most people buying such a device will sooner or later also get a NAS.
Personally I have a WD TV Live and it's fine.But it has it's issues. One beeing that it sometimes has trouble connecting to the network. Another thing is that some content from youtube is blocked. You get a message similar to:
"This content can not be watched from TV attached devices."
This is pretty annoying because it is no mentiond that youtbe access i limited...
-> one thing that speaks for a real HTPC.
ganeshts - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
beginner99, Thanks!We definitely plan to test the networking capabilities, and present it in the review. The only problem we will need to work around is the fact that the network performance is highly dependent on the setup and environment. So, one thing which works in the reviewer's home perfectly, might not be very stable in someone else's home. Of course, we will be keeping an eye out on the various forums to get the various users' experience and make those observations play a small role in our review.
By the way, my WDTV Live experience is also very similar to yours, and that is the main reason I am unable to get rid of my HTPC :)
SlyNine - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
For HD content you will def. need 50+ sustained mbps. I find that even my netgear WNDR3700 based wireless stutters on High Def, I just wired everything and now it's silky smooth.I think the devices should be reviewed in their own right, with no networking limitations, then a general review of how wireless works on media streamers ( unless you find one that performance unusually well or poor)
Also you might think about looking at software media servers like twonky and tversity and others. With Twonky and WD Live, through the twonky software on your server ( computer) you can tell the WDlives what to do, for instance, play music in the bathroom, see what each device is playing, Play the same music through out your home.
clarkn0va - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
"For HD content you will def. need 50+ sustained mbps"For non-recoded BD rips perhaps, but many users will not run into this limitation, at least not in the current state of things. I've tested hundreds of 1080p mkv/H264 rips and typical bitrate is in the neighbourhood of 20mbps (variable, peaking as high as 40).
I don't stream a lot of HD over wireless, but with a good 54mbps connection I've found 720p to work well, while 1080p is more hit and miss.
SlyNine - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
Yea I'm talking about demuxing and remuxing a Blu Ray and playing back TrueHD which is my preferred way of getting HD content. I guess if you reencode it at 720 P you would be ok. Now, I'm way more picky then most so to get acceptable quality encoding HD takes around 5-10 hours, I have a Core I7 at 3.7ghz. So for me, forget that.But I just say 50mbps just to be on the safe side, you'd probably be ok with 40 but you would have no overhead.
Hubble70 - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Don't forget the SageTV HD200. It is the only media streamer that spans all of the categories. It can act as an extender for their excellent media center software, can play almost any file format (mkv, blu-ray file format, etc) as a standalone media streamer, and can stream non-DRM internet video. I'd love see Anandtech cover it since it never seems to get any love from the media.ganeshts - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - link
Hubble70,Thanks for your suggestion. SageTV HD200 is based on a Sigma Designs chipset. It will probably have the same features of a WDTV Live or any other NMT, except for UI changes. We will definitely review an upcoming revision of the product if we manage to get our hands on a review unit.
Hubble70 - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Yeah, its based on the old Sigma, but I find that its not the hardware that limits most of these devices, it is the software stack. Whether or not they can play ISO, full BD menus or just BD menu lite, whether you can pick a BD playlist, container support, etc. It seems to matter a lot more than the hardware in them unless you really want HD audio support which it lacks.And no, the HD200 is nothing like the WDTV since its primarily designed as an extender for for their media center software. And when you use their media center software you can use any UI on it that you want. There are LOTS of user created UIs and you can customize your own easily. SageMC is the most popular alternate UI. Their new version of their media center, V7.0 even allows you to install XBMC frontends on them, though this feature is in beta.
Used as a standalone unit it is pretty similar to the WDTV live but with better file format support.
It's definitely worth taking a better look at since it is unique among media players because it can be used as an extender, a standalone media streamer, and even as a placeshifter.
Here's a geektonic review of the unit.
http://www.geektonic.com/2009/01/sagetv-hd200-hd-t...
dumbletore - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Hi and thx for an very interesting article.I would like included test for playback of the format WTV which is the standard TV recording format for Windows7 / media player 12
WMP cannot record TV shows in any other format, and i am really annoyed by my WDTV LIVEs lack of ability to playback it.
Not that any of the competition can either though..