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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wiak - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
hello Aikouka mr lover 恋人ganeshts - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Aikouka,Thanks for your feedback. We will definitely make a comparison of how much each extra feature costs (over a particular base price) in our reviews.
All said, except for ease of use and power concerns, a properly built HTPC scores over a media streamer any time.
cknobman - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Why did this get no mention?I have several media streaming devices (this, patriot, and xbox 360) and the kodak is by far the best one with the most features, smoothest interface, built in wifi N, 1080p capabilities.
ganeshts - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
cknobman,Yes, we are aware of the Kodak Theater HD player. In terms of features in the product spec, it doesn't seem to compare that favourably with other players in the market. [ http://www.iboum.com/pr/kodakt1.php ] ; Of course, if Kodak is interested in getting its review out, we will carry it forward. As of now, Anandtech doesn't have any plans to review this unit, but things are likely to change going forward. We will keep you updated!
johnlannock - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
What a great idea for a section. A few months ago I purchased a single Patriot Box office streamer as the price point had dropped to the point where I wanted to replicate it across my home network ; cat 6e cables, NAS, mult servers, wireless etc. My main streamer is a win 7 64bit mch running win 7 ultimate. Imagine my surprise when I was informed by Patriot support that the only way to share folders across a wired LAN was to invoke "regedit" and modify my registry.i WAS TOLD THAT WAS THE ONLY WAY THE BOX COULD SHARE WHEN USING Win7 ultimate.
Now think of the implications for Patriot if that is needed for the mass market. The margin implications are staggering for Patriot.
Please include this type of "software mod implication" in your future reviews of these boxes.
I hate this requirement as I do not want to have to maintain this regedit mod as Microsoft continues to mod Win 7. A CONSUMER BOX SHOULD NOT REQUIRE SYS PROG MODIIFCATIONS.
Needless to say I have not rolled out these boxes to my network.
Please feel free to contact me if you need more details.
NOT HAPPY in the Far North (Canada)
ganeshts - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
johnlannock, Thanks for your feedback.We will include this in our future reviews:
(1) Ease of networking feature usage / Implications on host OS
pjladyfox - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
The biggest weakness that I've found in just about every single NMT (read: Network Media Tank) is the depth of subtitle support. Currently, right now most boxes while they say they support SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, and SMI only spit out the subtitles if they are in ANSI format and nothing in UNICODE. Worse still they also default to this rather garish font size that either takes up a large portion of the screen or is extremely difficult to see on white backgrounds.The other big problem is the complete lack of full softsub support by a lot of these devices. While you can get the subtitles the formatting is completely stripped or ignored. This pretty much kills the device from being able to display non-English, or hardsubbed, HD titles since they mostly come in .MKV format with softsubs.
So if you are a fan of these kinds of videos you're pretty much stuck with a HTPC which comes with it's own variety of problems and to get decent performance on HD media pretty much require a system more powerful than a Atom system since not all formats are GPU accelerated like RMVB.
If proper subtitle support could be implemented, while keeping the cost low, in these boxes the sales for these would greatly increase. Otherwise, right now it's like playing Russian roulette when you come home from the store wondering if the box you have will support the videos you watch or not. -_-
ganeshts - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
pjladyfox, Thanks for your feedback. We will note the following point for our reviews:(1) Support for UNICODE subtitles display
pjladyfox - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Would it be possible to add the following as well:1. SSA v4.00 support
2. ASS v4.00+ support
If you require more info a good starting point would be http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=SubStati...
A lot of boxes, like the Popcorn Hour, claim SSA/ASS support but are only really parsing the text and converting it to .SRT stripping out the style and event tags. While nobody really expects full support just having support to the point where the position and subtitles appear correctly would go a long way. ^_^
daskino - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Hey Annadtech, finally a serious media like yours take up the sprawling market of media players. great to see i will follow it closely. for a more in depth view of the media player market. Also look at my page and blog on the digital media players. www.industryconvergence.com