2011 Media Streamer Roundup : Netgear NTV550, A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the Boxee Box
by Ganesh T S on November 20, 2011 10:32 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- NetGear
- Boxee Box
After the initial unboxing, the consumer encounters the setup and user interface of the media streamer. It is essential that the setup process be simple and straighforward. Both the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the Netgear NTV550 are quite painless to setup. The Boxee Box requires an Internet connection as well as a Boxee account to complete the setup process. The general feel of the user interface and the various available options in each of the streamers are given in the three galleries below.
It is also necessary for the streamers to support jukebox capabilities for the user's media collection. Most streamers go for the local scraping option in which some PC-based scrapers (like YAMJ or Media Center Master or ID3 TAG tools) generate the metadata for the media files. The streamer accesses this metadata either during normal browsing or in a special jukebox mode. The Boxee Box handles scraping on its own. Therefore, no media library setup was necessary. The automatic scraping tool wasn't always correct in determining the correct title. However, we also have support for local NFO files. Using Ember Media Manager, it is possible to ensure that the correct titles and metadata are picked up. Unless the user specifically browses to the 'Files' section, the default browsing mode is the Cover Art mode. Some screenshots of the jukebox in action are provided along with the user interface screenshots above.
The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the Netgear NTV550 adopt the PC scraping strategy. A.C.Ryan relies on YAMJ for its jukebox capabilities. They carry an official user guide (PDF) for this purpose. Omertron's site also has PlayOn!HD specific directions. Unfortunately, my experience after creating a YAMJ database for a sample media library on a NAS was not as expected. Using the Jukebox option in the main menu, I navigated to the index.html, only to be presented with a blank jukebox despite all the necessary metadata files being present. This is apparently a documented bug in the official forums. However, resetting the filters to browse titles alphabetically did work. I am sure many users might have got the jukebox to work for all the titles in one screen, but, in my limited testing, it has not lived upto its promise.
The Netgear NTV 550 has a couple of jukebox solutions. One of them involves the Tag Tool supplied in the bundled software CD. There are other tag tools listed in the support site. For the purpose of this review, I used Ron Chernich's TAG Maker and Editor for the EVA and NTV devices. There is no dedicated jukebox mode in the NTV550, but, the Cover Art browsing mode works well as a replacement. Users need to press the Info button to get the full details about the video in question. This is not the greatest of jukeboxes in existence, but it actually works seamlessly with the existing user interface.
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kolepard - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
Could you mention where you found a Boxee Box for $90? I can't seem to find one for much under $200, and at $90 I'd purchase additional units.Kevin
gplracer - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
Looks like a media pc is still the best choice.Matt355 - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
I replaced my HTPC after I purchased the Boxee Box. It serves my Needs Perfectly and uses far less electricity, its never gone over 15w and is easier for other family members to use.jbm - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
Indeed. No full 10bit-Support=fail for fansubs. What use is a streaming device when you cannot play your current video downloads.ganeshts - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=46697I am sure we will see more such offers as time goes by.
Matt355 - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
I purchased my Boxee Box from Best Buy for $89.99 last week. They price matched Comp USA, who was sold out. No doubt Amazon will be offering it at that price soon also.I must say I had not really considered it at $179.99 but if I had Known how good it is I would have Gladly payed full price, It plays everything. even video I had Problems With on the WD Media Player, it applies dvd and album art to music and video files and has channels for streaming live content from the internet and only uses 15W under full load, far better then my HTPC it replaced. I only wish now that I had purchased a second one while it was on sale.
mcturkey - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
The biggest issue I have with all of these is the fact that if you truly want to move to a whole-house entertainment system, none of them support streaming CableCard tuners and the DVR functionality that provides. Of the Media Center Extenders that exist with this capability, only the 360 is still supported, and it requires a Windows 7 system with a fair bit of processing power and memory to transcode newer formats on the fly.I am about to take the plunge on moving to 360s for streaming from my HTPC for movies/tv shows/cable. If someone would just make a proper media streaming box with the kind of native codec support that these streamers have and make it an MCE, they could really make a killing. But I'm not going to have multiple boxes for this stuff. I'd build HTPCs for all the rooms, but you lose out on proper whole-house DVR capability, and you have to manually assign tuners to each box, making it more of a hassle to use than it should be.
Matt355 - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
Boxee Box will be selling a dongle that plugs in and allows recording of over air TV, I tried the X Box 360 Solution and gave up. There is no excuse for the 360 not supporting more codecs. That sad, I can point my Boxee Box to any folder on my Windows Home Server or Macbook, So you could record on 1 PC or server and point all your Boxee's to it and stream to any room. All codecs are built in to Boxee Box. Just like WD Media Player. so no transcoding and no re encoding required.CU - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
Mythtv can do that. You setup a backend somewhere, and then install frontends at each TV.mcturkey - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
MythTV doesn't work with CableCard tuners, though, which is necessary for making whole-home DVR and TV support work. The only software that has been certified by Cable Card Labs or whatever they're called is Windows Media Center :( It's not just playing back recorded stuff (which requires extenders under WMC due to copy-never flags), but also sharing tuners for live TV. I'd much prefer to use HTPCs for this as I'd never need to worry about codecs and transcoding--not to mention having more control over the interface.