A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 - First Realtek 1185 Media Streamer in the Wild!

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• probedb - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  Excellent, can't wait for a review of this. I'm particularly interested in how good it is at deinterlacing DVD content. I rip mine and stream to my PlayON!HD mini but I would upgrade to this if it's better.

• Bartjes - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  I'm very very interested in the real speed of the USB3 and Gbit network. And if supplied the WiFi speed with a USB dongle.
  Having Gbit and USB3 doesn't mean the filling up of the HD goes fast (see previous generation of mediaplayer).

• SlyNine - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  My WDLive HD does do DTS HD, My reciever sees it as a DTS stream, so unless its encoding a DTS ( Doesn't support DTS MA) stream from a DTS MA stream ( highly unlikely, na impossible) It does support DTS MA It just sends the core audio(DTS.
  
  In fact its the Dolby True that I cannot play back. My Receiver only supports Dolby Digital and DTS, Its a harman Kardon from about 2004.
  
  My Files are MKV remuxes of full Bluray ( no re-encoding) movies. I use DVDFab, ClownBD,MKVMerge, and ANYDVD HD.
  
  Software I use Twonky Media center in Virtualbox ( It didn't play nice with my Windows 7).
  
  The WDLive is connected though component to the TV and through Fiber for Audio.

• ganeshts - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  I am sorry if my comment about the WDTV Live series wasn't clear.
  
  I meant to convey the fact that the WDTV Live series can't decode to full LPCM / bitstream the full DTS-HD MA soundtrack. Yes, core DTS is taken advantage of.. but that is hardly what the people with the latest AV receivers want.
  
  Btw, over fiber, you will get only DTS or Dolby and not any of the HD audio bistreamed.

• SlyNine - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  Yea I understand that you need HDMI for any of the HD Audio formats.
  
  What leads to my confusion is the fact that I have yet to get Dolby TrueHD's core audio to stream through my WDlive HD. Right now I have to demux the core Dolby Digital sound track and if I want to retain the TrueHD I have to have that as a separate audio track. Not a big deal but it is one extra step I'd love to remove.
  
  Any Ideas? Does the WD Live simply not support this?

• SlyNine - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  Thanks for the preview, I love these.
  
  If you guys could tell us how the Media streamer handles/ Builds the libraryies i'd appreciate that. Expecially the libraries located on a network drive.
  
  This is important for us who want to set it up for people less tech savy. The most important thing is how clean the selection is, How many different folders/screens do they have to navigate to find the content.
  
  Thanks.

• Shadowmaster625 - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  For $300, what can this do that a zacate mini itx cannot do?

• ganeshts - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link

  For starters,
  
  1. Ease of use for the non-DIY crowd
  
  2. No messing around with codecs
  
  3. Play 1080p60 H264 videos in a reliable manner
  
  Don't get me wrong.. I build and use HTPCs too, but there is a market for each of these products :)

• Trefugl - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - link

  Also, the $290 comes with a 2TB HDD. I for one, would want to just stream all my video from my NAS, so a cheaper version of this w/o HDD would be interesting and less expensive than building something with the same features from scratch.

• probedb - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 - link

  Then you want the Mini2 :)