some pre-sales questions

[Jeroen1000]

Hi everyone,

Currently I own (it was a nice gift) a WDLIVE HD media player. But some aspects about it annoy me so now that I now what I want, I have a few questions. My interest goes towards the new A-300.

1) does it support full DVD-structure, and DVD-iso navigation? So, normal fast forward and chapter skipping.
2) Same question for BLU-RAY, both structure and iso-navigation.
3) Can it be configured to output the same framerate and resolution as it is present in the video file. So I want PAL DVD's outputted as 576i 50hz, NTSC DVD's 480i 60hz. I do not want any video processing, upscaling or deinterlacing done. No sharpness stuff, no noise reduction, ....
4) is Samba performance sufficient to play high bitrate MKV's (so 35 mbit or higher). The WDLIVE starts to stutter due to poor Samba performance.
5) Does it present advanced audio/video information? Like the type of audio present, the frame rate, ...
6) Does it play PGS subtitles embedded in MVK's or ISO's?

7) Are there any serious bugs that would annoy me given the above information? Like faulty color decoding?

Many many thanks
Jeroen

[Martien]

1) does it support full DVD-structure, and DVD-iso navigation? So, normal fast forward and chapter skipping. yes
2) Same question for BLU-RAY, both structure and iso-navigation. yes
3) Can it be configured to output the same framerate and resolution as it is present in the video file. So I want PAL DVD's outputted as 576i 50hz, NTSC DVD's 480i 60hz. I do not want any video processing, upscaling or deinterlacing done. No sharpness stuff, no noise reduction, ....no, but in future yes. Do you realize that subtitles will be in low res or not available if you use that feature?
4) is Samba performance sufficient to play high bitrate MKV's (so 35 mbit or higher). The WDLIVE starts to stutter due to poor Samba performance. yes, NFS is even better, but your NAS/network has a big influense
5) Does it present advanced audio/video information? Like the type of audio present, the frame rate, ...yes, but not always and not always accurate
6) Does it play PGS subtitles embedded in MVK's or ISO's? no/yes
7) Are there any serious bugs that would annoy me given the above information? Like faulty color decoding? not that I know of

[Jeroen1000]

Dankje Matien

Hmm what do you mean by "do you realize that subtitles will be in low res or not available if you use that feature?". If just do not let the media player upscale SD content to HD as I have a different device dedicated to video processing tasks. And is there some timeline on this feature? I hope you are talking about the near future then:-). The WDLIVE can output 576p, but not 576i. Fortunately, I can undo this with the video processor.

Too bad about not displaying PGS subtitles. It's mildly annoying to convert and remux them into the video file.


edit: are you sure PGS is not supported? it is mentioned here:
http://www.popcornhour.com/download/A200...P-411.html

[halfelite]

PGS is supported but not 100% it has flaws like the subs stay on the screen to long, they havent got the blanking of the subs right yet for pgs subs inside mkv.

[Martien]

(10-06-2011 05:28 PM)Jeroen1000 Wrote:  Dankje Matien

Hmm what do you mean by "do you realize that subtitles will be in low res or not available if you use that feature?". If just do not let the media player upscale SD content to HD as I have a different device dedicated to video processing tasks. And is there some timeline on this feature? I hope you are talking about the near future then:-). The WDLIVE can output 576p, but not 576i. Fortunately, I can undo this with the video processor.

Too bad about not displaying PGS subtitles. It's mildly annoying to convert and remux them into the video file.


edit: are you sure PGS is not supported? it is mentioned here:
http://www.popcornhour.com/download/A200...P-411.html

If you let the C200 do the upscaling, which is not bad btw, the rendered (srt) subtitles are high resolution with anti-aliased edges and shadows.. They look really good. If you set the output of the NMT at SD resolution, they look really bad. Like the DVD's original vob/sub subtitles. Well, a little better.
Of course the scaler tries to do its best to make it better, but the result is annoying, if you want a fine picture.
Also the On Screen Display looks terrible.
So I ended up using the C200 scaler.

If you search the forum, you will find a long thread about disabling the PCH's upscaling, but the strange thing is, this issue is not mentioned in 19 pages of discussion. That's why I mentioned it in my post.

PGS subtitles in MKV show up, but the timing is horrible.
Also Gigabit connection is unstable, but still advertised. All (3) gigabit switches I tried made the C200 crash at some point, when in gigabit mode.

[Jeroen1000]

I see, but can not IDX subtitles (sorry if we need another 3-letter word here) be upscaled properly as they are basically images? I've never seen the issue you have mentioned with regular DVD's using IDX/VOB subs, they all looked great (albeit the letters are a bit thicker than with PGS subs but they are as sharp as can be).

Yes, the OSD, on the WDLIVE also, will look quite bad but I'm not too bothered with that as long as the movie looks great.
Strange that no one has mentioned this (the badly looking subs), but maybe (or likely) you are using the TV's scaler which might be doing a bad job compared to the C200's scaler?

Haha, yes, funny that gigabit still is not sorted. I still remember it from years ago when I decided not to buy the buggy C200.

[Martien]

(10-06-2011 08:28 PM)Jeroen1000 Wrote:  Strange that no one has mentioned this (the badly looking subs), but maybe (or likely) you are using the TV's scaler which might be doing a bad job compared to the C200's scaler?

No, I don't need an external scaler for TV, as I won't see the difference.
I use a TV-projector with build in scaler of good reputation. And I tried the AVR's Faroudja scaler (DENON) but it was not better than the C200.

If you like to discuss this matter further, maybe it is a better idea to join this thread

[Jeroen1000]

Thanks Martien, that thread was an interesting read. Too bad there is a large amount of FUD in it.