Doggie Howser Posted March 20, 2006 Posted March 20, 2006 Been meaning to get something like this for a while to replace my HTPC. While the HTPC works pretty well, I have had the odd issues with HD clips being jittery especially when I enable Dolby Digital output. My HTPC setup Metalware ATI Pentium 4 Socket 478 Chipset Pentium 4 Northwood 3.2GHz Socket 478 ATI RADEON X800Pro 256MB AGP 1GB DDR400 memory Seagate 250GB HDD onboard PC97 audio Accent H400 HTPC chassis VFD LIS2 display with remote Windows XP Professional SP2 MediaPortal front end VLC for HD playback So does the MB100 really work? Here's a quick comparison: Booting up: My HTPC takes abt a minute or two to boot up to the Media Portal interface The MB100 shows the splash screen in abt 5 seconds and boots up to the menu interface in abt 30 seconds. Winner MB100 Initializing/Setting up: My HTPC gave me a tonne of headaches with compatibility issues. I think I wrote abt how I had to install/reinstall the OS a number of times and swap my graphics card from a cheaper Nvidia to a more expensive ATI just to resolve a number of issues/ The MB100 is heck of a lot easier to assemble, format and setup. Winner MB100 Interface: Media Portal on the HTPC is pretty neat and cutesy (with an MSN like character showing u the various options) MB100 is spartan at best, but functional Winner HTPC with small margin Responsiveness The remote on the MB100 feels a little unresponsive, especially if you are trying to press 2 buttons in quick succession. Watching slideshows on the MB100 is painful. Display.. press Next.. blank screen with Please wait message... Display. No buffering of previous image while next is being decoded. HTPC seems better in this respect. Winner HTPC with small margin Flexibility HTPC can play back all sorts of formats. All you have to do is to install the codecs. MB100 repertoire a little restricted. A number of WMVs I had couldn't play. Some JPGs didn't display. Even some WMVHDs I downloaded from Microsoft (Titanic's 2 clips) didn't play. But most of the recent bittorrent TV shows play back just fine. Winner HTPC Visual Quality I'd give a slight nod to the MB100. It does look a tad crisper over VGA. Over HDMI at 1080p, it's remarkable. Motion deinterlacing looks smoother. Playing back the HD clips like T2, Taxi etc are just incredible. Winner MB100 Stability The MB100 feels like a bit buggy at the moment. Hung when I tried playing a HD avi clip I had (played back fine with VLC albeit jerkily). In fact, it hung abt 4 times in the last hour I was messing with it. Not entirely sure why. Most of these clips/files play back fine on the PC but for some reason trip up the MB100 Even with my HTPC running Windows, it still fares a stabler platform. Hope the MB100 will get upgraded firmware to fix this soon. Winner HTPC So overall, no clear winner yet. The MB100 does look better and the feature set is very very good. It's the first real 1080p source I managed to get to test with my Amoi 37" 1080p native LCD display and it looks gorgeous. I sure hope the PixelMagic can work out a more seamless, more robust firmware for the MB-100. More codec support would be great too.
Doggie Howser Posted March 21, 2006 Author Posted March 21, 2006 Any better than 1080i? I think the Amoi does a pretty good job of deinterlacing 1080i to 1080p, so the difference has not been really appreciable.
pcking1624705747 Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Hi Doggie Howser, nice review. Short but to the point. ;D May I ask if U can evaluate the SQ of both HTPC & the MB-100 using the same source & equipment ? (i.e. amp, speakers all same) I am more interested in the digital pass thru' & decoding by the reciever results. ;) Lastly where & how much U paid for it ? :D
Doggie Howser Posted March 21, 2006 Author Posted March 21, 2006 Hi Doggie Howser, nice review. Short but to the point. ;D May I ask if U can evaluate the SQ of both HTPC & the MB-100 using the same source & equipment ? (i.e. amp, speakers all same) I am more interested in the digital pass thru' & decoding by the reciever results. ;) Lastly where & how much U paid for it ? :D Mine is the MB100. Have not really tested the audio extensively since it was quite late at night. The MB100 does not really have any decoder so it's be passthrough I will be using. Bear in mind, my HTPC is also using onboard audio so it may not be a fair comparison. Got it from FastLogic (Burlington Square). They are the official distributor for Pixel Magic stuff (including their Crystallio and Plasma Enhancer range). Price is $599 for MB100 w/o HDD.
hplanet Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 I was thinking of buying this product but i guess i have to wait and buy a high end DIY HTPC!! :P
Doggie Howser Posted March 21, 2006 Author Posted March 21, 2006 I was thinking of buying this product but i guess i have to wait and buy a high end DIY HTPC!! :P HTPC definitely has better flexibility.. and more potential uses.. but they also cost a lot :) The MB100 or TVIX offers pretty decent subset of functionality for a lot less money IMHO. In my case, was watching a recent episode of CSI with AC3 on the MB100 and despite the lowly 640x350 encoded resolution, it played back as sharp as crisp as a real HD demo I have seen in Best Buys in the US. I need to see if copying those problematic files from the external HDD to the internal HDD will solve some of these issues.
terry1624705816 Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 this is what i want which they are doing on their modded xbox where all the dvd details are wget from either dvd profiler or imdb. the developers of tvix m5000u did indicated that they would like to do something similiar along the same vein. pictures are taken from avsforum.
Doggie Howser Posted March 21, 2006 Author Posted March 21, 2006 I used to run XBMC on my Xbox as well, but to be honest, the component output even at 720p/1080i was very very soft. I have seen the menus on the retail TVIX and it does look pretty good. And I like that it has a VFD to facilitate navigation w/o turning on projector, and the ipod inspired controls at the top seem pretty intuitive. But as I mentioned in other post, some users of TVIX has confirmed it fails WTW/BTB tests... so not ideal for DVD rips if that is yr primary intention.
Doggie Howser Posted March 21, 2006 Author Posted March 21, 2006 Okay. Please report later. What firmware do you have ? Just played some .ts HD movies and they look pretty damn good in 720p over VGA out. Audio out was over coax to my Creative DDTS-30 decoder (Dolby/DTS over headphones) since it was pretty late at night. Dolby Digital worked just fine. One of my HD movies (the same one as last night with the .avi extension) didn't play back tho. In fact, it froze the MB-100. No amount of pressing on the remote would unfreeze the box. Not sure what format it was, but it played using VLC on the HTPC. Used DVD Decrypter to rip my Terminator 2 eXtreme DVD and visual quality was pretty good over 720p on VGA (tho not as impressive as a true HD source I guess). By default, the .IFO was the top file and the icon used was a "disc" so it was pretty intuitive to play that file. Playback of individual .VOB files worked too. Couldn't get subtitle to work on this DVD rip using the Menu navigation tho. Pressing Subtitle button didn't work either. The HD WMV (copy protected) on Disc 2 of the movie refused to play. :( Again, it froze the MB-100. Both instances of freezing required me to manually pull the power plug out of the box and plug it back in again. Annoying, to say the least. Not to mention there might be long term reliability issues since the HDD usage icon was flashing during this freeze. Tested the Titanic clips that wouldn't play on the MB100 last nite with my HTPC instead. It does appear that these are "protected files". Windows Media Player had to log on to authenticate the licences before it would playback. So maybe that's why the MB-100 couldn't play it back. But at least, it didn't freeze the system. Tested on another ripped DVD and DTS audio output correctly as well. Despite selecting the subtitles in the menus, it didn't display during the movie. But pressing the Subtitle button on the remote allowed me to toggle the subtitle settings and they started displaying properly again. Was able to switch between English, Mandarin, Malay and even Thai! :) Firmware is 1.0.4 dated March 13 2006. Guess it still needs work :)
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