Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Media player discussion (moved from 861v6 thread)

I did A/B video comparisons between the Oppo and the Seagate Theater+ Both units are fed through the HD621 and I can say with certainty that on a 50" 1080p Elite Kuro there is no difference in video. It is exceptional on both players. Mind you the Theater+ is $129 sans HD/NAS.

(The Theater+ uses a RealTek chipset and while it may not in theory extract as well as Anchor Bay it is indistinguishable at the 50" screen size; i additionally paused a few movies on both players and inspected the pixels.)

The Theater+ is cat6'ed to a RAID 5 with 8T of data and on 98% of Bluray 1080p rips there is never a dropout or stutter. 1080p MKV files play flawlessly as do AVI etc. Subtitles work flawlessly. I have hardly used my Oppo since going this route.

I am awaiting the new widget-based Intel media chip powered Yuixx media player to replace my Theater+, which should be incredible.

I hope this helps someone.

PS the Theater+ accepts any USB drive in any capacity formatted in various non-FAT partitions; in fact the Movie organization works better in USB drives than the NAS, but NAS fw update is immanent.


PPS SOMEONE PLEASE REPORT BACK ASAP ON THE 861V6 AS FED THROUGH A HD621 INTO DSP SPEAKERS!

OK, I have to ask as a somewhat interested observer, does the 861V6 have "relay click" when digital streams change from DD to PCM etc like the G68 series ?

Dr. Bill, thanks for the info. Do these media players convert the high res audio files (DD truHD/DTS HD) to PCM? If they do I think you presented me with the solution Ive been looking for.

Jerry, have you missed the HDI Dune BD Prime 3.0? I've used the Prime for over a year playing highres lossless multichannel audio. DolbyTrueHD, DTS Master HD Audio, FLAC 5.1 is decoded to Multichannel PCM for the HD621. And the Prime 3.0 can play Full Quality Blu-Ray with lossless audio over a 100mbit network.

Search a bit if you're interested in it. I think I wrote about it in the 2009 forum mostly.

HDI have big plans for it during 2010 regarding the graphical interface where you select films/series/music so it will not stay a file based browser forever. Many users are hoping for iPod/iPhone browsing support. For the money it's almost silly how much you get and the quality through the HD621 is really excellent.

Dune is good. It is Sigma chip based. The Yuixx is Intel and on a whole other level from these "low end" chipsets like Sigma and RealTek.

If you need a quick inexpensive fix the Theater+ is LESS than half the price of the Dune base and is a perfect stopgap for the Yuixx. The Dune's UI will be history as will Seagate's when Yuixx is finally released.

PS the Dune Bluray spinner version is noisy. The Dune base form factor is the size of an Oppo for no good reason.

PPS the Theater+ does LPCM multichannel out via HDMI and of course HDMI raw. But does saving $200 matter here when we are talking about $25k processors!?!?!

Now wait a sec dr.bill, Yuixx is not a BD Profile 2.0 player like the Dune is correct? That means no Blu-Ray menus or BD-Live content possible.

Let's talk about Yuixx when it comes out and see how stable and able the platform really is.

Hi Crion,

out of interest, have you ripped your DVDA MLP files into FLAC 5.1 ?

Thanks

Nick

No I get my 5.1 24bit 96KHz FLAC's from the 2L music label. Via BD-Live they are also serving up 5.1 FLAC's from their newer Blu-Ray releases to PC's.

They have demo material here:

http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html

Yuixx will outperform the current media players. Not sure how they will deal with BR menus and such. My point was that the Sigma and RealTek based media players are inexpensive Chinese based el cheapo solutions that have little hp to deal with more advanced processing and advanced UI, while Yuixx is specifically designed for this with a media player graphics intensive chip.

Dune is okay and they are trying but as they develop their UI they will be limited by their chipset.

OT: Yuixx
They have no Blu-Ray license. They have no BD Profile. This means no BD-Menus or BD-Live functions. Ofcourse they can hack/play into an m2ts file, but that is all they are ever gonna get without a license.

Also they don't seem to offer decoding (just bitstream passthrough) of DolbyTrueHD or DTS Master HD Audio which makes it unsuitable for HD621.

I'm sorry for responding with OT talk but I didn't want people to be mislead thinking they would get the Blu-Ray capability of the HDI Dune BD Prime 3.0 with a Snazzy interface. Without proper Blu-Ray and DTS/Dolby lossless licenses it's not going to happen.

Let's see when Yuixx releases. It should decode 7.1 and support passthrough. They will have Bluray menus at some point (maybe this last delay was for both intel and licensing).

JerryL: for the best audio to HD621 the Dune or Popcorn Hour would better suit your needs.