Myka - set top box , streams up to 1080p, open source

[Slick5150]

Well, I'm honestly becoming more and more suspect about this company's ability to deliver. I placed an order on March 30 for a unit and they charged my credit card on April 14. As of last week, I hadn't heard a word from these guys about the status of my order (despite the last post on their websites blog saying they had the final units in hand). I sent them an email and it took them a few days to respond but when they did they apologized and said they'd have it out by the end of the (last) week.

As of today, still nothing from them. I'm giving them until the end of this week before I do a chargeback on my credit card. Not good business practice to charge someone's credit card before you can deliver a product, let alone leave them in the lurch about the status of a delivery.

I'll keep you guys posted, but as of right now I certainly wouldn't recommend placing an order for one of these.

 

[Muadib]

Thanks for the update Slick5150. Very disappointing.

 

[ericlp]

The bad part about PCH is it's SLOW and clunky interface. Most people use a 1TB USB hard Drive, but, if you got 500 moves on it the complaints I've heard are that it take forever just to scroll through such a list of movies even if you only have 100 it will take 5 minutes to scroll half way down. That was my complaint as well, why buy a 1TB drive if you can't fill it up full of movies? Then I thought you could put all your movies into different sub folders and then if it was still too big you could sub those out as well tho, I've heard a lot of good things about the PCH and I'm still thinking of buying one.

 

[kenrippy]

Originally posted by: ericlp
The bad part about PCH is it's SLOW and clunky interface. Most people use a 1TB USB hard Drive, but, if you got 500 moves on it the complaints I've heard are that it take forever just to scroll through such a list of movies even if you only have 100 it will take 5 minutes to scroll half way down. That was my complaint as well, why buy a 1TB drive if you can't fill it up full of movies? Then I thought you could put all your movies into different sub folders and then if it was still too big you could sub those out as well tho, I've heard a lot of good things about the PCH and I'm still thinking of buying one.

I just noticed this thread, and I'm a PCH A110 owner. I will give you a few of my thoughts on the PCH to this point. I've had it for about 8mos. I can tell you that the ability to stream and output HD audio (via pass-thru) is a must for me. Until the Myka can do that, it is really behind the times IMHO. PCH has a DTS license, so it will decode DTS in the box too. I don't see that the Myka can even do that, I could be wrong.

As far as the slow UI of the PCH; that has been significantly increased with a FW update as of a few months ago. There is also a resume feature now that can take you back to the same spot in a movie after stopping and browsing etc. I have about 4tb of movies (1tb in PCH, 3tb in PC) that I watch from - over 360 HD movies. They are all 720p/1080p ranging from 4gb-35gb, some with HD audio too. They stream just fine at high bitrate and with HD audio via CAT5. The UI isn't terrible, you need to scroll or search for your movie. Alternatively, there is a YAMJ plugin (yet another movie jukebox) that comes included with the Syabas Myihome software. It gives you full access to all your movies on ALL drives, with a nice interface and quick operation. It also automatically downloads the IMDB data, box covers, and also displays the MediaInfo of your file on the same page.
Here's what the YAMJ interface looks like

As others have stated, the PCH is NOT a great music player. It displays pictures ok via network, but this thing is made for movies.

I don't have a DVD player or BD player anymore. I can rip a DVD in a few minutes and stream the ISO with full menu support, just as if I was watching from a stand alone player. Blu-ray is handled in the same manner, it just takes longer to rip the 35+gb file. I have a BD drive, rip the movie, stream the .m2ts movie file. Only thing the PCH can't do that a Blu-ray player can, is menu support (BD ISO) no java=no menus.

Slick5150, I hope things work out for you with the Myka.

 

[erwos]

The other slight problem with the PCH A-110 is that there's no EVO support in hardware for HD-DVD rips. *shrugs*

 

[kenrippy]

Originally posted by: erwos
The other slight problem with the PCH A-110 is that there's no EVO support in hardware for HD-DVD rips. *shrugs*

True, it is slight. I just use ripbot to encode them to x264.

 

[ericlp]

Thanks Ken for your update. Maybe it's time to buy one. Damn, I guess I'm gonna have to upgrade my internet account to d/l 35Gig movies but watching the cosmos series in HD must be fun.

4TB eh? So how do you back that up???

 

[kenrippy]

Originally posted by: ericlp


4TB eh? So how do you back that up???

I don't It wouldn't be the end of the world if a hard drive failed.
99% of all of the files could be "acquired" again if needed.

 

[CupCak3]

Any updates? I'm hoping this isn't too good to be true!

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: CupCak3
Any updates? I'm hoping this isn't too good to be true!

I wound up canceling my pre-order. I sent them yet another email asking for any kind of an update as to a shipping date (since it had now been a month since they charged my credit card for it), and they didn't respond so I'd had enough at that point. They also don't respond to questions in the user forums (which are sparsely used anyways).

Hopefully they get their act together and can actually deliver on what they're promising, but I'm done letting them hold onto my money while they try to do that.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Slick5150

Originally posted by: CupCak3
Any updates? I'm hoping this isn't too good to be true!

I wound up canceling my pre-order. I sent them yet another email asking for any kind of an update as to a shipping date (since it had now been a month since they charged my credit card for it), and they didn't respond so I'd had enough at that point. They also don't respond to questions in the user forums (which are sparsely used anyways).

Hopefully they get their act together and can actually deliver on what they're promising, but I'm done letting them hold onto my money while they try to do that.

I'm sorry to hear that. I feel kind of bad for posting about it in the first place. I really thought we had a winner here, the dev was even posting here. I also did my homework and researched the developer. Seemed like the kind of person that could bring this about.

Wondering if maybe money issues are the reason.



His info

Dan Lovy, EVP of Products for PermissionTV, is a veteran of a number of successful startups.Dan combines his engineering skills, product design, and business execution to guide our product development.

In 1995, Dan co-founded (with Seth Godin) Yoyodyne Entertainment, an early internet direct marketing company.
...
At Yahoo!, Dan proposed, launched, and ran Yahoo!'s B2B properties.

Prior to Yoyodyne, Dan was CTO at Learningways, Inc.There he architected and implemented an authoring system that produced high quality multimedia products for the text book and consumer markets.Clients included Fisher Price, Simon and Shuster, and Paramount.Learningways was acquired by Davidson and Associates in 1994.

Dan has spent 20 years preparing for the digital convergence we are seeing today.In the 1980's, he was with Spinnaker Software creating multimedia adventure games.He also founded a hardware company that produced audio digitizing hardware and video production tools.He finished the decade at the Educational Development Center, a non-profit research company building multimedia classroom software for IBM, Apple, and Scholastic.

Dan has a degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan.

 

[Slick5150]

Modelworks - I'm glad you posted the info about the Myka player in the first place. It does have the potential to be a good option and I was looking forward to trying it out. But, I'm just going to step back and wait for them to actually start delivering on their product before deciding again if I want to give it a shot.

 

[Slick5150]

Well, I noticed they updated their website today to say that their first units have cleared customs in the US and are on the way to their warehouse. So, we'll see if they actually start shipping these things anytime soon now.

 

[Muadib]

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Well, I noticed they updated their website today to say that their first units have cleared customs in the US and are on the way to their warehouse. So, we'll see if they actually start shipping these things anytime soon now.

Does that mean you are going to put in another order?

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: Muadib

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Well, I noticed they updated their website today to say that their first units have cleared customs in the US and are on the way to their warehouse. So, we'll see if they actually start shipping these things anytime soon now.

Does that mean you are going to put in another order?

Nah. Not yet anyway. If I see firm evidence that they're shipping the devices (i.e. people are getting them in their hands) then I'll consider it.