WDTV Live Plus

[teatime0315]

Quick question for those who own a WDTV.
I know it supports mkv's, but can it display subtitles from within an mkv?

 

[Nohr]

Yes, and you can switch subtitle languages during playback. Same for audio tracks.

 

[gigahertz20]

My WD TV Live cannot play certain movies with dual audio tracks yet when I try the same movie using my Popcorn Hour A-110 it works fine, so watch out for those.
Another annoyance is how the WD TV Live automatically plays back the subtitle files for a movie, I wish it wouldn't do that. I hate how every time I watch a movie I have to turn subtitles off. I don't think there is a setting either to change it.



I think the Sigma Designs chip in the WD TV Live/PLUS is faster then the one in the Popcorn Hour A-200 even, so for $120 or so the PLUS version is a damn good deal. The WD TV Live/PLUS plays just about everything.

 

[sdifox]

My WD TV Live cannot play certain movies with dual audio tracks yet when I try the same movie using my Popcorn Hour A-110 it works fine, so watch out for those.
Another annoyance is how the WD TV Live automatically plays back the subtitle files for a movie, I wish it wouldn't do that. I hate how every time I watch a movie I have to turn subtitles off. I don't think there is a setting either to change it.



I think the Sigma Designs chip in the WD TV Live/PLUS is faster then the one in the Popcorn Hour A-200 even, so for $120 or so the PLUS version is a damn good deal. The WD TV Live/PLUS plays just about everything.

pretty sure you can set subtitle to default to off.

 

[Nohr]

pretty sure you can set subtitle to default to off.

Yeah it's "Subtitle default" in video settings.

 

[teatime0315]

Thanks guys. I think I'm just going to go ahead and purchase it. PS3 and 360 fail as media players. (i've tried the media server thing for ps3 as well).

 

[Modelworks]

Thanks guys. I think I'm just going to go ahead and purchase it. PS3 and 360 fail as media players. (i've tried the media server thing for ps3 as well).

I think the thing I like best about these players is they just work. I don't have to mess with servers, drivers,codecs or setups. Plug it in, connect to network or usb drive and press play.
If I want to take it to a friends house so they can watch something , I can unplug it, toss it in a bag with a flash drive. Plug it in at their house and plug the hdmi cable in and we are watching tv in under 5 minutes.

 

[gigahertz20]

Does anybody know what is more powerful, the Sigma SMP8655 chip in the WD TV Live or the Sigma SMP8643 in the Popcorn hour A-200?

I'm guessing the higher model number would mean the Sigma chip in the WD TV Live is more powerful, if so, why is the WD TV Live so much cheaper then the Popcorn Hour?

 

[Anubis]

Thanks guys. I think I'm just going to go ahead and purchase it. PS3 and 360 fail as media players. (i've tried the media server thing for ps3 as well).

PS3 media server? or Tversity
both work with bot the 360 and PS3

i know you are asking about something else but i haven't run into a file format PS3 MS wont transcode

 

[morkman100]

PS3 media server? or Tversity
both work with bot the 360 and PS3

i know you are asking about something else but i haven't run into a file format PS3 MS wont transcode

I'd guess the fail is from having to have a computer on all the time to transcode the files to play on the 360/PS3 (or having to convert files to playable formats, like TS).

 

[RKS]

Does anybody know what is more powerful, the Sigma SMP8655 chip in the WD TV Live or the Sigma SMP8643 in the Popcorn hour A-200?

I'm guessing the higher model number would mean the Sigma chip in the WD TV Live is more powerful, if so, why is the WD TV Live so much cheaper then the Popcorn Hour?

copied from http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2091146


WDTV LIVE = Sigma 8655 = No Macrovision = No Netflix Support
WDTV LIVE PLUS = Sigma 8654 = Macrovision = Has Netflix

Viewsonic VMP74 = Sigma 8655 = No Macrovision = No Netflix support
Viewsonic VMP75 = Sigma 8654 = Macrovision = Has Netflix

*Popcorn A-200 = Sigma 8643 = No Macrovision = No Netflix support (I see it in there but I can't use it?)
*Popcorn Popbox = Sigma 8643 = No Macrovision = No Netflix support (At launch? If they were going to get it why not for the A-200 too?)

 

[Destiny]

Does anybody know what is more powerful, the Sigma SMP8655 chip in the WD TV Live or the Sigma SMP8643 in the Popcorn hour A-200?

I'm guessing the higher model number would mean the Sigma chip in the WD TV Live is more powerful, if so, why is the WD TV Live so much cheaper then the Popcorn Hour?

Sigma 8643 = 667 MHz with 333Mhz Co-processor (This processor I think is designed for Media Players with Blu-Ray players integrated so it would need a more powerful chipset...i.e. Popcorn Hour C-200 and Dunes - correct me if I am wrong)


Sigma 8655 = 500MHz with 333MHz Co-processor

Here is the link from Sigma Designs to compare the two:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/media_processor_overview.php
click on the 8640 series brochure to get the specs for 8640 series and click on the 8650 series brochre to get the specs for the 8650 series.

The odd numbers do not support Macrovision and the even number has Macrovision (NetFlix at this time requires Macrovision)

But you can also ask ModelWorks... he knows this stuff more...

 

[gigahertz20]

Sigma 8643 = 667 MHz with 333Mhz Co-processor (This processor I think is designed for Media Players with Blu-Ray players integrated so it would need a more powerful chipset...i.e. Popcorn Hour C-200 and Dunes - correct me if I am wrong)


Sigma 8655 = 500MHz with 333MHz Co-processor

Here is the link from Sigma Designs to compare the two:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/media_processor_overview.php
click on the 8640 series brochure to get the specs for 8640 series and click on the 8650 series brochre to get the specs for the 8650 series.

The odd numbers do not support Macrovision and the even number has Macrovision (NetFlix at this time requires Macrovision)

But you can also ask ModelWorks... he knows this stuff more...

Thanks for the info, so I guess the Sigma 8643 in the Popcorn Hour A-200/C-200 are more powerful, interesting. You would think the higher model number for the Sigma 8655 in the WD TV Live would denote higher speed, guess not.

 

[teatime0315]

PS3 media server? or Tversity
both work with bot the 360 and PS3

i know you are asking about something else but i haven't run into a file format PS3 MS wont transcode

It's pretty much what a poster said above, I'd rather not have two machines on at the same time just to play a movie.

 

[Modelworks]

Thanks for the info, so I guess the Sigma 8643 in the Popcorn Hour A-200/C-200 are more powerful, interesting. You would think the higher model number for the Sigma 8655 in the WD TV Live would denote higher speed, guess not.

It can be confusing.
The thing to remember is that the processor speed here is not really important for what they are doing as media players. The 8643 is the 8642 without the macrovision. So the 8655 in the WDTV is the 8654 non macrovision version. Comparing the 8654 and 8642 the differences are that that 8642 can play back 2 HD video streams at once but that doesn't do you any good on a media player because that function is disabled and handled by the DSP anyway. The faster cpu was needed to handle the traffic of something like DVR recording one stream and playing back another. On the media players the cpu spends its time doing nothing. That is why you can run other applications in the background while playing back video and have it not effect the playback. On something like a DVR that cpu power would have been used to browse the guide or menus.

For example , playing back content this is the cpu info on my WDTV live. over 80 percent idle playing back a 40mbit bluray.

Mem: 193696K used, 5360K free, 0K shrd, 496K buff, 117872K cached
CPU:  3.9% usr  8.5% sys  0.0% nic [B]81.8% idle[/B]  3.9% io  0.0% irq  1.5% sirq
Load average: 0.21 0.25 0.20 1/94 20179
  PID  PPID USER     STAT   VSZ %MEM CPU %CPU COMMAND
 1341  1340 root     S     144m 74.2   0  1.9 /bin/dmaosd
 1324     1 root     S     3712  1.8   0  0.9 /bin/sh /usr/bin/wdlxtv.watch
 1339  1337 root     S    13184  6.6   0  0.4 DMARender
19626  9778 root     R     3712  1.8   0  0.4 top
 1336     1 root     S    95328 47.7   0  0.2 MediaLogic AV MSGL_FATAL
 1358     1 root     S     3712  1.8   0  0.2 telnetd -K -l login
 1112     1 root     S     3648  1.8   0  0.2 /bin/sh /usr/bin/nc-send-ssdp-loop-silent
  937     1 root     S     3648  1.8   0  0.2 /bin/sh /bin/power.monitor
13919     2 root     SW       0  0.0   0  0.2 [cifsd]
 1308     1 root     S    37776 18.9   0  0.0 unionfs /tmp/.root/osd:/msheets /osd -o nonempty

The big thing from sigma to watch for is the upcoming 8656 chip. It adds:

• High-performance 3D graphics
• Nagravision and NDS conditional access
• MLC NAND flash
• SPI NOR flash
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet

 

[gigahertz20]

It can be confusing.
The thing to remember is that the processor speed here is not really important for what they are doing as media players. The 8643 is the 8642 without the macrovision. So the 8655 in the WDTV is the 8654 non macrovision version. Comparing the 8654 and 8642 the differences are that that 8642 can play back 2 HD video streams at once but that doesn't do you any good on a media player because that function is disabled and handled by the DSP anyway. The faster cpu was needed to handle the traffic of something like DVR recording one stream and playing back another. On the media players the cpu spends its time doing nothing. That is why you can run other applications in the background while playing back video and have it not effect the playback. On something like a DVR that cpu power would have been used to browse the guide or menus.


The big thing from sigma to watch for is the upcoming 8656 chip. It adds:

• High-performance 3D graphics
• Nagravision and NDS conditional access
• MLC NAND flash
• SPI NOR flash
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet

Cool, thanks for the info. I'll be looking forward to future products with the Sigma 8656.

 

[Modelworks]

Cool, thanks for the info. I'll be looking forward to future products with the Sigma 8656.

They are making announcements so quick on set top boxes it gets hard to keep up with them.
Today mips sent me this :
http://www.mips.com/newsletter0810/googletv.htm

Google TV will have an integrated search capability to help viewers easily find relevant content across over-the-air and pay-TV channel listings, DVR, and the Internet, as well as a picture-in-picture layout to access multiple windows simultaneously. Google TV will also have a home screen to help viewers quickly organize their favorite content and personalize their TV viewing experience.

Google TV is well aligned with MIPS Technologies' own vision of the future connected television and entertainment experience.

Today, putting an advanced MIPS-Based™ chipset into a set-top box or other device with the addition of Android, Chrome, Flash Player 10.1 and other components, would result in a connected TV experience very similar to Google TV. And there are already other Android TV software platforms in development on MIPS-Based chipsets, including an optimized reference platform of Yahoo! TV Widgets and Home Jinni's ConnecTV product that we demonstrated at CES in January.

Initial Google TV products will be available in autumn 2010. There will likely be tens of millions of marketing dollars spent by Google and partners on the initial effort, with major promotion around Google TV. This paves the way for MIPS licensees and their customers to capitalize on this momentum.

In 2011, Google TV code will be open sourced. As with Android, we expect an explosion of Google TV devices to follow, starting in 2011 and beyond. Much like TV platforms in the past, once Google TV reaches mass deployment, it will run on MIPS-Based platforms.

We are committed to ensuring that our licensees have access to the best available software ecosystem for Android on MIPS-Based solutions, and Google TV is part of that picture. Leveraging our work with Android and our ongoing relationship with Google, MIPS is in an ideal position to work with our licensees as Google TV moves beyond initial reference platforms and into mainstream development.

We are looking forward to the new experience that Google TV and other Android products can offer to consumers, and since MIPS licensees are designing the majority of digital home devices, we are excited to enable our licensees to integrate this functionality in future products. Working together, we can get these solutions to market quickly.