Any interest in Network Media Players? Group buy?

[ajoesmith]

I have been looking for a network media player as i recently bought a Full HD TV.

I initially bought a cheap DVD player with HDMI upscaling and it is performing very well but it only plays dvd's and other files like .avi .mp4 divx and xvid etc BUT it DOES NOT play .h264 files, the future of High definition

well my search has led me to network media players which basically play everything you can throw at it including .h264 files and HD media, it also plays ripped blu ray content! Excellent. THis can also be done over a network or via an internal Hard drive.

Anyway, some of you may have heard of 'Popcorn Hour'. The network media player i can get is called eGreat EG-M31B which has basically the same internals as the popcorn hour but also a little extra.

Most if not all media payers are based on the Sigma 8635 chipset and can all do the same thing. THe difference between the eGreat player is that it has HDMI version 1.3 output and also a USB slave. the Popcorn player does NOT.

The egreat has also eSATA compatibility for faster transfer of files, popcorn does not.

Here are a few pics of the player and some info. Here is the manufacturer wesbsite if you want to have a look: http://www.egreatworld.com/en/index.asp

If people are interested we can do a small group buy for this.

pics first then details

now the details, sorry its long!

The follwing specs are of the eGreat EG-M31A, the new EG-M31B has additional HDMI 1.3 and eSATA

Hardware Specifications :

Hardware

* CPU:SIGMA DESIGNS SMP8635

* Mips 300MHz

* DDR-1 DRAM support:64-bit 512MB

* External NOR Flash Support:16-bit 256MB

* Audio DSPs:300MHz

Video Output :

* HDMI version

* Component (Y/Pb/Pr)

* Composite

Audio Output :

* Stereo

* SPDIF Digital audio output

Networking :

* Ethernet interface, 10-baseT/100-baseT

USB :

* USB 2.0 host 2 port

* USB 2.0 slave

* Device Classifications : Mass storage device

HDD Type：

* SATA Ⅰ/Ⅱ HDD

FORMAT:

* EXT3

* NTFS/FAT32

Power :

* adapter AC100~240 V,DC12V/2A &5V/3A

Human Interface Device :

* Handheld remote (standard)

* USB keyboard (optional)

Connectivity Protocol(s) Support :

Protocols :

* UPnP AV NMPR v2.1

* UPnP 1.0 (connect to myiHome Lite)

* Bonjour

NMT Streaming Application Specifications :

* Streaming via HTTP protocol over local network or the Internet

* WMS over HTTP support via the Internet

* RTSP over HTTP support via the Internet

Media Container :

Video [extension(s)] :

* ASF/WMV [.asf, .wmv]

* MOV/MP4 [.mov, .mp4]

* MPEG2PS [.ps]

* MPEG2TS [.ts]

* AVI [.avi, divx]

* MPG [.mpg, .mpe, .mpeg, .m2v, .vob, .vro]

Audio [extension(s)] :

* WAV [.wav, .pcm]

* ADIF, ADTS [.aac]

* M4A [.m4a]

* O.G.G. [.ogg]

* ASF/WMA [.asf, .wma]

* FLAC [.flac]

Subtitle [extension(s)] :

* MicroDVD [.sub]

* SubRip [.srt]

* Sub Station Alpha [.ssa]

* Sami [.smi]

OSD Language:

* English (standard)

* Chinese Simplified (standard)

* French (optional)

* Spanish (optional)

* German (optional)

* Czechic (optional)

* Portuguese (optional)

* Swedish (optional)

Media Codecs :

Video :

* 4 standard definition streams (PAL and NTSC formats) in any of the following

format: H.264, VC-1,MPEG-4 and MPEG-2,MKV,M2TS,TS,AVI

* One high definition stream 1920 x 1080i(60), 1920 x 1080p (30), 1280 x720p

(60) and one standard definition stream simultaneously

* H.264 MP/HP @L4.1

* VC-1/WMV9 MP@HL, AP@L3

* MPEG-4 ASP @L5 1

* MPEG-2 MP@HL and MP@ML

Audio :

* MPEG 1/2 Audio Layers I, II, and III (MP3)

* Dolby Digital® (AC-3)

* DTS

* PCM

* MPEG-2/4 AAC LC and HE

* Microsoft WMA and WMA Pro

* Supports the audio sampling rates at 8, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48, and 96KHz

* Audio samples at 16, 20, 24, and 32 bits per channel

* FLAC (software decode)

Photo formats :

* JPEG (software decode)

* Animated GIF89a, BMP and PNG in browser mode

NAS + Media Server feature :

Protocols :

* DLNA v1.0 compliance on CTT test tools v1.0.

* UPnP AV NMPR v2.1

File Upload support :

* Samba version 3.0.21 (home-use)

* FTP for Digital Signage (commercial)

Download services :

* Bit Torrent btpd v0.12

NAS Management system :

* HDD format

* HDD partition create, copy, delete

* File transfer

* Password protection, etc.

Proprietary server :

* myiHome Lite (detection by Networked Media Tank slim client with UPnP 1.0)

Media Player extender :

* Supports any other DLNA compliant devices

Browser support :

* HTML 3.2 compliant and partial HTML 4.0 support

* Partial Javascript 1.5 support

* Partial CSS2 support

* Proprietary Consumer HTML support to ease navigation using a remote control

* Partial Cascading Style Sheet (CSS1)

* Partial Netscape and IE extensions including exception handling

* Cookies function support

* Full graphical frames

* Local file system implemented as disk on RAM and/or flash memory

* Fast HTML page and downloaded files caching in RAM disk

* Automatic local time synchronization with server time

* GIF87, Animated GIF89a, JPEG, and progressive JPEG image files support

* Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image files support

* Ability to support double byte character sets for internationalization effort.

Current supported character sets

- English

- Chinese Simplified (GB2312)

- Chinese Traditional (Big5)

- Japanese (ISO-2022JP, Shift-JIS, EUC-JP)

- Korean (EUC-KR)

- Hebrew (no right to left alignment)

* Secure Sockets Layer 2.0/3.0, TLSv1 40-bit and 128-bit encryption for secure

online transaction

* Javascript/ECMAScript (ECMA-262) support

Playback feature support :

* Photo Album (JPEG) with the entire supported audio format as background music

* Internet Radio supporting Shoutcast server MP3 Internet Radio stream

* Playback control

- Play/Pause,

- Go to (seeking)

- Fast Forward/Rewind

- Slow Motion (MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 only)

* Audio and Video Play List supported

* MP3 playback with album art support

* proprietary server (e.g. myiHome Lite), allows playback on multiple platform

(Windows XP, Mac OS and Pocket PC) via an Internet browser

Accessory packing:

* Remote Control x 1PSC

* Power adapter 12V2A&5V/3A x 1PCS

* AC cable x 1PCS

* CD-R x 1PCS

* USB2.0 Cable x 1PCS

* HDMI Cable x 1PCS

* OPtical Cable x 1PCS

* AV Cable x 1PCS

* YPbPr x 1PCS

[Shundi]

Hmm...what are we talking for price?

[ajoesmith]

around $250 excluding shipping. TBC