My on going review of PV76120.

The review will proceed taking in account what I was expecting from it when I decided to replace my old WDTV player.

First I wanted to get in one box Digital TV with recording capabilities and media player.

And that’s what I got. Digital TV works fine especially when a firmware update brings back the feature to enlarge automatically 4:3 TV channels. There is a problem with my TV (analog) when it gets the signal from PlayOn. I hear a noise and the picture is strange. Not really watchable. So I used a T plug to bypass PlayOn. This is a hardware problem, not fixable I suppose, unfortunately. Maybe, in case of a Digital signal, would be no problem as it appears to be some kind of over-amplification.

Recording capability not tested very much at the moment but looks ok.

Media player works nice. I didn't find a serious problem so far.

There is one annoying problem although. When PlayOn is connected with a sound system through optical, it needs a configuration change to have sound both from MP3 and DD or DTS files. I have to configure PlayOn to pass-through when the video has DD or DTS sound and LPCM when it has MP3.

Subtitles for srt files use a very clear and nice font but the usual miss in supporting tags, especially the very frequently used <i></i>, is present too. Probably the real time rendering of italics is too costly for the hardware and it is avoided. Maybe. So I reverted to idx/sub support. I generate idx/sub subtitles through AVIAddXSubs. It seems that the result is not consistent for all videos. Looks that for some files the letters appear a bit smaller than in others. The resolution of the file affects the rendering of idx/sub somehow. This is not a big problem but I would be happy to get always the same idx/sub subtitles rendering regardless of the played file. WDTV did that.

There is a bug in palette handling of idx/sub. When I choose blue outline I get red and vice-versa. The same idx/sub file works correctly in my PC and in other DivX/DVD player I have. So the problem is in PlayOn. Sure that this can be fixed with a firmware update and I hope that it will. But it is easy to overcome.

Second I wanted to be able to connect through network (or other convenient way) and manage the contents of the internal disk. Able to copy files from my PC quickly, delete files etc.

There are problems, and I am afraid not fixable. The network (wired) connection is very slow.

I already rejected a player with similar features because of that. But finally I had to face it with PlayOn.

A file of 6.55GB it took almost half an hour to copy. About 5MB/sec. For smaller files up to 2GB maybe is acceptable but not to wait half an hour. In cases when you can initiate a copy from your PC and forget it doing something else the same time, this delay, maybe, can be accepted. But not when you want just to copy a video and immediately view it. Fortunately there is a workaround through USB connection. I connected PlayOn through USB to my PC and the copy of the previous mentioned file took only 4.5 min. About 25MB/sec in this case. So in such hurry cases I will use USB to copy the files.

Using network it took 7+ hours to copy 120GB and in the end the half of the files disappeared even if there was no error reported during the copy. Maybe the problem caused because while copying I made some recording tests.

As I was unable to delete the directory that was full of invisible files, I had to reformat the disk, remove it from the device and use my PC eSATA connection (and a special host device) to copy the files as fast as possible.

The reliability of the internal disk is very important. I have put inside one 500GB green WD disk. Others put 1 or 1.5 T disks. Is not easy to copy and copy again such big amount of data. And if there is no reliability you always have to keep the files at least in two others places as PlayOn disk cannot be trusted as backup medium. Actually if there is no reliability big disks are not needed. One of 120GB could be ok, just as a transient, only to play and delete, medium.

I would prefer (or have the selection) the internal disk to be formatted in ext3 in case the Linux NTFS support is proved not reliable yet. But when the SABA support still works we will loose the capability to copy through the fast USB connection. I hope we get soon a solution to the NTFS reliability problem.

Third I wanted a device that is energy star compliant.

If it had to be in the mains all day, as expected from a device with programmable recording capabilities, this is essential to me. It implies that at least in standby the power consumption has to be 1W or less.

I know, the product was not marked as green and information about consumption was not possible to find in the specifications. This is bad. This information has to be in the specifications so I can decide. And if it is not, is not for good reasons, of course. I knew that beforehand but I risked.

I asked and they told me of about 1.2W which is acceptable. But when I got my unit I measured and I found 4W at standby. So I have to disconnect it from mains when is not in use, for example when there are no programmed recordings. At the moment I don’t do frequent recordings and I can still use my analog recorder which has been proved very reliable from 2005.

I also measured the consumption when it is on. About 22-28W, depending of what is doing at the time of measurement. WDTV consumed only 11W when playing HD files and 8W in standby.

keep it up to date man , i think most of these are going to help improve the product!!!

p.s : απο τα πιο καθαρα γραμμενα posts !!

Reficul

Maybe because I disconnect PlayOn from mains when is not in use, I observe that the time/date is lost and I have to set it again. If this is not a malfunction of my unit or some firmware bug, it seams that the backup power for the clock is some kind of capacitor and not a real battery.

Even I have set the option "Subtitle of-off" at ON, many times videos start without subtitles and I have to activate them specifically.

nice review.

thanks.
NG

I also experience this problem, but reversed - i set subtitles to off in the stup, but they display anyway when playing some ISOs or MKVs

The problem no showing subtitles in mkv if had subs incorporated, was fixed in a later firmware update.

... probably the first review written after a thorough test

I got yesterday my new TV (LG 47LE5300) with DTV MPEG4 support so playon's DTV dual tuner is useless or will stay as a backup. Recordings were already off because of faulty timer, unreliable File system (NTFS in Linux) etc, so playon stays only as a media player with internal hard disk.

I can see the difference of DTV (EPG) handling between LG and ACRyan/realtek. LG has an out of the box very dissent handling with many information that never appear in playon, and of course correctly displayed Greek text. It can be used too as a media player as it plays everything with some minor limitations that probably you will never met. But still I would prefer playon for this function.

Hopefully my new TV includes a schedule list to reminds you for a program and I will use it to make playon start a recording the few times I need this function. I will wait to get a dissent product, that will work out of the box and adds a BluRay player, from a serious company like LG, SONY etc. I am convinced that we cannot get such products from ACR/Realtek... complex. Is above their powers. They have to stay in the media player arena if they can compete with the big companies as media player features become common place everywhere now. Even toasters will have media player functions from now on.