Originally Posted by article Although that is an oft-used HD format it was reassuringly the only thing we found within our vast library of video content the Icy Box unable to handle
do you mean that that codec is used frequently? or rarely? i am confused.
I personally was a little disappointed with my popcorn hour. I found that it crashed quite frequently especially when downloading torrents. I am not sure if it is a fault with my box or not but I cant help feel that it is puny CPU that gets overwhelmed and then causes everything to freeze.
However I do have to agree with tnkflx, it plays everything I throw at it and it does it well.
This sounded interesting until I saw the price. For under £200 you can get an Acer Revo which gives you a fully featured PC able to use a nice free interface like Myth. It'll handle all the HD files easily and will give you a lot more flexibility.
The only plus for the Icy Box seems to be the already setup nature of it which is let down by the slow interface.
I am following the NMT devices closely. My current 6 year old HTPC build is getting a beating when playing 1080P content. Well it wants to play but its just to slow. Its had Asus SLI-32 deluxe with 2gb ram, athlon s939 x2 3400 and ATI pci-e card. (x1600?)
Any advise to extend the life of my HTPC. Maybe a better videocard that will playback 1080p or do i need to find a better processor also?
Originally Posted by Fruitloaf This sounded interesting until I saw the price. For under £200 you can get an Acer Revo which gives you a fully featured PC able to use a nice free interface like Myth. It'll handle all the HD files easily and will give you a lot more flexibility.
The only plus for the Icy Box seems to be the already setup nature of it which is let down by the slow interface.
+1 the idea is good and i like the idea of a prebuilt interface with a remote. if its going to be slow and take forever to do anything i'll leave it thanks.
i can imagine being sat there with friends while they lambasted my home setup because they are made to look at an icybox logo for 20 seconds (i have very unforgiving friends)
Originally Posted by [USRF Obiwan]I am following the NMT devices closely. My current 6 year old HTPC build is getting a beating when playing 1080P content. Well it wants to play but its just to slow. Its had Asus SLI-32 deluxe with 2gb ram, athlon s939 x2 3400 and ATI pci-e card. (x1600?)
Any advise to extend the life of my HTPC. Maybe a better videocard that will playback 1080p or do i need to find a better processor also?
Stick a video card capable of decoding video through dvxa into it. Have to make sure the software you use is capable however.
Originally Posted by proxess Any chance of formatting this with a full-fledged Linux distro?
More thank likely, yes. For a given value of 'fully fledged'.
It looks like this device runs more or less the same OS used by the IB-4220B NAS box and there's a fairly large community of users who are into hacking, modding and generally repurposing their NAS boxen (eg. as embedded webservers). RaidSonic/IcyBox actually encourage these folks, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's info out there on beefing up/replacing the stock firmware etc. May be worth casting your eye over the RaidSonic website and forums to see what's what.
However, since it's running an ARM-based processor your choice of distro is going to be fairly limited unless you're prepared to roll your own (think there's still an ARM-friendly Debian set but that's about yer lot)
Firstly thanks to bit-tech for reviewing the IB-MP309HW-B. Thanks for reading the review, some negative comments passed from you guys have noted, we can now use these comments and learn what more you would expect to see from the product. The chipset used is also expensive, when the product was put into production Raidsonic included as many features as possible which does make the product stand out.
Raidsonic has also paid for the licenses to use the various file formats etc featured on the MP309, many other media players do not have the licensing. as company Raidsonic is respected because of this.
Iâve operated one of these myself menu response time I feel is still comfortable, besides.. how long do you plan to sit in the menus for when you should be enjoying your full high definition movies or nodding your head along to some music :)
For anyone who plans to purchase or already owns one of these will be pleased to know that a firmware update is already available with a truck load of fixes and changes to improve the device. A full list can be found in our care forums by visiting this link...
Agreed, as long as it doesn't turn out the way it did with the crappy all-in-one water cooling solution by I-forgot-the-name-of-the-stupid-company where the rep just talked BS all the time. :)
good review, first one ive seen that tics most of my boxes. ive been thinking of something along these lines for a while now - was disappointed that the wi-fi is an add on though, but thought it would still be worth it until the "slight" issues with the os were highlighted.
im certainly in the market for something like this, purely as a network player - hopefully there will be an update on this to see if the os issues have been smoothed a bit?
Been looking for a box like this with such versatility for ages but seeing as the interface is sluggish and has long waits at certain times it's just a big no no. What a shame. It checks off all but UI...
I guess I'll have to wait just a little longer till someone gets it all right :)
Originally Posted by perplekks45 Agreed, as long as it doesn't turn out the way it did with the crappy all-in-one water cooling solution by I-forgot-the-name-of-the-stupid-company where the rep just talked BS all the time. :)
haha that dude was clearly just given a page of marketing jargon and told to get posting! hopefully other companies will be more receptive and less PR driven (it was CoolIT btw)
Originally Posted by Sh00ter good review, first one ive seen that tics most of my boxes. ive been thinking of something along these lines for a while now - was disappointed that the wi-fi is an add on though, but thought it would still be worth it until the "slight" issues with the os were highlighted.
im certainly in the market for something like this, purely as a network player - hopefully there will be an update on this to see if the os issues have been smoothed a bit?
Originally Posted by flibblesan wtf. £200 and it doesn't even have a hard disk inside it? Theres a Western Digital device for under £80 that does the job.
Well there is no pleasing everyone... please read the review and see if you can spot the different features
Originally Posted by flibblesan wtf. £200 and it doesn't even have a hard disk inside it? Theres a Western Digital device for under £80 that does the job.
Did you even READ the review? Or did you just see the price and went "Double-You-Tee-Eff-Mate?", then thought it would be cool to talk some uneducated stuff on the forum?
Comments 1 to 25 of 47
ReplyThe Popcorn Hour is a very nice box, but the interface is rather clumsy :) It does play everything I throw at it :)
However I do have to agree with tnkflx, it plays everything I throw at it and it does it well.
The only plus for the Icy Box seems to be the already setup nature of it which is let down by the slow interface.
Any advise to extend the life of my HTPC. Maybe a better videocard that will playback 1080p or do i need to find a better processor also?
+1 the idea is good and i like the idea of a prebuilt interface with a remote. if its going to be slow and take forever to do anything i'll leave it thanks.
i can imagine being sat there with friends while they lambasted my home setup because they are made to look at an icybox logo for 20 seconds (i have very unforgiving friends)
Stick a video card capable of decoding video through dvxa into it. Have to make sure the software you use is capable however.
It looks like this device runs more or less the same OS used by the IB-4220B NAS box and there's a fairly large community of users who are into hacking, modding and generally repurposing their NAS boxen (eg. as embedded webservers). RaidSonic/IcyBox actually encourage these folks, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's info out there on beefing up/replacing the stock firmware etc. May be worth casting your eye over the RaidSonic website and forums to see what's what.
However, since it's running an ARM-based processor your choice of distro is going to be fairly limited unless you're prepared to roll your own (think there's still an ARM-friendly Debian set but that's about yer lot)
Firstly thanks to bit-tech for reviewing the IB-MP309HW-B. Thanks for reading the review, some negative comments passed from you guys have noted, we can now use these comments and learn what more you would expect to see from the product. The chipset used is also expensive, when the product was put into production Raidsonic included as many features as possible which does make the product stand out.
Raidsonic has also paid for the licenses to use the various file formats etc featured on the MP309, many other media players do not have the licensing. as company Raidsonic is respected because of this.
Iâve operated one of these myself menu response time I feel is still comfortable, besides.. how long do you plan to sit in the menus for when you should be enjoying your full high definition movies or nodding your head along to some music :)
For anyone who plans to purchase or already owns one of these will be pleased to know that a firmware update is already available with a truck load of fixes and changes to improve the device. A full list can be found in our care forums by visiting this link...
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=1998622#post1998622
+1 ;)
excellent.
im certainly in the market for something like this, purely as a network player - hopefully there will be an update on this to see if the os issues have been smoothed a bit?
I guess I'll have to wait just a little longer till someone gets it all right :)
haha that dude was clearly just given a page of marketing jargon and told to get posting! hopefully other companies will be more receptive and less PR driven (it was CoolIT btw)
Please see the latest firmware update for the IB-MP309HW-B, I have posted a whole list of fixes... http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=1998622#post1998622
Some of the fixes include...
- faster navigation on local drives, use numeric key to input item number to jump to the page where item is located
- Improved fileplayer speed
- Fixed HDD spin-up during standby
- Fixed slow loading of HTML pages
Well there is no pleasing everyone... please read the review and see if you can spot the different features
Kids these days...
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