New member media player experiences and feedback

[bitshifter]

Newly registered today. Thought I'd pop up and say hello and share some of my experiences with MakeMKV:

Up until about a month ago, I was ripping DVDs and Blu-rays to full ISOs for storage on a NAS and playback from that NAS to networked media players in several rooms. I've been primarily using the Netgear NeoTV 550 for playback as I've found the playback of full BD ISOs by that player to be excellent. Full menus and reliable video and audio. In fact I was so impressed I bought 2.

But my viewing habits are such that I rarely watch any extras on a disc, so I was storing a lot of data I would never use. So I took a look at MakeMKV and decided to start going that route. Being able to remove what I did not want without recompressing and to do it during the ripping process is exactly what I was looking for. Saves me a lot of hard drive space.

However, the playback of the resulting mkvs has been much less reliable on the NeoTV 550 than the playback of the same streams in ISO form on the NTV 550. The problem is mainly stuttering and faulty LPCM playback. In several cases I had both the mkv version and iso version of the same streams. The iso would play fine on the 550 when the mkv had problems. So I tried some other media players I have. I tried an old iStar (older Syabas-based NMT like Popcorn Hour. iStar went out of business.) The iStar seems to play the mkvs just fine although it can not read the subtitles. I also went out and grabbed a Uebo M400. It plays the mkvs fine, but also can not read the subtitles in the mkv version. All 3 players had problems with any LPCM streams in the mkv. I should add that there have been some mkvs that the NTV 550 was able to play just fine. I have not yet seen any pattern to the failures.

I have had a few processing failures with MakeMKV, but thus far those have all been with ISOs that already have had the DRM removed (which MakeMKV makes clear it does not consider optimal.)

But I really like the workflow that MakeMKV allows and will continue that route despite these issues. I would love to see the NeoTV 550s become more reliable with these mkvs since I have invested in 2 of them (plus I just really like the 550s overall.) But the solution could rest more on the shoulders of the NeoTV firmware than MakeMKV. Or vice-versa. Or both. It is unclear to me at this point.

[Icanseestars]

LPCM support in MKV is not common at all even among PC software players, you should take TrueHD or DTS-MA track for HD audio were applicable or convert the LPCM into lossless Flac.

BD subtitles in MKV are also not fully supported by all players.

Netgear could probably fix both of these issues in software but that would be up to them. If your looking for a player that is capable of handling both LPCM in MKV and BD subtitles the Boxee Box is what your after.

[bitshifter]

LPCM support in MKV is not common at all even among PC software players, you should take TrueHD or DTS-MA track for HD audio were applicable or convert the LPCM into lossless Flac.

BD subtitles in MKV are also not fully supported by all players.

Netgear could probably fix both of these issues in software but that would be up to them. If your looking for a player that is capable of handling both LPCM in MKV and BD subtitles the Boxee Box is what your after.

That's what I'm seeing also. That's why I generally keep at least 2 different brand players in each room. Where one falls down, the other generally picks up the slack, although MKV subtitles can still be a bit of a problem.
In my experience, if LPCM is present, Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA is not, but the standard, compressed Dolby 5.1 is and that's fine. I can live with that. I just like to see everything working. Of course, any of these issues could be resolved with the next firmware update. Hopefully.
I looked at the Boxee Box but it failed all of my basic tests (from what I can tell; D-link does not seem to provide complete specs anywhere):
No gigabit ethernet.
No indicated menu support in ISOs (although this is becoming less important to me now that I'm switching everything to MKVs.)
No Samba or NFS serving of connected storage.
What specs they do provide seem to indicate no DTS-HD MA support and no MPEG2 in MKV support. Of course, it is possible it has all of these features and they are just not documented.
With these boxes I guess you don't know for sure until you try it. I was thinking of trying the new Popcorn Hour A300 next, but maybe I'll have to give the Boxee Box another look since it is available in local stores and is easily returnable.

[Icanseestars]

I looked at the Boxee Box but it failed all of my basic tests (from what I can tell; D-link does not seem to provide complete specs anywhere):
No gigabit ethernet.

Irrelevant to Blu-ray streaming 100Mbps ethernet is more than enough.

No indicated menu support in ISOs (although this is becoming less important to me now that I'm switching everything to MKVs.)

Correct it has no BD menu support only DVD.

No Samba or NFS serving of connected storage.

It does support serving attached USB HDD's via Samba.

What specs they do provide seem to indicate no DTS-HD MA support and no MPEG2 in MKV support. Of course, it is possible it has all of these features and they are just not documented.
With these boxes I guess you don't know for sure until you try it. I was thinking of trying the new Popcorn Hour A300 next, but maybe I'll have to give the Boxee Box another look since it is available in local stores and is easily returnable.

It does support MPEG2 in MKV and has DTS-MA pass-through support, the Boxee Box has the best codec support of any player on the market as it stems from a PC application. However in the current firmware there is a bug affecting TrueHD/DTS-MA which causes audio dropouts, a fix is in development and rumoured to be coming in the next major firmware update.

The Popcornhour A300 and Popbox V8 do not support LPCM in MKV at this time but they are going to fix this in a future firmware update, they both do support BD subtitles in MKV. The A300 also has unofficial BD menu support but how long that lasts is anyone's guess.

[bitshifter]

I looked at the Boxee Box but it failed all of my basic tests (from what I can tell; D-link does not seem to provide complete specs anywhere):
No gigabit ethernet.

Irrelevant to Blu-ray streaming 100Mbps ethernet is more than enough.

No indicated menu support in ISOs (although this is becoming less important to me now that I'm switching everything to MKVs.)

Correct it has no BD menu support only DVD.

No Samba or NFS serving of connected storage.

It does support serving attached USB HDD's via Samba.

What specs they do provide seem to indicate no DTS-HD MA support and no MPEG2 in MKV support. Of course, it is possible it has all of these features and they are just not documented.
With these boxes I guess you don't know for sure until you try it. I was thinking of trying the new Popcorn Hour A300 next, but maybe I'll have to give the Boxee Box another look since it is available in local stores and is easily returnable.

It does support MPEG2 in MKV and has DTS-MA pass-through support, the Boxee Box has the best codec support of any player on the market as it stems from a PC application. However in the current firmware there is a bug affecting TrueHD/DTS-MA which causes audio dropouts, a fix is in development and rumoured to be coming in the next major firmware update.

The Popcornhour A300 and Popbox V8 do not support LPCM in MKV at this time but they are going to fix this in a future firmware update, they both do support BD subtitles in MKV. The A300 also has unofficial BD menu support but how long that lasts is anyone's guess.

Thanks for the feedback on the Boxee Box and the A300. Good info. Although if the Boxee can't decode DTS-HD MA, then that is probably a deal breaker.

I'm going to disagree on the gigabit ethernet being "irrelevant" to streaming Blu-rays. The real world throughput of 100Mbps ethernet and the max bitrates possible with Blu-ray are far too close in my experience and in fact sometimes cross. I have examples of both feeding off of the same server and can certainly see that the extra headroom afforded by the fully gigabit path is necessary for my investment comfort. I agree that 100Mbps with decent buffering is generally going to get the job done, but I like that extra headroom so that there is one less link in the chain to wonder about when troubleshooting. Plus, my media players all also act as servers so the faster transfer rate is also a plus in that respect.

The A300 is still looking like the top candidate, but my NeoTV 550 and my uebo m400 are so, so close that hopefully the next round of firmware updates (if they arrive) will obviate the need for the next player for a while. The 550 just has the tiniest bit of playback issues with some of my mkvs (visually it looks like just the occasional, random dropped frame; although on one occasion, the failure was much more dramatic) and is also not quite there on the attached storage server performance. The m400 really just needs the subtitle support. The video and audio playback has been flawless so far. Also, the m400 has a fan that is a bit too noisy. I'm going to take a look and see if the fan can be easily and safely disabled on the hopes that it is really there for the case where an internal hard drive is installed (mine will all be external.) The BD menu support has also been a failure on the m400 thus far, but as I said, that is becoming less and less of an issue (but would be nice for my homemade BDs.)

[kkimmel]

Why not use ClownBD to strip the main feature and audio from your ISO's? No need to buy addional hardware as it will write to ISO.

[JasonX]

I personally use XBMC running on Windows 7, and all my MKVs are stored on a SMB/Win-mounted NAS. No issues reading any MKVs and I only rip the main title and English + forced sub-titles.

The beauty of an OS-based NAS (aka HTPC) is that old software/drivers/codecs aren't an issue.

For the record, the only issue I run into is occasionally green artifacts during playback of titles.. and that's caused by the XBMC video driver. In that scenario, I just play the MKV using VLC and no problems.

Hope this helps.