Most other places will simply refer to this as the M2TV, but we're not that lazy. For you, readers, we'll dig out our bag of magical key combinations and do it the proper way: MediaGate's MG-M²TV. Beyond the needlessly elevated name what we have here is a reasonably comprehensive media player with a title far more interesting than its look. That boring black box houses a lot of functionality, including compatibility with oodles of video formats like AVI, WMV9, MKV, Xvid, H.264 -- and even RealVideo for some reason (yes,
RealNetworks is still around). Music and image formats are equally comprehensive, there's even subtitle support, and it can all be sent to your HDTV at 1080p over HDMI or Component (check out the outputs after the break). It'll take media from a USB HDDs, memory cards, and there are plans for a WiFi module in the not too distant future. MSRP is $119, but we're finding it for around $100, meaning
WD's HD Media Player has a little competition on its hands.
[Via
Newswire Today]
posted July 24th 2009 9:27AM
Why can't one of these machines also stream netflix??? It's almost worth getting an xbox to play media files and stream netflix...
Archos TV+, although old, and I hate Archos, seems like a better deal since it has a built in hard drive, network support, and can be had for about the same price.
Yeah. There was a time when I would have jumped at this for $100. Unfortunately for them, a PC can be built for little more than $200 that can do all of the same things, plus network connectivity. I don't think there's a good argument that video decoding is >50% of what people want a media center for, given the amount of free internet content that's out these days.
Can you really build a media center PC for $200. Will it be as small and as this box, or will it be a huge PC desktop tower case? Honest question... would like to know.
For roughly 200-ish you can get an Nvidia ION, Cheap $10-15 ram, a $50 hard drive, and a cheap case or a diy case. Then run one of the many media center linux distros out there.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=NVIDIA%20ION&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811234020
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500029
US only?
It sounds worth it. I can't get through the read link.
No network = fail. So close too!
RealVideo format is often used for Chinese soaps in torrent files and is therefore a good addition to the supported files.
No wonder I don't use realvideo ever.
i would seriously purchase this instead of another WDTV but not having network support just SUCKS.. And with the WDTV being able to connect to network with a little hackery its still #1.
If u can plug a USB to ethernet adapter to its ill consider..All my media sits on a HPmediasmart..
Surprised about RealNetworks? It is still the main codec for Chinese videos. It is wise to make chips that is capable of handling all formats used around the world.
Yes, and I remain utterly baffled as to why they continue to use that craptastic format.
I'd like to know if it has NTFS support. If not, that seriously cripples its potential for HD videos, seeing as the standard file size for HD movies is over 4 GB.
That's a really good question
I can say with certainty, that yes, it does NTFS. I just got one of these in the mail yesterday after going back and forth between it and the WD model. It feels a little cheaply made, but it works, and it works well. So far it has played everything I have thrown at it without so much as a hiccup. The GUI is simple and easy to use, although it would be nice to have a search feature or at least a page up/down function to get to the file you want to see quicker. That IMO is one of the biggest downfalls of this little machine right now. You have to keep pressing the down arrow on the remote in order to scroll through your media, The tiny case fan on it is a little on the noisy side as well, but tolerable. The only other thing I would have liked to see is a rear USB port so that you don't have to snake a wire around to the front panel to plug in your HD. Overall, its a great machine with all of the features I was looking for at the moment. I've got a 1TB drive hooked up to it right now. With a couple of tweaks and a better feel to the build quality, along with network support and this would easily be the BEST non-computer media player on the market. One other interesting feature of note is the ability to copy files from one media device to another, which makes it great if download something new. Just throw it onto a thumb drive and copy it over to the HD. If anyone has any other questions about the device, just let me know.
Need moar ethernet. Preferably gigabit. Otherwise perfect.
Gigabit ethernet is in no way necessary to stream HD media. Blu Ray discs don't go above 40mbps - the only way you'll go above that is if you're using something that does live transcoding and doesn't bother compressing
whoa! no ethernet! didn't see that.
That ruins it. need ethernet. if you buy a large drive with out ethernet you have to keep unplugging it to take it back to your computer to add to the drive. With eithernet it's networked and you just download to it. Come on wd add ethernet.
sweet. count me in.
No network connectivity renders it kinda useless.
Unless you travel with a number of drives that you take your time to load with stuff all the time.
I could perhaps understand the lack of WIFI to save costs, but a wired Gigabit slot would've cost them pennies and extra $5-10$ to us and make this device a viable replacement for an HTPC.
If it properly supports ASS subtitles I'm sold.
Unlike Popcorn Hour last time I checked.
Can't ASS-format subtitles be easily converted to, say, SRT? I'm sure I saw somewhere that it's no big deal to use ASS subtitles on the Popcorn Hour (which, BTW, has gigabit ethernet in the new model).
it only supports PATA up to 750GB??
http://www.mediagateusa.com/faq.html
I think that FAQ is for their old model; further down in the FAQ it mentions that there's no HDMI output, which the one in this article has.
if it had f*cking ethernet i would have bought 3 of them, one for each room in my house but alas no it doesnt.
Haha, did you just slightly reprogram the site to find a way to superscript characters? Or was it like that before? Either way, bravo!
Reprogram? No, UTF8 precedes this article.
If you look at the trouble-shooting section of the owners manual at the media gate website it says to make sure the HDD is a supported format NTSF, FAT/FAT32, or HFS+
So is TP format really Mpeg2 program stream? and TS = Mpeg2 transport stream?
If not, does this thing play .m2ts files?
and can it handle the subtitles within?
and for .iso support, does it handle BD .iso files too?
I'm waiting for my 2nd batch Xtreamer to arrive (should start shipping somewhere in august)
100 eur +20 shipping and the first 2 batches came with free wifi n usb dongle
place for 2.5" internal disk, streaming, youtube support, NAS, torrent downloader in next fw ...
slight problems with fan noise , fullhd 24p and ASS at fullhd: these are supposed to get fixed
linux ftw
Xtreamer is decent. A colleague bought it and I played around with it for a while. Where is this available for $100?
WHY DO NONE OF THESE PLAYERS HAVE WI-FI BY DEFAULT?!
Seriously, these things (this guy, and the WD TV, etc) are all very cool, and work well, and then they just drop wireless support, and it makes the device next to worthless. WD TV I *ALMOST* understand because they get the value-add sale of an extra hard drive, but these guys?
Here, let me help you guys make an extra $50 million. Add a wired connection, wi-fi chip, and Opera mobile. You're welcome.
Because they're trying to hit the lowest price point, of course. There are mediaplayers with networking, but they necessarily cost more.
Networking would also make the whole thing more complicated - need to support SAMBA etc. All not rocket science, and "not hard" but still adds complication. Don't think that's the reason they left it out though.
I don't see much benefit to streaming from the computer, but having a networked drive connected to the router, and a box like this on every TV in the house would make a whole lot of sense.
I have a WD TV and wish it had a front and back USB. The back is for big media, the front would be for USB sticks. Nevertheless, I just found out that the WD TV supports USB hubs (and multiple drives) so it's not all bad.
supporting networking problems is really expensive.
There are so many factors that a support call would be 20+ mins average instead of the 2 or 3 for the "is my format supported" questions.
What about the HD audio formats? Tru-HD and DTS HD MA? Even with pass-through?
Okay, almost a full page of comments and no one asked for specs (processor?) so is that because I'm just not seeing it?
No ethernet? NEXT!
And can a $200 PC actually play 1080p? You'd be lucky if it can handle 720p. A good wireless keyboard alone will put you back $60+.
Sounds like Popcorn Hour with YAMJ and a 1.5TB drive for the win.
Probabally no Ethernet because they want us to buy the "MG-800HD"?
http://www.mediagateusa.com/mg800hd.html
I'll take my HTPC over this every day of the week. As others noted I don't just use it for movies & tv shows. It's great when company is over and we're in conversation and want to check something out on the net real fast, whip out the wireless keyboard and insta-interwebz. Want to share that funny vid from the stupid forward at work...bust out the wireless keyboard. What this would be actually used for, if it had networking, is for streaming from a drive server. My next project is stuffing a server in a closet with something like a 8 tb raid 5 array and wire the house with fibre so every tv could have something like this. But I will use full htpc's.
wish I can find this in Asia..... :(
I'd be sold if it had wired ethernet connectivity.
"there are plans for a WiFi module in the not too distant future."
WTF! No way is wifi going to stream 1080p reliably, not even 802.11n. GIVE ME GIGABIT!!!
Wireless IS fine. with local storage. That should be in there as well. The purpose for the wireless is for transfer as fast as possible, yes, but buffering is possible with local storage.
Is there a similarly sized box that can RECORD as well as play back?
this is what I see the different
1. to be able to run 1080p you will have to at less spend over 200+ to build ur PC, which mean I can buy two of this for two rooms already.
2. how many home owner really have an network cable plug right next to your TV? even for my PS3 i am only use WIFI to stream my PC file, if as promise this device are WIFI able in very near future, then I will buy one of this for sure (I hate so many wire around the house)
3. be fair to just compare this to WDTV which looks very same product, M2TV support RMVB and also 1080p format video, come with card reader built in, WIFI upgradeable
and selling as 100.00, I will buy this over WDTV...
Anyone with the M2TV could let me know if it recognises a DVD structure please. WDTV doesn't, so when playing from a Video_TS folder in a hard drive I can't access the DVD menu, nor skip to the next chapter.