Just ordered a Micca EP600

[dgrams]

Just ordered teh Micca EP600 off Amazon.
My motivation was purely to be able to stream full 3D .iso images to the device (not just SBS)

Lots of good reviews on this. Can't wait to get it.
Anyone else play with these yet?

[glenns]

I have one but don't stream their is a clunky remote control and it doesn't play blu rays from the menu unless its a older disk that uses the old type menus.I can't get the thumb nails to work maybe you have to format the hard drive with the miccia for this to work that's what i would do if I were you.My 3t hard drive came pre formatted so I used it that way and maybe should have formatted it with the Micca.

Also have trouble with the few disks that have many tiny files in them like Wreck it Ralph,Merida and a few others.

It takes a lot to stream a blu ray that's 3d with hd sound as its 3 streams or more of information the blu ray the ssif file and up to 7.1 sound that's why you need hi speed cables for 3d.let us know how that works for you streaming,if you get thumbnails and what version of software it came with. Their are some updates on the internet sight so your unit may have newer software so let me know version number.

It does play well and just about anything I have a 3t hard drive plugged in by USB.

[dgrams]

Well.. that's not what I wanted to hear.

I plan on this thing streaming from a network share on my network.
I curretnly stream BluRay and HD audio thru my Western Dig Media player, and I compress my discs 3D or not, down to 25GB, so I think things should work.

I usually do a 'movie only' rip anyway - not having menus.. so maybe that will be a plus on my side as well.

Thumbnais? Are you talking about the movie poster/slip sleeve covers that show in the menus? That also is not a big deal if its not working.
If the movie streams and plays good.. then that is all I am after. The rest will be a 'bonus' if it works.

[glenns]

Their are no perfect media players that I know of I just wanted to tell you the downfalls so you can decide if you wanted something else.

As I stated the movie thumbnails that should be listed next to the movie aren't their for me.I did explain it may be because i didn't format the drive with the Micca and that may be the reason you may find it works fine I couldn't find a way to make it work for me.

If it works for you maybe you can tell me how you were able to do it.Also yours may have newer firmware and I am asking for the firmware number so I can check what they have on line and see if your firmware is the same or newer this can change everything.Most don't play blu rays from the menu.

Their are good things about it also it will play from folders or iso most media players will only play iso's.It plays 3d well except for a few trouble disks that have many tiny files in them.

With them their will be small audio drop outs when they play when one file changes and another starts.Most play outstanding with 7.1 hd sound and any format you throw at it.

Streaming I don't do as I know it's a lot to ask to do that with full 3d and hd audio.Try it let us know if it don't work for you return it.Their are many newer ones on the market now.As I say the firmware could be different so it can change everything.

[mediachimp]

Micca suggests that you use a wired LAN connection for streaming. Wireless can be loaded with problems.

[90312]

Streaming video should be all wired all the time.

[GregiBoy]

And if you can't wire it, Ethernet over Power devices work pretty well.

[dgrams]

The 15min review

I have to go run errands, but have the Micca plugged in and I ran a few tests out of the box.

1. Hooked up to my network (1Gb network, connected into a Seagate Central Network Storage unit)

2. Navigated to movies.. tried DVD, seemed flawless

3. Tried an uncompressed BluRay at about 42GB in size. It streamed flawlessly, and FF and REV functions held up fine zipping through the movie.

4. Tried a 25GB Compressed .iso of a 3D movie. WTF? Jerky frame rate? Definately not the quality of my blu ray disc player.

5. Researched firmware version quick. its at 1.0.6.3 which seems most current. Found this link: http://content.miccastore.com/node/227

QUOTE:
Known Issues:
- There still is no fix for 23.976fps playback for 3D content, which remains being played back at 24fps. We continue to work on this.


SERIOUSLY?!? WHAT???
All the reveiwers on Amazon were saying 3D works good. Uh.. this is not good at all.

Who else has this thing? Is no one using it for 3D?

Anyways.. that is my first initial reaction, out of the box.
Gotta go run errands for the afternoon. This is going to bug me all day. lol
Will play more with it thru the weekend.

[dgrams]

Okay.. so another 15min of playtime went in.

This time I tried one of the 3D SBS .iso files that I had on one of my old usb drives yet...
To my surprise.. they played very nicely on the projector/wall.
And they don't have the bad framerate as the normal 3D movies do.

On my old Western Dig Live TV media player, SBS looked horrible on the projector becasue of one of the pictures being of lesser resoulution. (why is it like that anyways...?)

So I went from 100% of thinking I would return this thing to... being confused as to what to do.

I really really dont like SBS format, but I also hate buying/testing/returning/buying/testing/returning as well.

I really want to get my discs into digital files - but I like using .iso so I can immediately burn a disc if I need to.
Once they are SBS, you are kinda screwed on what you can do with the files. (Nothing, really)

Sigh.

[glenns]

Well I have almost every 3d movie made.I turned most into side by sides for the most part they play flawlessly so does 3d 25 gig and 3d 50 gig iso's and main movie full 3d.If you have one that st-udders it may be one of the few disks that are made up of tiny files as everything else plays fine.

The only exception is the few disks like Wreck it Ralph,Brave,Monsters University that have like 100 tiny files making up the disk.These are made overseas and their aren't that many maybe 5 or 6 out of more than 240 3d disks.Few media players will play these without problems.The frame rate doesn't make a difference it's very close to what it should be and I can't see any difference playing any 3d movie at any size.

If your having jerky video with streaming and its not a movie with many tiny files it's because streaming 3d is taking a lot of bandwidth I use hi speed hdmi wires and have no problems at all except for the many tiny file movies.Their's a new media player their talking about from Germany in the German international Fab sight from hi media that has a 4 core processor.Their is a English internet sight with that media player.

I know you want to stream so good luck with any media player streaming 3d movies.1.04.22 is the latest on line firmware so I am not running your firmware you have a different version but the firmware can be changed backward or forwards but your version is not on line at their internet sight so if you were to download older firmware you couldn't go back.

[dgrams]

Had some major breakthroughs tonight. Life is good.
All is well, but I'm too tired to get into it right now... Will update tomorrow.

[dgrams]

Okay, here is the review after about 90min of playtime...

Setup: Out of the box, it was pretty easy to get it connected to my 1Gb wired network and Epson 5020U 3D projector.
One issue that I had posted about in previous posts was the 3D playback being 'choppy' and unwatchable. This was due to a setting that needed to be changed from 720p to 1080 in the video setup. Once 1080 was chosen, my 3D .iso files and 3D .mkv files (True 3D, not SBS) streamed perfectly.
Found my network storage (Seagate 3TB Central) very easily.

Apps: Apps suck on this device. No major apps. No Netflix, no Vudu, not much of anything. On the latest firmware on the device that just arrived, so I probably won't expect much else to show up. It has youtube, but when I tried to do a search and play videos... every video I tried (about 10 of them) came up with an error from the media box that it couldn't play 'em.
It has a facebook app.. but I didnt buy the device to use facebook on it, so I'm not even going to try it. Just bought it for streaming vids off the network.
As far as apps, all the other devices have what I need, so its no loss.

Streaming Movies: I stream .iso and .mkv and the occasional home video in .mp4 As far as streaming in anything else.. I dont know. Dont use anything else.
Once I found the 1080p setting, everything played super great. Streams everything I can throw at it off the network flawlessly. Even streamed a straight 44GB .iso rip with no problems.
Chapter buttons work great, FF and REV work really well. And what is cool is that if it is a 'movie only' rip and you didnt bring the dvd/bluray menus over... the media player has its own pop-up for going to a particular chapter or time in the movie. My old Western Dig TV Live sucked when it came to all this.
I did try 3D SBS .iso images when I was having the video stuttering issue in 3D (before I found the 1080p settings) and the SBS videos actually played very nice. When I play SBS thru my WesternDigital media player, the quality was pretty poor on the 92" screen. On here, I watched about 20min total of various movies and had a hard time telling that it was SBS/Lesser quality than normal 3D.

Music/Pictures, etc... Not planning to use the device to view any of this.. so I haven't tried it, or plan to any time soon

Controller: Kind of basic controller, and it doesnt seem like anything super special, but it is 20x better than the controller that I have for my Western Digital Media Player. For this reason alone.. it is awesome. lol

Thumnails: I spent 20min on trying to get thumnails working with the movies... The first .jpg file that I put in the movies directory seemed to be a generic 'default' image to use for all files unless I had a specific .jpg named to match the .iso, then it would use that one.
I really don't like browsing in thumbnail mode just becasue of the fact that I would rather have larger lists of movies on the screen that I can page through than to only have 7 or 8 thumbnails showing at a time. Then if you miss a thumbnail, and the default image is used... you actually have to 'mouse over' the thumbnail to see what the movie filename is.. That takes way too much effort. I will be sticking to the Text Only descriptions to find my movies quicker.

All in all, for my needs - the Micca EP600 G2 Media player is what I wanted for in my theatre. Would be nice to have netflix on as an app as to have everything central on one device, but oh well.

For what i need it for, I give it a 5 out of 5. Very pleased with it at this point.

[GregiBoy]

Glad you have got it all worked out. Sounds good.

On the thumbnails, have you tried adding a jpg file into the directory that the movie is in with exactly the same name as the movie file?

eg. Avatar.mkv & Avatar.jpg

[dgrams]

Glad you have got it all worked out. Sounds good.

On the thumbnails, have you tried adding a jpg file into the directory that the movie is in with exactly the same name as the movie file?

eg. Avatar.mkv & Avatar.jpg

Yup. That works, but...
Whatever the first .jpg is that you put in the directory seems to be the 'default' graphic for all movies until they get a matching filename with the .jpg extenstion.

For example.. say you have 10 movies in the folder.
None of them have thumbnails yet.
The first one you put in is avatar.jpg to match your avatar.mkv
Now ALL movies have your avatar.jpg being used.
Next, you come along and put a backtothefuture.jpg in the folder to match your backtothefuture.mkv
That graphic now changes for backtothefuture.mkv, but the other remaining 8 movies are all represented with the avatar.jpg

Maybe there is some 'format' to use to get around this, but haven't found any documentation by googling after about 5 or 10min of looking.

Like I said earlier.. its easier just to have the text lists of the movies on screen. Makes it easier and faster to scroll through. (and less work to maintain a new .jpg every time you add a movie)

[glenns]

Wait till you get 200-250 movies to scroll through should be a search feature.Scrolling is to fast you go by what your looking for a lot once you get a big list of movies.