Popbox V8 now available in North America

cncb · 2011-11-26, 09:08 PM

Looks like the Popbox V8 is now available in North America: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/11/...-s-canada/

So, does it support the existing NPVR "plugin" used with the A-100s or will it take something new? I was hoping it would have the seemingly now "standard" Netflix and Pandora services but I still might try it if it will work with NPVR.

mvallevand · (This post was last modified: 2011-11-27, 04:52 AM by mvallevand.)

No, mvpmcx2 which is a remote client application to NPVR, not a plugin, only support the first gen. NMT devices. Syabas used a different SDK and compiler for the 200/300 series and the Popboxes. The only way to write a client for all those platforms uses flash, and I was working on a flash client, but ran into a snag with LiveTV taking 30 seconds to buffer, and posted for a question Syabas's help but they don't respond to any developer questions in the closed forum.

Right now I'm looking at Plex as a possible solution (it would still have the 30s delay on the V8) since it is available on more platforms, some of which support Netflix, but it will be quite a different user experience. I still do check in on the Popbox developer forum from time to time. though, since the V8 would potentially be a very good client for NPVR, although I wish it had the extra 256MB of DRAM and telnet that the 200/300 series has.

Martin

cncb · 2011-11-27, 04:49 AM

mvallevand Wrote:No, mvpmcx2 which is a remote client application to NPVR, not a plugin, only support the first gen. NMT devices. Syabas used a different SDK and compiler for the 200/300 series and the Popboxes. The only way to write a client for all those platforms uses flash, and I was working on a flash client, but ran into a snag with LiveTV taking 30 seconds to buffer, and posted for a question Syabas's help but they don't respond to any developer questions in the closed forum.

That's too bad but thanks for the explanation. The v8 seemed to have potential and looks very similar (at least externally) to the SageTV HD300 box which I really liked.

mvallevand · 2011-11-27, 05:02 AM

The Popbox is based on a newer generation Sigma chip so it will be a better media player then the HD300 especially for BD audio and video. Of course it will continue to be an average mpeg player, which NextPVR and SageTV users really need. The case is really the only thing familiar and that model been used by Chinese manufactures for the low end players on many different chipsets for a few years now. The HD300 did add a nice touch with the remote eye.

Martin

UncleJohnsBand · 2011-11-27, 05:54 AM

Started to get all excited again..... Sad

cncb · 2011-11-27, 01:34 PM

mvallevand Wrote:but ran into a snag with LiveTV taking 30 seconds to buffer

By the way, are you trying to use the direct http streaming URL for this (e.g. "http://<server>:8866/live?channel=2")? If so, for what it's worth, I recently tried one of the new WD Live boxes and had the same result when trying to watch this stream (~30 s delay for the video to start playing) so maybe this is something that needs to be tweaked on the NPVR end?

mvallevand · 2011-11-27, 02:59 PM

cncb Wrote:By the way, are you trying to use the direct http streaming URL for this (e.g. "http://<server>:8866/live?channel=2")? If so, for what it's worth, I recently tried one of the new WD Live boxes and had the same result when trying to watch this stream (~30 s delay for the video to start playing) so maybe this is something that needs to be tweaked on the NPVR end?

For the test app, that is the URL I was using and it is quite possible that sub can tweak some things a bit, the players don't always make logical http calls. However another dev wrote a flash app trying to read from a DVB device on the A200 itself and had the 30s issue http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showth...?tid=52377. At the time I researched it a bit and found a post from a WDTV users who talked about 30s to read a live stream from and HDHR too so I am guessing Syabas and WD are using the same SDK libraries reference code and they have little desire to improve this. As mentioned, I have not had one reply from Syabas on the developers forum and I don't want to bother sub when the issue doesn't look like it is his.

The thing, is the player is capable of fast LiveTV. A year earlier I had my port on the A200 discussed here http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showth...?tid=38350 and I used the native player in the sample on post 1,t then in post 6 is used my own and starting two minutes in to this video you can see live TV is quite fast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzaMKgnZ4tg watch a bit for some channel changes. Unfortunately soon after that they introduced new firmware that broke this and I was a bit frustrated so I just abandoned it. Fast forward to this year, Syabas are going flash only on the 200 series so even if my code had worked out, it would be broken in the next few months.

The fact is most people buy these boxes for mkv and avi playback. I probably could get my code working on the Hauppauge MVP-HD but unfortunately it doesn't have the full mkv and avi that the other players have, it has no native Internet apps like YouTube, Netflix, and it uses an old chip (same as HD300). There is a lot of activitiy on ebay these days for the old NMT boxes as people want newer players and the A100s (no DTS downmix) are going around $50-60 and the A110 around $75-90 they would be better mkv/avi players then then MVP-HD so it is hard to get excited about this box.

Martin

***sub*** · 2011-11-27, 04:15 PM

I'm pretty sure that 30 second delay wont be caused by the way NextPVR is streaming channels. The exact timing will vary from device to device, but it's usually a second for the connection from the client, a few seconds to start the device, and another second or so to start capturing the requested channel. Maybe 8 seconds or so all up. If you try it in VLC you'll see how long it's taking on your setup.

What's likely to be happening is their player components aren't really designed for live streams, so they're wanting to buffer x amount of seconds of video before starting playback, or x amount of bytes before starting playback. For example, for pre-existing content (netflix, youtube etc) they might be able to buffer 30 seconds of video in the first few seconds, since it's already sitting on a server somewhere ready to download. You cant do that with live streams, since it takes 30 seconds to produce 30 seconds of content.

cncb · 2011-11-27, 04:50 PM

sub Wrote:You cant do that with live streams, since it takes 30 seconds to produce 30 seconds of content.

That makes sense but I didn't get a long delay when watching Playon via UPnP which pretty much creates the "live" stream in a similar way (doesn't have any video initially for a "buffer"). I don't know if UPnP uses a different streaming mechanism (although I thought it was 'http') but it seems like there might be a way around the delay...

***sub*** · 2011-11-27, 05:04 PM

I'm by no means an expert in what the Sigma libraries do behind the scenes. They could be treating UPnP sourced material a differently.

Alternatively it's possible the Sigma libraries dont like something about the http response headers that nextpvr produces. You could try capturing the http response header using Wireshark so we can see if they have any significant difference.