2011 Media Streamer Roundup : Netgear NTV550, A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the Boxee Box

In addition to the major media aspects covered in the preceding section, there are a number of other factors which need to be touched upon (but don't deserve a full section by themselves).

DLNA

Except for the Boxee Box, the other two media streamers have the ability to act as DMRs (Digital Media Renderers), compliant with the DLNA specifications. This makes it quite easy to push media from a PC onto these devices and through them to the display (with the Play To functionality). However, the DLNA capabilities are quite limited. For example, NTV550 users have ended up being disappointed with the DLNA features of the unit. PlayOn!HD2 also has DLNA DMR support which can be enabled or disabled by the user. It can also act as a uPnP server. I am personally not a big fan of DLNA support. It is good when it works, but, more often than not, I have seen consumers end up getting disappointed.
    
Networking

In this subsection, we present the results of our experiment to determine the efficiency of the networking stack in the media streamer. We restrict ourselves to wired Ethernet connections (even if the unit possesses wireless support). Various test clips with bitrates ranging from 20 to 110 Mbps were streamed from the Western Digital MyBook Live.
    
The NTV550 has a built-in network test option for the configured shares. Initially, I obtained very poor transfer rates (10 - 20 Mbps) with the NAS. A quick search on the forums revealed that the NTV550 networking stack puts the entire onus of 802.3x flow control on the router / switch. Fortunately, my network infrastructure supported it. After performing the requisite configuration, I managed to consistently hit 75 - 85 Mbps in the network test for the MyBook Live shares.

The table below presents the maximum bitrate of the clip which played back without stuttering in our network transfer rate test suite.

The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 can act as a NAS device if an internal hard disk is installed. Despite have a GbE port, I could hit up a max transfer rate of only 13 MB/s (and that too, over FTP and not SMB). The USB 3.0 performance in DAS mode is limited only by the transfer rates of the internal hard disk. I was able to regularly hit 70 - 80 MB/s over USB 3.0 to an ASRock CoreHT PC.

Cinavia

Out of the three media streamers being considered today, only the Netgear NTV550 has the ability to play protected Blu-rays, and that too, only with a special 'bdallow' hack. Cinavia detection doesn't exist in the currently available firmware for the NTV550. Netgear initially planned to obtain BDA certification for the unit, but things didn't go according to plan. Without the BDA certification, I am fairly certain that there should be no firmware updates with Cinavia enabled coming around when Cinavia becomes compulsory next February. In any case, all firmware updates for the NTV550 are completely optional.

Since the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the D-Link Boxee Box are not AACS licensed, the case of Cinavia doesn't arise.

Blu-ray Region Locks

Region locks are applicable only to BDA certified players, and at first glance, it appears that none of the players should have this problem. Certainly, for the PlayOn!HD2 and the Boxee Box, there are no problems since they can't play back commercial Blu-rays. However, my experience with the NTV550 was a bit strange.

The NTV550 acts like a licensed Blu-ray player even without the bdallow hack in this respect. There are only 5 allowed region changes. Even when a folder backup of a Blu-ray from a different region (with AACS / BD+ protection removed, but region lock not removed) is played, the region lock message is triggered. Of course, this is not a show stopper issue.

Image and Video Quality / Characteristics

All the three media streamers being covered today have support for dynamic refresh rate changes depending on the media being played back. The NTV550 terms this as 'Auto Refresh Rate'. With this enabled, the end user is able to watch the media file without any frame drops / repeats (subject to display support). 23.976 fps videos play back at 23.976 Hz, 24 fps videos at 24 Hz, 25 fps videos at 50 Hz, 29.97 fps videos at 59.94 Hz and so on.

The Boxee Box and the PlayOn!HD2 have support for 23.976/24 Hz only. If you are in NTSC land, and you wish to watch a PAL video, you might be out of luck with respect to matched refresh rates even if your display supports both NTSC and PAL.

It doesn't make sense to run the full HQV benchmark set on any of these media streamers since the knobs to test many of the processing algorithms are simply absent in the options. That said, we did run the cadence detection and denoising clips through the units. The Netgear NTV550 drew a blank in both departments. The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 had options to enable or disable denoising, and it achieved the desired results (though the amount of denoising couldn't be controlled). It failed all cadence detection tests (except for 3:2, which is the most important pattern, anyway). The Boxee Box has the best video post processing capability amongst all the considered streamers. It was able to pass all the cadence detection tests (including esoteric cadence patterns such as 6:4 and 2:3:3:2).

None of the media streamers being covered today offer a native resolution mode. This means that the output is always upscaled by the player itself. The colour space conversion also takes place within the player. All the players allow upto 36bit setting for HDMI deep colour. Output can also be set to RGB Limited / RGB Full / YCbCr 4:2:2 / YCbCr 4:4:4.

The BT.601 vs BT.709 colour space issue is another aspect which needs to be handled properly by the streamers. By default, SD videos are supposed to use BT.601 and HD videos are supposed to use BT.709. Sometimes, the videos are not flagged properly. So, an unflagged HD video should be assumed by the streamer to be using BT.709. If not, the user is bound to see some colour differences as shown in this post. Of the three streamers tested today, the Netgear NTV550 fails this test. The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the Boxee Box handle the case of missing flags without any problem.

General Stability

Everything we have seen about the NTV550 so far makes it appear to be the ultimate media player. However, it is in general stability that it flunks the test. Even in stable firmware versions, I often encountered UI freezes (thankfully, the frequency has gone down in the recent version) and lock ups on playing some Blu-ray ISOs and video files. My biggest complaint about the NTV550 is the HDMI output behaviour when the device enters sleep mode (or after the display is turned off without the NTV550 being put in standby). Most of the time, the HDMI output just dies out. Some times, it is possible to regain the output by cycling through the TV Modes, but, at other times, it needs a hard power reset. Such problems don't contribute to a good home theater experience.

The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 is similar to the NTV550 with respect to general stability. In addition to the unit locking up (particularly when something is being played from the internal hard disk and it is also accessed over the network simultaneously), the menus and the remote are a pain to use. My biggest complaint about the unit is that the internal hard disk doesn't get recognized some of the time (usually after getting out from USB slave mode) and a power cycle is necessary for the hard disk to get recognized and the NAS services to start.

The Boxee Box came out to be the most stable of the three media streamers under the scanner today. I didn't experience any lock-ups (Except in cases where the network connection was not stable enough -- but the unit did eventually recover). My biggest complaint about the Boxee Box is the audio dropouts issue over HDMI. Fortunately, the problem seems to have been root caused and a patched firmware expected to appear in another 4 or 5 months.

Power Consumption

The three media streamers being considered today have varying power consumption profiles due to different reasons. The NTV550 came out to be the winner in this department. Being fanless and avoiding the internal hard disk slot has enabled the device to operate between 6.5 and 8.1 W.
    
The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2, on the other hand, is let down by the power consumption of the internal hard disk and the fan. Without the internal hard disk, the unit only consumes 6.8 W when streaming videos over the wired network. However, adding the internal hard disk increased this to 13.4 W.

The Boxee Box is let down by the inefficiency of the Intel CE4100. Conuming more than 10W of power in sleep mode is entirely unacceptable. Just for the record, the device consumed between 11.1 W and 13.8 W when streaming videos over the wired network.

Future Support

None of the three streamers considered in this review can be termed perfect as of today. In this situation, can the user expect firmware upgrades in the future? Will they help the unit become better / resolve bugs? In this respect, the Boxee Box is at the forefront. Not only are they quite transparent about the bugs being addressed, the firmware updates have also been more frequent compared to the other two units. A timeframe has already been provided for the HD audio dropouts (which is one of the most glaring issues plaguing the unit), and one is assured of new firmware releases at least till end of Q1 2012. A new Live TV add-on is also scheduled to appear in January 2012. Hopefully, DVR support should follow.
    
The NTV550 comes in next, with beta firmwares turning up once every two months or so. The beta firmwares / test builds are not publicly announced, and I have also found them to resolve only a few bugs at a time (while breaking existing stuff). I think there will probably be a couple of more firmware releases, and I am afraid they will not be able to fix all the issues with the unit.

The A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 seems to have the least issues in terms of actual playback ability (even though the unit may not be the easiest to use). The firmware updates have also been quite spread apart. There are still pending bugs to fix, but, with the A.C.Ryan Veolo slated to start shipping next month, I don't think users are going to see a lot of firmware updates for this unit.