NETGEAR NeoTV 550 NTV550 Ultimate HD Media Player

Manufacturer : Netgear Inc Model : NTV550 ASIN : B004EEOA9U Price : 169.99$ See Special Offers Product Description Netgear NeoTV NTV550 Network Audio/Video Player NTV550-100NAS Network Media Players Most Helpful Customer Reviews 50 of 52 people found the following review helpful: Solid Performing Media Player for Local Content    This review is from: NETGEAR NeoTV 550 NTV550 Ultimate HD Media Player (Electronics) This is a review of the Netgear NeoTV 550 with updated firmware version 3.0.268 EU. I received the device from a European retailer on Nov 30, 2010. The Netgear NeoTV 550 is a complex product to review. Your success with the device is highly dependent upon situational factors such as usage, media source, network speeds, and user technical ability. While the device is easy to use, it requires a home theater geek to properly and optimally set up the device. When first received, I recommend going through the device's Settings menu, drilling down through all the submenus, to properly understand and configure the device. Take the time to go through the several dozen settings and try to make them match your home theater equipment. There are settings for DVD region, video resolution, frame rate, aspect ratio, language, audio output (pass-through (bitstreaming)) and so on. The remote is IR based, non-universal, non-learning, and not backlit. Ports include one HDMI port, two USB ports (front and rear), one SD port and one eSATA port. Some Blu-Ray menus require 1GB of storage. This can be a USB stick, SD cartridge or other attached storage device. The unit has no fan and is dead silent. My media consumption is largely local content so this review reflects that bias. Alternatively, other people will use this device for consuming online media. I selected this device because of its rare ability to play Blu-Ray content with full menu support, bitstream audio and WAF. A plus will be when and if it plays Netflix, Vudu or other streaming services. I have hundreds of movies stored on a Windows Home Server (WHS). DVDs are ripped to folders and Blu-Rays are ripped as an ISO file. I tested several dozen DVD and Blu-Ray titles. Blu-Rays and DVDs play fine, audio bitstreams and menus work. The device has a good user interface. Video quality seems quite good too. Movie files are shown as cover art. My girlfriend has given the NeoTV's usability an eager thumbs up whereas the HTPC was impossible for her to use and difficult for me to maintain. I do not use any reencoded media/containers so I can't speak about MKV, FLAC, etc. Initially, I had problems with stuttering on Blu-Ray. This is a common problem on networks that are not optimal. In my case, I had to turn of WHS's Drive Extender on my movie server. There's a host of technical problems that can prevent media, especially Blu-Rays, from playing properly. The device has a network speed test which can help identify some issues. However, my issue was the server's inability to sustain adequate disk read rates. The device offers no diagnostic for this situation. This must all be a nightmare for Netgear tech support -- customers too. Tip: The power button will stop a playing movie and bring up the Home menu. Update 3-Dec-2010: Updated firmware to 3.0.268 EU. It fixes a few annoyances, adds a couple nice touches, leaves a couple bugs not fixed. No sign of Netflix. Perhaps an annoucement next month at CES? Update 4-Dec-2010: Raised the rating to five stars because of resolution to my Blu-Ray networking problems (my bad) and bug fixes in 3.0.268 EU firmware. All's good now. Update 4-Feb-2011: NeoTV 550 is stuttering on some Blu-Ray ISOs when played across a network. Importantly, it does not stutter when playing directly from a file or folder across a network. I believe the NeoTV has some optimization issues on Blu-Ray network playback. I'm hoping the NeoTV developers fix the stutter issue with a firmware update. Otherwise I'll be spending hours converting ISOs to folders. Because of the stuttering issue, I've lowered the rating from five stars to three. Update 7-Feb-2011: I've confirmed that Blu-Ray stuttering is caused by NeoTV's SMB (network protocol) implementation. There's no stuttering when using NFS. This is a major problem as SMB is used by Windows networks. If you are planning on playing Blu-Rays ISOs across a network, hold off buying until the issue is resolved. Update 9-Feb-2011: Community has confirmed Blu-Ray stuttering over SMB. Waiting for firmware update. Workarounds are to use file/folders or NFS. Hold off buying until the issue is resolved. Update 3-Mar-2011: Beta firmware has resolved Blu-Ray stuttering issues. I hope to raise the rating to 5 stars when I can test and confirm on a release version. Update 6-Apr-2011: I can confirm that firmware 325 has been pushed through. It does indeed fix the major issue of Blu-Ray ISO stuttering. With this release, finally, the device fulfills the initial major claims. Update 22-Aug-2011: Frustrated by the inabilities of any single media player, I've reached a new conclusion. I recommend buying two players to cover all bases. I recommend the Netgear NeoTV 550 for local content and the Roku 2 XS for online content. 8 of 9 people found the following review helpful: Best network-attached media box for your HDTV This review is from: NETGEAR NeoTV 550 NTV550 Ultimate HD Media Player (Electronics) Last year, I purchased a Samsung LED HDTV and was pleasantly surprised that it could play both streaming video (like Netflix streaming) as well as AVI and MKV files from my PC and my NAS. Although the Samsung HDTV plays almost everything that I throw at it, there was a subset of files it just didn't like, particularly certain hi-def or high bitrate files. DVD ISOs and Blu-ray ISOs didn't work either. So the search was on for the "One box to Rule them All!" I did a ton of reading and even tried a few boxes like the WD HDTV Live Plus, but all of them had various failings. (Too expensive, difficult menus, stuttering and audio drop outs, no ISO support, etc. etc.) The Netgear NTV 550 is the first box I have found so far that has not disappointed me. Here are the things that made the top of my list: - Plays *everything* that I've thrown at it: AVI, MKV, MP4, DVD ISO, Blu-ray ISO (with Full Menu support, too! Awesome!) - Visually pleasing menus that are snappy, responsive, and easy to navigate - HDMI, Component, two USB 2.0 ports, SDHC card slot, eSATA, Optical audio out. - DLNA, SMB, and NFS network support - No stuttering or audio drop-outs on high bit-rate video (fixed via firmware released on Feb 28th, 2011) - Jump forward / backward in video file to specific time (hh:mm:ss) - Good remote control with nice smooth buttons and faux-rubberized case. (It feels really nice in the hand.) - Stupidly easy to setup. Things to be aware of: - On the more spendy side of media boxes, but worth it, IMHO. - The firmware is still being actively developed by Netgear. This is both good and bad. It's bad because right now, this player is missing features and still has bugs. Up until a week ago, it had an issue with high bitrate files played over SMB. A recent (beta) firmware release has fixed this, though. This player is also supposed to have Netflix streaming support, but it doesn't exist yet. That said, Netgear seems committed to improving this player over time. - Cinavia (DRM) might be added later. Some other Amazon reviewer has written about this. Apparently the movie studios are pushing hard to get media box makers (like Netgear) to include this DRM into their firmware. As of this moment, Netgear hasn't included this DRM yet, but there is talk about it. Whether they follow through on it remains to be seen. I give it a 5 because it currently meets all my needs perfectly. 6 of 7 people found the following review helpful: Pretty Good Initial Effort. Video Playback is excellent. GUI, Pics, and Music need a little work    This review is from: NETGEAR NeoTV 550 NTV550 Ultimate HD Media Player (Electronics) Overall not a bad peice of kit compared to the boxee box and a lot of streamers at release. its not perfect and still needs bug fixes but it plays BD Iso and plays m2ts files Both trueHD and DTS-MA bitstreaming and decoding (all work well) DVD ISO's with menus work well Decent Movie GUI (used Media Center Master to create the cover art, fan art etc).... Works with my Harmony universal remote Support playlists and plays back all the different audio files correctly. No resampling or dithering like with boxee box. The 268 shipping firmware has issues with: Photo Browsing Speed Crashing creating photo thumbnails 275 beta firmware is junk. dont bother very buggy. No Netflix yet but was demoed at CES. But unlike boxee they didn't advertise it and then not deliver. I'll update the review in a month or two and see if the firmware improves... Cinavia looks to be a problem with a lot of streamers but since none of this exists yet its just speculation at this point. Only time will tell how serious this issue for the media streamer market place... got lucky and got mine at frys before xmas. amazon should have stock end of January according to Netgear. Most Recent Customer Reviews Avoid this and similar Netgear Products I have tried several of Netgear's media solutions, including their EVA9150 and this item. All I can say is, they may make decent switches, but you should avoid this like the... by Jason D. Sanchez Still Needs a little work I installed this on Firday. Today is Sunday. I have had to physically unplug the device to reset it 6 times in those three short days. The firmware still needs a little work. by Martin L. Del Prince Excellent remote media streamer for the price... I purchased an NTV550 for my dad this past Fathers Day. The NTV550 replaced an aging laptop that I had hooked up to the flat panel Sony HDTV in our living room (via HDMI), and... by NightSon Awesome player! I first purchased the WD Live Hub about 6 months ago. I was disappointed that it could not handle blue ray iso's and playing over a network was terrible. by Ali Heidarpour solid and capable media player NTV550 is a solid performing unit with some great capabilities and few issues. Easily handles BluRay ISO streaming over my local gigabit network; DVDs are zero... by A. Funge A fine player, but not quite what I expected... This media adapter disappointed me. That is not to say that it is a bad media player. That statement is, after all, subjective, based on my expectations. by Michael Great Player, Reasonable Price! I've had the NeoTV-550 now for a few months and I must say this player has played EVERY format I've thrown at it. The 1st thing I threw at it was Blu-Ray .ISO files. by D. R. Ford To say this product is beta is too kind! Some people on various forum said NTV550 in its current form is more like a beta. I think they are too kind! This product as is with current f/w version 3.0. by PawPawDog Not Perfect But An Excellent Start The specifications are well know and in-depth discussions are available on the AVS Forums (highly recommended) so I won't go into all that. by M. Maney BEST media player available if you set it up correctly. About 3 months ago I decided to re-do my basement into a media room. New TV (Samsung 58 inch 8000 series plasma) new reciever (Yamaha Aventage 2000 reciever), new speakers... by Jef Mehr

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