Xtreamer, a maker of multimedia players similar to Popcornhour and Dune, have just announced the Xtreamer Prodigy. The Prodigy will be based on the new Realtek RTL 1185 chip. It will include USB 3.0, gigE, support for a 3.5″ internal drive, and the list of usual codecs (mkv, H264, DTS(MA), TrueHD, etc…). More of interest is the full list of App support, including Facebook, YouTube, Pandora, MLB.tv, and Netflix (yes you heard correct). I believe this is the direction Media Players will need to go towards in order to stay competitive, offering up a wide selection of online applications natively integrated into the player (as opposed to accessing via some sort of hack such as PlayOn). Check out the link for further details and stay tuned for my Xtreamer Pro review in the coming days (for further clarification, the Xtreamer Pro is not the Prodigy, it just happened to be coincidence that I was working on the Pro review when the Prodigy was announced. I will make every effort to get a Prodigy once available to review as well since there seems to be a great deal of interest).
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a) Will this thing connect to a TV tuner like the HD-Homerun and act as a DVR?
b) Will it be capable of playing movies in “Video-TS” folders?
a) As Brajesh mentioned I wouldn’t expect so
b) yes, definitely
My review of the Xtreamer Pro should be live by Friday, so that will give you a good indication of what the Xtreamer is capable of (basically it played everything thrown at it, bitstreamed HD Audio, etc…)
That’s too bad, since it means that it doesn’t replace my do-everything dedicated Windows 7 box, running Windows Media Center and Sage-TV. Since the HD-Homerun just provides a computer data stream and not an ATSC signal (same as a USB tuner), it shouldn’t be too difficult to provide DVR functionality and it would add a lot to the product.
I do have some hope that we may see Media Center extenders (using Windows Embedded) hit the market that give full codec support plus all the benefits of WMC (maybe it is just a pipe dream though). It is a shame that SageTV is not quite there with online support as their extenders could then possibly be the all in one solution everyone is looking for (and I don’t consider incorporating Playon the best option)
(a) Would be nice, but I wouldn’t expect it. They’re supporting DVB (Europe’s transmission format), so technically, I’d expect ATSC devices could be supported, but don’t think so. The dev team isn’t bad in ATSC territory (U.S., Japan or Korea), so that’s why I’m doubtful.
(b) Guessing yes.
Oops, typo there. Meant to say Xtreamer isn’t based in ATSC territory, so they likely won’t support HDHomeRun or other ATSC tuners. TViX (Korean) supports ATSC, and Boxee Box (U.S./Israel) can stream from HDHomeRun. But, these two are the only streamers I know of being capable of live TV for us in the U.S.
Very interesting, that ticks a lot of boxes on my list. My plans for a Boxee are now officially on hold. Can’t wait for the review!
I must admit that the design is very interesting (and nice to see they finally add support for Component). I am also a fan of having the ability to add an internal hard drive, and the list of Apps is impressive (especially considering it appears they are officially supported). You will find that members of the community have rather strong feelings about Xtreamer (both positive and negative) which I will try to address briefly in my Pro review. I will also see if I can get my hands on a Prestige to review as well once it is available.
Besides “just play everything I have” I’m also interested in the Netflix performance, I’ve heard rumblings in various boxee forums that early trials of Netflix on the box aren’t playing well, and if I’m buying yet-another entertainment gizmo the wife will want it to play Netflix easily.
I only tested one show on Netflix with the Boxee Box and had no issues. However, it appears many people are reporting audio sync issues. This is something I won’t be able to tolerate, but it appears it may be affecting other devices running Netflix as well (so possibly an issue on Netflix’s side)?
Hi a couple of questions if you don’t mind.
1. What is meant by cooling in the specs? Is it passive cooling.
2. Will the 24p framerate stutter be finally fixed with this?
3. Will auto frame rate be an option that has been on the NMT’s for a while?
4. What is expected ftp speed to the unit seeing as it has gig lan?
Cheers
1. Looking at the specs is mentions there is a fan included (i.e if you scroll down to the accessories they are selling the IceCube which is meant to replace the fan if you want)
2. & 3. I had set auto framerate on the Xtreamer Pro (I am almost positive of this) and did not see any 24p stuttering. Unfortunately I don’t have the Pro anymore to give you definite confirmation
4. I truly hope with gigE transfer speeds will be much better. On the Pro (which is 10/100) I was getting a dismal 3-5 MB/s transferring files over the network to the Pro (I ended up just connecting directly t o my PC via USB and speeds jumped up to 30 MB/s +
You say you will be doing a review on the Pro, so … not the Prodigy? (Just for Clarification).
I’d certainly be interested in the Prodigy, if you do ever get a chance to review one. As I’m sure everyone is going to ask anyway, can you contrast it to the current Dune/Popcorn hour equivalents to give some comparison?
Thanks!
Yes, the Xtreamer Pro (not Prodigy). It just happened to be coincidence that I was working on the Pro review when the Prodigy was announced. I will make this more clear in the writeup, thanks for pointing out. I will of course try to get a Prodigy as well to review
Hi,
I have a one question. Can Xtreamer work like DLNA (UPnP) server. That mean can it stream audio, video across Ethernet to another device?
If it is like the current Xtreamer players then yes.
I know its late – Can you tell me.
Does the Prodigy come with all the same features as the Pro? Specifically I am interested in the following, torrent client, FTP server, Web server and NAS?
I can’t find any information about the a/m features on the website – any help would be appreciated.
many thanks, Jon.
Since the Prodigy is not released and Xtreamer has a tendency of providing questionable marketing, honestly I don’t want to say definitively what feature set it will come with. I would “expect” similar/same features as the pro, with the exception the Pro can hold 2 hdds
Thanks for your help – I guess we will have to wait and see!
Jon.