MC001-XBMC(US)

Interesting! XBMC all set up and ready for your pleasure. Love the price too.

I wonder if it's customize-able or if you're stuck with the stock themes. I also wonder what the bitrate limits are with it. XMBC on a PC can play raw Blu-ray titles from BDMV folders using plugins. I wonder if this machine can as well.
 
In addition to your questions, I want to know if it can read the media I have stored on my server machine. I don't want to store some 15+ hard drives near my home theater system. And since I have two, then it is even more important to find network stores.
 
I'm surprised nobody's interested in this device. I guess this forum's too DIY-centric.
 
If you're looking for a standalone box that'll run XBMC and pull content from your server, save yourself $130 and get the PIVOS XIOS:

http://www.pivosgroup.com/xios.html

Install the Linux firmware on it and it'll boot into XBMC in seconds and run smooth as butter. I use a HTPC in the living room, but use these in my bedrooms without issue. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned on these forums already.
 
_cashel said:
If you're looking for a standalone box that'll run XBMC and pull content from your server, save yourself $130 and get the PIVOS XIOS:

http://www.pivosgroup.com/xios.html

Install the Linux firmware on it and it'll boot into XBMC in seconds and run smooth as butter. I use a HTPC in the living room, but use these in my bedrooms without issue. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned on these forums already.
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I see it uses 10/100 ethernet. That's not enough to pull uncompressed Blu-ray files (either BDMV or MKV), isn't it?
 
dan87 said:
At the max, BD is 50mbps. So shouldn't be an issue.
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Have you actually done it? My experience say you need 10MBps - in the clear - to stream any bluray. 100Mbps is 12.5MBps and the margin is going to be too close. Even a 1000Mbps network only gets 600-800 Mbps guaranteed. It has enough to stream 3 or 4 high-bit rate BDs....100Mbps is going to lead to a frustrating experience unless you compress all your stuff.
 
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AQ_OC said:
Have you actually done it? My experience say you need 10MBps - in the clear - to stream any bluray. 100Mbps is 12.5MBps and the margin is going to be too close. Even a 1000Mbps network only gets 600-800 Mbps guaranteed. It has enough to stream 3 or 4 high-bit rate BDs....100Mbps is going to lead to a frustrating experience unless you compress all your stuff.
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Yep no problems. 50mbps for BD is peak, not sustained. Most discs average @ 20mbps or less.
 
dan87 said:
Yep no problems. 50mbps for BD is peak, not sustained. Most discs average @ 20mbps or less.
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I suppose 10/100 is ok for that device then since it's not designed to transfer data, but simply play them from a media server.

The 10/100 ethernet being bogged down argument would only hold water if the device was used as a media storage server for other playback devices and computes in addition to being a playback device.
 
All-Or-Nothing said:
Any firsthand experience with this. Does it boot directly into the XBMC main page?????
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(re: pivos xios)

I'm curious too.

Their forums have a lot of complaints about instability. Anyone using this thing? I'd love to buy one of these but it'd need to be rock-solid stability wise or at least on par with a WD TV which Pivos products typically have not been at all.
 
Azhar said:
I suppose 10/100 is ok for that device then since it's not designed to transfer data, but simply play them from a media server.

The 10/100 ethernet being bogged down argument would only hold water if the device was used as a media storage server for other playback devices and computes in addition to being a playback device.
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So when a BD hits 50Mbps what happens? Burps? There are lots of bit-hit movies that achieve high bit-rates for short periods. 100 mbps aint going to cut it... when you factor in overhead and any other use on your network at the same time the BD is playing, then you are going to hiccups. And in this day and age, why is anyone bothering with 100 mbps networking?
 
AQ_OC said:
So when a BD hits 50Mbps what happens? Burps? There are lots of bit-hit movies that achieve high bit-rates for short periods. 100 mbps aint going to cut it... when you factor in overhead and any other use on your network at the same time the BD is playing, then you are going to hiccups. And in this day and age, why is anyone bothering with 100 mbps networking?
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I'm just going by what the other guy said about not ever having issues. I'm the one who originally asked whether 10/100 was enough because I simply don't know.

If it isn't enough, then the pivo's never going to be on my shopping list.
 
AQ_OC said:
So when a BD hits 50Mbps what happens? Burps? There are lots of bit-hit movies that achieve high bit-rates for short periods. 100 mbps aint going to cut it... when you factor in overhead and any other use on your network at the same time the BD is playing, then you are going to hiccups. And in this day and age, why is anyone bothering with 100 mbps networking?
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It streams w/o hiccups. 50mbps isn't an issue.
 
I haven't tried full uncompressed BluRay rips, but I can tell you that I don't have any trouble with my 1080P MKV rips. They're compressed, but still come in at around 10-20GB if that makes any difference.

Stability-wise, if you keep up with the latest nighties, you run into the chance of instability, but by now the builds are generally pretty solid and stable. I'm not sure it's "Buy it for your parents, set it and forget it stable", but it's certainly stable enough for daily use in my bedroom without any tinkering. Keep in mind that the Linux firmware is still technically considered beta, but it's good to see a team that's actively working on it and responding to the community, unlike many of these other devices.
 
_cashel said:
I haven't tried full uncompressed BluRay rips, but I can tell you that I don't have any trouble with my 1080P MKV rips. They're compressed, but still come in at around 10-20GB if that makes any difference.

Stability-wise, if you keep up with the latest nighties, you run into the chance of instability, but by now the builds are generally pretty solid and stable. I'm not sure it's "Buy it for your parents, set it and forget it stable", but it's certainly stable enough for daily use in my bedroom without any tinkering. Keep in mind that the Linux firmware is still technically considered beta, but it's good to see a team that's actively working on it and responding to the community, unlike many of these other devices.
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If they are compressed, than the bit rate is reduced. They are not full blu-ray.

Titles like avatar, the dark knight will not stream correctly over 100 Mbps link.
 
The main drawback of this and other Atom and ARM based boxes is that they are insufficient to decode codecs that aren't supported by hardware. An Atom is insufficient to decode 10bit h264 videos (mainly used by the fansub scene), and high resolution rmvbs. It will also be insufficient to decode h265 when that becomes mainstream.

Other than that, if you just playback standard 8-bit h264 files, it should handle xbmc and even heavy skins like Aeon Nox fine.
 
Particleman said:
...Atom and ARM based boxes...

...if you just playback standard 8-bit h264 files, it should handle xbmc and even heavy skins like Aeon Nox fine.
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Is that really true though? I've watched random youtube videos of users demonstrating boxes like the PIVOS XIOS, and while they "handle" navigation in the XBMC user interface (general moving around, not necessarily playing videos), I don't know if I would say it's "fine". From what I've seen, my 6 year old C2D is still a lot better option, but doesn't offer the SFF that these boxes can.

I can live with 8-bit h.264 for a cheap $100 machine that I can replace in a year with something that can do 10-bit h.264 or h.265 when that's more mainstream, My fear with Atom based CPU's is that the general UI will be clunky, and not meet any kind of WAF.

My
 
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