Sony BDV-E570 3D Blu-ray Home Theater System

Sony’s latest Blu-ray home theater system is now available, the BDV-E570. This 5.1 system offers a 3D Blu-ray disc player, 1080p video playback, WiFi, and DLNA compatibility.

The big news with the BDV-E570 is 3D Blu-ray disc support. 3D Blu-ray discs will be available this summer, and the BDV-E570 will require a firmware update to add support (offered free of charge). Sony will be launching a full line of 3D TVs to complement its 3D Blu-ray home theater lineup.

Additional features of the BDV-E570 include BRAVIA Internet Video, which allows users to stream a variety of content including TV shows, videos, and music from providers such as Netflix, YouTube, Slacker, and others. DLNA compatibility means the BDV-E570 can share content from other DLNA-enabled devices on a home network (it will be supported this summer via a firmware update).

The Sony BDV-E570 3D Blu-ray home theater system is available now for $549.99.

Sony Product Page

Samsung today announced two new soundbars for its home theater lineup, the HW-C450 and HW-C451. They include a wireless subwoofer, up to 280W of power output, and a grill-less speaker design.
The soundbars support virtual surround sound and connect to the TV via a single optical cable. Designed to complement flat-screen HDTVs, the soundbars can be wall-mounted and have a focus on design, featuring Samsung’s prism Touch of Color pattern and open speakers. The HW-C450 and C451 are differentiated by color; the C450 comes in black and the C451 in silver.
The Samsung HW-C450 and HW-C451 have an MSRP of $349.99; the C450 will be available this month and the C451 will be available in May. The HT-WDC10 wireless iPod/iPhone dock will be available for both units in May for $149.99.

Samsung C7530W Blu-ray Home Theater System

The models and their availability dates are listed as follows:

Be sure to see our CES 2010 coverage of Samsung’s Blu-ray Home Theater systems for model overviews.

All of the new home theater systems have support for the Samsung Apps HDTV application store. The store features downloadable content and applications from providers including The Associated Press, Netflix, Pandora, Twitter, USA Today, and VUDU. 20 applications are expected to launch by the end of March and will be available free of charge.

Onkyo SR608 A/V Receiver

Onkyo USA today announced its first 3D-Ready home theater receivers and home theater in a box (HTiB) systems. The company announced three new A/V receivers and three HTiB systems. All of the new products support the HDMI v1.4 connectivity standard for 3D video displays and Audio Return Channel capabilities.

Additional features of the new products include the ability to decode lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreams and a new 192kHz/24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1690 DAC with a 113dB dynamic range. Lastly, a new HDMI Thru feature allows content to pass to the TV when the receiver is in a standby state.

The three new receiver models are as follows:

• TX-SR608 7.2 channel
• TX-SR508 7.1 channel
• TX-SR308 5.1 channel

The SR608 is the highest-end receiver; it features a power amplifier and is THX-Select2 Plus certified. It also has Audyssey DSX dimensional sound processing and 1080p upscaling support for all inputs.

The SR608 and SR508 will be available in April for $599 and $399, respectively, and the SR308 will be available in March for $299.

Onkyo HTX-22HDX HTiB System

The HTiB systems consist of a receiver, subwoofer, and speakers. The following models were announced:

• HT-S5300 7.1 channel
• HT-S3300 5.1 channel
• HTX-22HDX 2.1 channel

The high-end S5300 model includes an iPod dock. The 22HDX uses just two speakers and a subwoofer but employs 3D sound processing to create simulated surround sound effects.

The S3300 will ship in March for $379 and the S5300 will follow in April for $599. The 22HDX will ship in May for $349.

The Components

Motherboard – Zotac GF9300-AE – $110
Intel Wolfdale e5300 -$70
Antec NSK1480 -$120
OCZ Vertex 30gb SSD -$130
Windows media remote/IR Receiver -$20
PNY 2gb RAM -$45
Total before tax and rebates – 495

The choice of motherboard, CPU and case all went hand in hand for me. The difference in price between a microATX Zotac board with a Wolfdale 5300 and a similar Zotac board with a dual core Atom processor was minimal. I chose to go with the slightly more powerful machine thus giving me a little more headroom for any CPU intensive tasks I have such as watching fullscreen HD Flash video on Hulu. For an additional upgrade in price I could have shrunk the form factor down to a miniITX board, but in the end the money was harder to give up than a little extra space. This board has an integrated Nvidia 9300 chipset. This graphics chipset supports VDPAU hardware decoding of HD and should perform flawlessly with non-flash HD video. Also while building this machine Adobe did release a new Flash version that allows some offloading of the decoding to the graphics card.

Once these pieces were chosen the rest of the machine pretty much just fell into place. I looked for the cheapest RAM I could find, which unfortunately at the moment wasn’t all that cheap. Originally my plan was to use an inexpensive 80-160GB Western Digital hard drive but after reading a number of glowing reviews on the OCZ Vertex 30gb SSD I decided to splurge and include it in this build. I would also need an IR receiver and remote to control this whole thing and for that I chose an off-brand Windows Media Center remote.

Finally I would need something to house all these components. Choosing the Antec NSK1480 was one of the harder choices I had to make. There were a number of cheaper options, particularly if I had gone for a miniITX form factor. There are also a large number of higher end cases from people like Silverstone and Lian-Li that I really liked but couldn’t fit in my budget. This Antec case was in the middle of these ranges but still looked like it would fit in with my audio/video equipment. It comes with 3 fans, but am only using the two near the CPU and unplugging the one that is meant to blow across the hard drives because my SSD will produce little heat, and airflow through the case should be fine without it. This will help me cut down on the noise of the system as well. The Antec also comes with a 350W power supply. While it won’t be the most silent power supply, Antec makes well regarded power supplies, and this one is 80Plus certified.

In the end I spent just under $500 for the whole package, but I’m expecting about $70 back in rebates. I originally budgeted about $325 for this machine and the drastic overshoot was mostly due to upgrades from an Atom based system with a standard hard drive to a Wolfdale system with a SSD drive and a slightly more expensive case than I had originally planned. A similar performing machine with a less flashy case and standard hard drive could easily be done for 350 or less. A machine with performance near this can also be purchased off the shelf. The Asrock Ion 330 is a solid option, and more machines in this class will likely be on the way.

The Build

This won’t be an exhaustive look at how to put together a computer, there are plenty of excellent tutorials out there which cover that subject better than I can. I will include a few pictures and descriptions of the process. I first rounded up all the components (which is a favorite part for me).

After unboxing everything and setting out a little workspace I began the assembly. Everything went together smoothly. I used the included stock cooler for my CPU which fit well (and I measured to check that it would fit in the case I had). I placed the motherboard in the case and set to the task of hooking up all the case wiring and cleaning up the case.

While I like this case a lot it is very tight, and is best left to people who have put a few computers together. This case would be really tight if using a DVD player and two 3.5 inch hard drives. The location of the power connection on my motherboard makes installing the DVD cage very difficult. I have a Blu-ray drive in my main desktop that I considered putting in the HTPC, but the cramped nature of the DVD cage persuaded me to leave it out. In the end I was pleased with the way this build went, and despite my notorious inability to manage my cables well I was for once able to get the case looking pretty clear. Additionally the face plate on the case is silver, and since very few DVD players come with a silver face plate your DVD player will likely stick out very obviously. This may bother you, although some with this case like the black and silver offsetting look. All together this build went pretty quickly and I was finished in under an hour.

Stay tuned for part 3 where I’ll discuss the final testing, software and performance of the system.

Digital Media and the Home Theater

Digital content is coming into the living room from many directions. Large digital media libraries mixing sources from Internet streaming to movies and music stored locally are becoming the norm for many people. I resisted this trend longer than most I assume, despite my interest in all things gadgety. About a year ago I began my transition to the digital age in earnest.

I started by building a media server that I’ve been primarily using for storage. That project was borne from my desire to have a solid backup for my various computers and my interest in centralizing my DVD and CD collections. Over the past year this machine has been rock solid. I added a TV Tuner card allowing me to run a mythTV server and record OTA HDTV. Budget restricted me from immediately moving to the second phase of that project, a home theater PC (HTPC) that would serve as a separate frontend to control my media library.

While planning out this build I wrote down a lot of notes about what I wanted to accomplish and the what components I’d need to accomplish my version of the HTPC. There has been some interest in our forums over the last few months about HTPCs and ways to get digital media to your home theater and we decided an article detailing the process I went through would be of interest to some people. I will detail the goals I had for this box, and what the hardware and software I’m using to get the performance I wanted. We may also take an in depth look at some of the HTPC software out there in a later article.

What should my HTPC do?

I chose to split my HTPC into a frontend (for connecting to the TV and providing the user interface) and a backend (for housing storage and a TV card). This allowed me to put the larger and noisier storage portion my system in a closet away from my theater and place a smaller system that just plays the media and has very little storage in my theater. Upgrading the individual capacities of these devices becomes a little simpler as well. If I need more storage, I can just buy hard drives and add them to my big storage system which has plenty of room.

I want my HTPC to function like any other entertainment appliance. You should be able to turn it on, and be presented with a menu to play your media, and it should be easily navigated from your couch with your remote. This machine will be the gateway to all my digital media. I store a lot of media on my small home server. I have media in a variety of formats stored on my server. Music in flac, dvds in video_ts and iso files, and even a few bluray titles ripped to mkv containers. I need to be able to easily play all of these sources at a bare minimum.

I’d also like to have access to a variety of Internet video sources. Ideally I’ll be able to pull in feeds from Hulu and Netflix and directly from various networks. I’d also like to pull in various other internet media sources. Places like revision3 television, movie trailers, and the TED series of lectures offer video rss feeds that I’d like to access on my big screen. I wanted to have this machine be relatively small, and fit in on my entertainment rack with my other components so I am going to need a case that looks like it belongs with the other entertainment gear as well.

The ability to get some of these requirements will depend on the software solution I choose to use for this PC, although my list of demands narrow down what hardware choices I can make a bit. I plan on using Linux on this PC and therefore to get reliable hardware acceleration for HD video I will be using an Nvidia graphics solution. I want to be safe with how much CPU power I need so I want at least a dual core Intel Atom chip to be able to safely play non-accelerated Flash HD sources such as Hulu.

There are many plug and play options from manufacturers that can do a lot of what I want. A DVR from your cable or satellite provider will allow you to easily record programming, and some are even going to whole home DVR solutions.. Or your living room might contain one of the streaming devices we’ve recently reviewed, such as the Roku HD or Netgear EVA2000 so that you can play internet streams easily. Other set top devices are designed specifically for playing back media you already have recorded, such as the Asus Oplay. This doesn’t even begin to touch on all the interesting products announced at CES this year that will be released in the coming year.

With so many options currently available or soon to be available that can stream media from your own collections as well as from the Internet why would I want to build such a device? Flexibility. None of the options out there do exactly what I want. Many get close, but none are perfect, and nothing I can do will allow me to make them perfect. A home built solution with some flexible media center should allow me achieve all of my goals.

Part 2 will discuss the components I selected, the components that narrowly missed the cut and the build process.

Part 2 – Selecting and Installing the Components

Mvix Ultio Pro

MvixUSA today introduced its Ultio Pro hard disk-based media center capable of HD media playback in up to 1080p resolution and personal video recording (PVR). It can record TV programs from cable or satellite and supports time-shift and scheduled recording functionalities. It has an embedded torrent client, samba server, and UPnP implementaion for integration with services such as PlayOn or Tversity, which allow for streaming video content from the Internet. The Ultio Pro has an Ethernet port and optional wireless-N connectivity.

Mvix Ultio Pro Rear Review

Blu-ray quality video can be played back in a variety of 1080p codecs; supported extensions include H.264, MKV, Divx HD, MOV, VC-1, FLV, and others. The Ultio Pro has scalable storage and can accomodate up to a 2TB hard drive.

The Mvix Ultio Pro is available in two versions: the regular version without a hard drive for $169, and a premium version with a 2TB hard drive for $348. The Ultio Pro is available for pre-order now and is schedule to ship in the first week of February.

MvixUSA Ultio Pro Product Page

ZVOX 575

ZVOX today added three new soundbars to its lineup. The three new models include the ZVOX 575 HSD, 550 HSD, and 430 HSD. Each model features Dolby Digital technology and PhaseCue virtual surround sound. The 575 HSD and 550 HSD are “Z-base” models, meaning they are designed to have a TV placed on top of them. The 430 HSD by contrast is a slim wall-mounted soundbar. All of the new soundbars have wood (MDF) cabinets and have built-in powered subwoofers.

The 575 HSD has a retail price of $749.99, the 550 HSD $449.99, and the 430 HSD $449.99. Availability information was not published at press time. Note these models are updates of the original models sharing the same name, which are currently available.

ZVOX Audio Website

Coby 3D Soundbar

Coby Electronics is planning to launch a soundbar featuring 3D sound technology from Sonic Emotion, a Swiss provider of 3D sound solutions. The technology can create a 3D sound experience off of just stereo input and stereo speakers.

The 3D sound is created using “wave field synthesis”, which reproduces sound waves to give the illusion sounds are coming from all directions.

Coby showed off the 3D soundbar at CES 2010; it should be launched in the US “soon”. No pricing information was announced.

Sonic Emotion Website

It is physically heavier than I expected. It is also large compared to the recently reviewed Netgear EVA2000, measuring roughly twice the size. It is an attractive device. The front and sides are wrapped in a glossy black/transparent plastic and the top of the device is a nice black matte textured finish. It certainly looks right at home amongst the other entertainment rack components.

As with most streaming media players setup was a breeze. Asus provides a standard a/v cable in the box, but most will hook this up using an HDMI cable which was not included. An spdif optical output is available for providing digital audio, allowing you to get the full audio resolution of the files you are watching. A small laptop style power adapter keeps the machine running cool and quiet.

Like my recent review of the Netgear EVA2000 I decided to start this device off in my bedroom attached to a 32 inch LCD via HDMI. Also included were a small remote that was very light and felt comfortable in the hand. It had all the expected buttons for navigating through the menus and chapters of your favorite movies.

Software

At the heart of any streaming media player is the software which allows you to find and play all your media. The software here is responsive without very much lag between key-presses on the remote and movement through the on-screen guide.

The home screen gives options for Music, Movies, Photos, as well as copying files and changing settings. Entering the menus for Music, Movies or Photos brings you to options for attached storage, your network storage, and after updating the firmware UPnP devices. The Asus box had no problem finding my storage server. Once selecting a storage location the menus for all three media types are pretty similar. Drilling down through the various folders to select your desired media. The Music, Movies, and Photo menus only differ in the file types they recognize.

At times the navigation can be a bit tedious although it is quite intuitive. The software behaves similarly to a file explorer in windows, clicking on a folder will open it and folders or files below will be shown. If you have your media arranged in too deep of folders this can mean many key-presses to get where you are going. It would have been nice for Asus to provide a means to create shortcuts to your main media folder. To navigate from the Home screen to my movie files on my server required a minimum of 6 folders to navigate through.

Video Playback

The Asus O!play supports an impressive amount of formats. In my tests with the box I threw a lot of different files and resolutions at the machine and it had very few problems. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, my personal library of media is ripped almost exclusively to video_ts folders for DVDs and my CDs have been ripped to audio. I only have a few Blu-rays which all were first ripped to a folder structure and then placed in .mkv containers, with a few .iso files kept around for testing purposes. This was no problem at all for the machine. Further the quality is excellent. Even my standard definition DVD rips came out looking excellent on my 32 inch screen. With a few exceptions I noticed no pixellation or stuttering during playback. Within a few minutes I forgot I wasn’t watching the original disc. In comparison to my other players I think playback via the Asus is only bested by my HD-DVD player (an HD-A2) which is known to perform up-conversion very well. Playback certainly stacked up very well to my newly built HTPC.

There were a few problems however I did encounter. On the ancient firmware that was delivered on this box (1.07n) some of my Blu-ray rips did have problems. The mkv file of Quantum of Solace stuttered and dropped frames badly. The Asus ethernet port is not gigabit, however this should be sufficient for Blu-ray playback. I was also unable to connect to my Windows 7 running PC. I also was unable to play Blu-ray .iso files.

A quick search of the Asus website showed a newer version of firmware (1.17N). A number of improvements are listed, most importantly for the problems I have had were a reported networking improvement, access to Windows 7 PCs, and BD .iso support. The update process was simple and involved just downloading a single file from Asus, transferring it to a USB drive, and plugging that into the Oplay. In the Settings menu there is an option for upgrading the firmware. After a few minutes I had completed the upgrade and was ready to check out the changes.

The new firmware changed the appearance of the menus slightly. A few new options appeared such as UPnP devices. I also could now access my Windows 7 PC. The added BD .iso support is a nice touch as well. Overall the update was an improvement, allowing me access to more of my media without having to change formats.

Upon testing some of my problem Blu-rays all but two problems remained. Quantum of Solace still stuttered, although not as dramatically, while it does not on my HTPC. I swapped the Asus in as a direct replacement for the HTPC and the stuttering continued which rules out any network or cabling issues. While Bluray iso files could be played, they often stuttered. Playing the same rip as both a iso and mkv file showed this was specific to the iso format. I never had this problem with any regular DVD rips or 1080p HD movie trailers. These concerns were relatively minor in annoyance and most movie sources I had played back perfectly fine.

A second source for media I have recently discovered is Internet TV shows and HD movie trailers. Using a bittorrent client I automatically download new trailers and episodes of several technology TV shows. These tend to come in several formats, with resolutions ranging between 480p and 1080p. Thinking these would be a great source of varying format of source material I decided to give them a whirl. Not only was playback flawless and smooth, but quality was again great. Each recording I tried looked and sounded perfect and was easily the equal to my main HTPC.

I was so impressed with the quality that I felt the Asus deserved to get a trial in the main system. The Asus was again impressive in this setting. Moving to theater also allowed me to test the spdif optical output of the box as well. This worked very well, requiring just a quick change in the settings/audio panel. Sound was crisp and the DTS soundtrack on my Bluray rip was recognized without any problems.

The movie preview is a neat feature that plays the movie in a small window while scrolling through your videos. After a while the “neat” factor wears off and it becomes a hindrance, as it seem to slow up the scrolling. Fortunately a menu setting allows this feature to be turned off, which helps the responsiveness of the user interface tremendously.

Overall the Asus provides a good video experience. Attaching to networked storage is easy, and playback is of a very high quality. Most file types play without issue which allows you to just enjoy the media you have access to.

Music Playback

Music playback was very good. The O!play had no problem with any of the music formats I threw at it. Unsurprisingly, flac files sounded just like when played back via any of the other computers on the network. While there was no fancy visualization mode, the O!play does have a screensaver mode that becomes active after periods of inactivity.

A more robust music playback frontend would be appreciated. The very simple filesystem format is the same as the Movies menu. In fact the only difference between the Movies and Music entries are the filetypes that show up upon entering a folder. There are entries for Artist, Album, or other category playback, but these seem limited to media connected via the USB or eSATA port. I would prefer a few more options for music playback. A shuffle mode would be a minimum, smart playlists and connection to Internet sources like Pandora or Last.fm would be even better. The manual suggests pushing the music icon on the remote will reshuffle the playlist. This doesn’t work as it should. Pushing this on the top level of a folder should put all music below into a shuffle playlist. No matter what I tried no shuffled playlist ever resulted from pushing that button.

Unsupported Features

The O!play has the ability to stream from UpnP servers. Once I updated the firmware I could navigate to my PlayOn media server running on my Windows 7 machine. The PlayOn system allows users to stream media from a large number of internet sources, most notably Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. Neither Asus or PlayOn make any claims that they work together and so any failures I describe here should not be a poor reflection on either company. A few scattered reports around the web reveal that several attempts have been made to try and get them working. I decided to see if I could get this feature running, as the ability to work with PlayOn would make this streamer a cut above most of its competition.

Success on this endeavor was a bit a bit mixed. I could get a picture from most of the services offered through PlayOn but often playback was interrupted by a buffering error, or in some cases a lack of any sound. Perhaps a later firmware revision from Asus or a software revision from Playon will get these two on the same page.

The network discovery of this box is very impressive. It found everything on my network, including m DirecTV HR20 box. Interestingly, it even could find the files of recordings on my DVR. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get playback to work here either. This would have been a really killer feature, allowing me to cheaply extend DVR functionality of my HD DVR to other rooms in the house.

I can’t hold it against Asus that these features didn’t work, since they don’t suggest that they do. Reporting my findings here was just a way to let people know what has been tried and what has been successful on this device.

Final Thoughts

Despite not being the newest media streamer on the block, the Asus O!play performs very admirably. The menu system is responsive and attractive. It can handle high definition video and a variety of codecs and containers. Asus sets out to make a media streamer that can offer robust playback of a large number of file types from a local storage device or your home network. At that task it certainly has succeeded. I was really impressed with the video quality this little box was able to put out. I tested the PlayOn media server because having even minimal non HD access to Netflix and Hulu streaming would make this a killer little box and a great price. This is a good effort by Asus into the media streaming arena, and I hope we see further revisions of similar quality in the near future.

Pros

• Excellent picture quality
• Wide array of formats
• Price

Cons

• No Internet streaming
• Music interface lacks good playlist options

Rating – 4 out of 5 Stars