Most recently, I did a review of the wonderful BBK PopcornTV NP101S network player - the article was quite large and the review of services would not fit in there.
Actually, the second part, about services - as promised! Review, traffic . I think it’s worth a little talk about the firmware itself, because everything starts with the internal interface of the device. A “cold” start takes about a minute - after this time, the device control panel appears. On the left side menu items are always displayed, the entire right side is reserved for content. Initially, the menu on the left has three items - a media library, web services and settings. Naturally, let's start from the end. ')
Settings
In the settings there are 7 tabs - General , Audio / Video , Network , Network drives , device software , DVD / Audio CD and Tools . The first ( General ) sets up the system language and subtitles (Russian / English), playback mode (no repeat, repeat once, loop), the effect when changing frames (no effect, smooth, from the center, right shift, left shift) and such trifles as idle time before the screen saver and the mode of movement by the remote control through menu items. I do Russian, I save.
The tab " Audio / Video " allows you to tighten the nuts, it is not strange, in playing audio and video files. It all starts with a resolution - it can be automatic (auto) and separate for each connection - composite, component, HDMI and VESA. Here is a complete list of those permissions that were available:
You can also enable frame rate synchronization. Without knowing even the diagonal of my test TV, I chose Auto) and I must say, I felt fine further.
In addition to the resolution, you can specify the aspect ratio - at a choice of 4: 3, 16: 9 or 16:10. Here you can choose the format of the image - the original size, full screen, cut or stretch proportionally. The sound format is either stereo or 5.1. Each audio format (DTS, AC3, AAC, WMAPro) on this tab can be output to digital (RAW) or analog (PCM) output.
On the " Network " tab, you can trust the settings from the DHCP server, I also specified the manual configuration, entered the IP, mask, gateway and DNS - everything immediately came to light and worked. You can make time synchronization with the time server.
Go further - the tab “ Software devices ”. Here you can specify the network name of the corn and set a password. It also shows the status of running services - UPnP AV server, myHome, FTP, SMB and NFS, as well as the torrent and usenet client. Initially, all of them are included, but I dare to assume that many will not need them all - you can turn off the unnecessary. I have not tried it, but I think it may somehow affect the speed of the device, although it already works quite quickly.
The tab “ Service ” displays information about the firmware of the device, which, if desired, can be updated, which I once again did. The firmware version for which the article was written - 50-17-090126-15-BBK-403-000 .
Run through the settings and save the changes, you can start sweets.
Media library
A strange name - after all, books are stored in libraries, and here we have pictures, music and a lot of indecent video :) So, entering this municipal institution, 4 icons appear in front of us - video, music, photos and miscellaneous. Accordingly, clicking on any of them, the contents of the disk (or the inserted flash drive) will be filtered so that only the necessary types of files will be visible.
As for the video - from what I had on a flash drive and shared on a computer - everything was lost. I’ll pay a little more attention to high-quality films (for which, in fact, the player was developed) - I threw a couple of video clips from a friend to me with a screw, which I connected to the BBK player via QNAP case:
- 9Rota.2005.BDRip.x264.mkv (12Gb, 1921x774, DTS [48kHz], H.264 [23.976fps 24p]); - AmericanPie.1999.BDRemux.mkv (13Gb, 1920x1080, AC3 [48kHz], H.264 [24.0fps 24p]); - Cars.BDRip.1080p.Rus.Eng.mkv (7Gb, 1920x800, AC3 [48kHz], H.264 [23.976fps 24p]); - 13Raion.2004.BDRemux.1080p.ts (15Gb, 1920x1080, AC3, mpeg2ts [23.976fps 24p]); - Most.slishkom.daleko.1977.x264.720p.BDRip.mkv (8Gb, AC3, H.264, Profile 5.1, 1280x544); - Terminator3.m2ts (BDMV) (12Gb, AC3, 1920x1080, mpeg2ts, VC1 [23.976fps 24p]) All movies earned, the rewind worked in all cases smoothly, the transition to a certain time also worked very quickly. For clarity and reliability - the video.
I agree, it’s impossible to draw conclusions from this about the 100% omnipotence of the player, but from what it was, he lost everything, except for the FLV-videos: (It’s a pity that such a popular format isn’t supported - often at work I just save the videos that came to ICQ On the flash drive, which I look on the road or at home.
Listening to music is the most common - a track opens, a blank image is displayed on the screen (although it would be possible to bring the Cover out of the tracks or at least make a slideshow), if you want, you can display information - time, author and track name. Not so thick, but not empty.
By the way, it was while listening to music that I noticed a ubiquitous line at the very bottom of the screen - “ Remember, the Ministry of Health warns ...) ” - this is what they correctly noticed ... because all people are divided into those who make backups and those who MORE does not do :) The fact that the device has two USB ports is good. You can insert flash drives and external hard drives - it works like a clock.
Web services
Finally got! Let's start with the fact that they are all divided into 4 groups - the PopcornTVportal, the online services portal , the MSP community (Media servce Portal) and the torrent .
You don’t have to wait much in a torrent - it’s a primitive shell that displays current downloads and has a couple of settings — a port and download / download speed limits. Looking ahead, I’ll say that I downloaded a couple of files from the national torrent, for a total of about 300mb in total, everything works, no matter what. The only thing that didn’t like it is that the information about the download status is shown not quite in real time - the torrent window is updated with a certain interval, each time giving a new download percentage. Torrent-files received through the computer, did not try to feed.
Portal PopcornTV
At the moment there are quite a few services, to be exact, there are 9 of them and they are divided into 4 categories (video, audio, photos and games). Each category can be accessed at any time by pressing the corresponding number on the remote.
Yandex.Fotki - service added recently. Allows you to view photos of any user whose name you want to enter in the line reserved for it.
RPOD - (Russian podcasts) - a plugin for the first and podkasterskogo shelter, which allows you to listen and even watch Russian-speaking podcasts.
This is how the service looked on my terrible non-TV:
And this is how it actually looks like :)
SKY.FM and D.FM - Internet radio Sky.FM and DiFM, the division of music in which is done by genre. Come in, choose and ... TANQUIZ - An interactive game, something like "Who wants to be a millionaire." The same 15 questions, the same clues ... it's only good that neither Dibrova nor Galkina) For a couple of games, the questions were rarely repeated, but sometimes playing is the most it! Questions in some places are quite complicated, but from the first time I managed to defeat the computer (with the wifi nearby on my laptop, which isn’t enough for a beautiful screen).
Youtube - I think it is not necessary to submit. One of the most developed services - on the main page displays the latest videos, there is a sort by views, rating, etc. There is a search - you enter the text and in a couple of seconds the results on the TV screen.
Flickr is a famous photo service. You can login (I am not registered there, but, I suppose, this will give additional functionality) or enable a slideshow.
Russia.ru is the main Russian Internet TV channel, which I only found out on PopcornTV. “Russia.ru is an Internet TV channel, which presents videos about politics, culture, various events, show business, and so on.Video posted on the site is available, including, and in high resolution.Therefore, with the help of Popcorn`a, the Internet channel Russia.ru can be viewed in excellent quality ... sitting on the couch. "
Torrents.ru - national torrent tracker, which I have already mentioned. With the appearance of the site there is almost nothing in common, on the other hand, there is nothing superfluous - after all, on the TV it is quite difficult to display all sorts of stuff. When entering, various categories immediately become available - foreign cartoons, domestic films. When choosing one of the distributions, certain information is shown (in the case of the cartoon I downloaded for verification, this is a picture and accompanying text such as year of production, quality, duration, etc.). No reviews - nothing. Only the “Download” button - press and after a couple of minutes (depending on the channel) the file is deposited in the Download folder on the player.
How all this is organized - I don’t know, at least I didn’t enter any logins and passwords there, and the service has not been working for the first month. Perhaps there is some kind of agreement between the developers of this service and the administration of the project torrents.ru, but I do not have this information. While shakes and okay)
Online Services Portal (MSP)
In this online portal there are 45 services available, which are divided into 5 groups - Video, Audio, Photo, RSS and What's new.
In the largest group, Video , 22 services are available. I will not consider each separately; I will simply list it (you can easily find the information in Google - just enter the name):
Youtube is the same service as in the first category. Veoh is a video service that allows you to watch various videos.
Videocast - videocasts from around the world. Cranky Geeks - weekly video broadcasting
BlipTV - supposedly the best videos from the Internet :)
Vuze is a bittorent based content system. Break Podcast - literally from the description of "a leading entertainment channel for guys" and even the names of the videos surprised me) but in fact I found there only entertainment videos and all sorts of curiosities.
Others - Larry King Podcast, Anderson Cooper 360 daily, CNN Dayly, New York, NBC News, interviews, newsmakers, CNT TV, Face the nation, NBC Nightly news, Mevio , Mediafly, CBS Evening news, Revision3, Motorz, PodfinderUK.
There are 8 of them available from auditorises, the one that I liked most was Radiobox . It has flexible sorting, for example, by language (of which 49 pieces). I choose “Russian”, pedlagayut choose quality - up to 96kbits, 96-160 and more than 160. The last found quite a bit (X3M radio, Worm Radio, Synth-radio.ru and Radio Gora Project), but “average” - more than! Echo of Moscow, Radio Chanson, something else there ... of course, there will be more foreign radio stations. Also a choice of 34 musical styles.
More from audio services - Live 365radio , iPodcast , ABCNews , BBC Podcast , CNN News , Indiefeed , Jamendo (allows you to download and listen to entire albums, and legally). All, of course, in English.
There are also 6 photo services available - Photobucket , Flickr , Picasa , Pikeo , SmugMug and 23 - photo albums of various degrees of beauty and complexity. Honestly, I don’t know who will sit in front of the TV and click the photos ... but, for example, put it on the TV during the feast as a “plug” is the most it.
There are 9 objects in the RSS group, all of them are foreign. Bloglines, Yahoo Weather Services, Traffic Condition, Cinecast, Yahoo news, MSNBC News, NMT Forum and WeatherBug. The latter, the weather service, managed to make friends with Moscow, which made it possible to recognize the weather without looking out the window and not waiting for the announcer on the canals.
The last category ( What's new ) is a collection of 15 news services that were already in the previous categories.
You can register on the portal (directly on the TV), after which it will be possible to subscribe to any of the selected services (this is done, in most cases, with a green button on the remote control).
Media Service Portal
Well, the last section of online services is the Media Service Portal ( MSP) community portal , in which 24 services are conveniently located. They are also divided into categories (of which this time more), each category has its own large icon. The interface is quite simple, to find something is not difficult.
It does not make sense to list everything, something is repeated the same way. From the new - ProjectPlaylist, Last.Fm, Gmail, TorrentPlaza, GoogleMaps. Well, 6 games, one of which we already know.
Another interesting fact is that a note appeared on the site in the news about the NMT Community Software Installer program, which I have not tried yet. According to rumors, working through a computer should help with the installation of new services, change of topics, and so on.
Quite a final feature - I really liked the device, but still there are minor flaws in some places. I wish the producers success and look forward to many new and interesting things!