Subjectively about the media center E-Great M32B

Introduction

To begin with, I will say a little about myself so that you immediately decide if you are interested or not so much.

First, it is a very subjective description. But what I describe, I like it - and that's enough for me, whatever you think.
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Despite the fact that I am an old “computer boy”, I do not like poking around in the functionality of new hardware or choosing and comparing these same hardware. I'm not talking about computers, but about all sorts of everyday gizmos that surround us in everyday life. Also, I don’t like the concept of “finishing” and “finishing” household appliances at all - here I want to be a “housewife”, I have enough brainchildren at work and doing “tuning a baby carriage” is not a heroic business. I go from the reverse.

One day, I realized that the computer for me was, first of all, work, and it was, to put it mildly, not comfortable with celebrating various activities related to rest on it. There is no longer that feeling of a faithful friend, teacher and favorite toy. This is just a job, not more.

After that, gaming consoles, stereos, portable MP3 players and other items began to appear in the house, whose legs seemed to grow from the computer industry, but which are no longer computers by vocation.

I recently wanted a miracle. Or rather, the modest possibility that you could watch a movie on a large home "thirty-third" TV, rather than a small 23.6 monitor, being not on your extra-comfortable working chair, but freely spreading out in a random pose on a soft-soft sofa. So that while watching the kin, nothing distracts my precious hearing with a hyster of humor, and joules are not emitted into the air of the apartment area and the electric meter does not conduct a careful calculation of absolutely unnecessary watts at the moment when I rest.

So that, in the end, not to see discs all over the house, which were covered with two generations of sinless vandal babies ...

No, of course, desires from scratch do not arise. Usually they are preceded by some thought process based on the acquisition of any new knowledge. I learned about Popcorn Hour, I immediately wanted something in this spirit and I began to search.

What Popcorn did not do for me is the fact that he is BBK. No, I understand, BBK 2 BBK - discord, but still ... Yes, I am prejudiced against BBK and so far nothing has happened that somehow could change my attitude for the better.

Further searches revealed several “boxes”: from Dune to v-duck, but my opinion, having passed through the whole row, for some reason stopped on the E-Great M32B. It looks elegant, has a small size and a very convenient vertical form factor. In addition, there is an opportunity in perspective to insert a DVD or even BD-ROM there (according to fans from different forums, this is expected). In addition, the piece of hardware works on some modified version of Linux and has the ability to be re-flashed, which guarantees a certain flexibility and long-term use. Well, by itself, it can look and listen to many different codecs, most of which I did not know and did not hear.

In general, I ordered it and bought it. I got it, deployed it, installed it, set it up, stuffed movies, and happily use it all, with all the conditions that I described above. And now - in detail.

Equipment

There is nothing to complain about. There is everything you need and what is described in the manual in normal Russian. I emphasize normal language. For the whole manual, I found only one spelling error on one of the last pages. This, in general, led me to the idea that I was not very stupid when buying a player of this brand.

The only thing that can be attributed to the shortcomings of the manual is its utmost brevity. And nevertheless, everything necessary for a successful start is there. If you add the fact that the player is as simple as a heating pad, they could not put this manual in the box at all and the user would almost surely figure it out.

Execution

The “box” itself is a black box on a stand. Design looks not so much cheap as specific. The case combines black glossy plastic and metal, painted with matt black paint. If you look closely, you may get the impression that you are holding not a home appliance, but some rack-mount switch from D-Link. On weight, it is somewhere under one and a half kilograms, I definitely did not measure. If you look inside through the slot for HDD, you can see something like mom Mini-ITX (for sure, this is it).

The eye immediately stumbles over a large and ambiguous control panel. They are quite convenient to manage, but as a paddle or a baton, it is also very suitable. Strictly speaking, it could be smaller, and not of such a bizarre form. The remote is warm to the touch, matte plastic is behind it, the same black gloss is on the front panel, it is pleasant to touch the buttons, they “recharge” during the day and glow faintly in the dark. If it were not for the artsy form, I would say that it looks much more expensive than the “box”. Functionally, he almost repeats the remote from the only Popcorn Hour I've seen, although the remote one is rectangular and not “reverse flipped”.

Now I will talk about the strange - about the smell. Of course, “we can't baptize children with him” and all that, but for me personally, the smell of a new device for some reason seems quite indicative of its property. Surprisingly, the smell of the remote and the "box" are different from each other. And the console smells nice and expensive, and the “box” smells like an Asus netbook, something recycled. In an absolute sense, there is nothing terrible about this — say, a new iPod has a much more pungent smell. But in general, it can be assumed that the Chinese have ordered the “fashionable” console for the device somewhere else.

Installation

Well, what to say. Everything is extremely straight. I inserted a hard disk into the player, connected it to the TV via HDMI, turned it on, waited, got a message that the HDD is not formatted and the offer to do it here and now. Just in case, I smoked a manual on this topic. It was mentioned in the manual that it would be nice to update the player's software to the latest version, which I did, since the link given in the booklet was wonderful to open the first time, and all the files that were needed were in the positions declared by the manual. Then, I formatted the disk, as indicated, and that was the end of the commissioning.

By the way, I once tried to update my old DVD from a fairly respected producer, practically one of the leaders. So, the current case with that old one, in terms of time and nerves, is not worth it. Then I spent a few hours only to find out which of the firmwares would fit my player and why the others did not fit.

Using

I'll start with the inclusion.
After switching on, this thing is loaded for a surprisingly long time. Personally, I, as an old spektrumista, it does not soar, because 2-3 minutes before watching a two-hour film is an opportunity to smoke in anticipation, pour yourself something, wait until everyone gathers in front of the TV and so on. But still, it is not clear what it takes so long to load.

However, the “box” can not be turned off - there is a “Standby” button with the inscription “Zzz”. In this case, we get the ability to turn on browsing almost instantly, and an unbreakable file storage for those who need it. "Eternal" in the truest sense of the word - in Standby mode, the stand glows with hellish blue color and completely rolls over the "beacon" at night.

After the start, a screen appears where you can select the type of media. But generally, strictly speaking, we get to where we were before shutting down. I found this feature especially convenient, since you can go into the “Cartoons” folder and turn off the player, and if you are unable to read a small child who turns it on, it will immediately get to its intended purpose. (There is, however, the probability that the child will be in the folder with the films “for adults” after some night watching by the parents)
When moving through directories there is some delay (up to 5 seconds). Which, however, is adequately indicated by the “chamomile” in the upper left corner of the screen, indicating that something is happening there. Well, the realization that inserting and removing real DVDs is still longer, warms the soul and compensates for those seconds of waiting.

In general, the interface is extremely ascetic, translated into Russian correctly. You can copy or move files from directory to directory, rename them, create directories, and delete files or directories. There are special functions “Page up / Page down” for page turning (12 lines). You can enter the directory or select a file by entering its number on the console “calculator”. Separate hyper-happiness - this thing perfectly shows Cyrillic file names!

The "box" is extremely picky in terms of a variety of USB-drives. There was not a single carrier in the house, from an external CD-ROM to an old 32-megabyte flash drive, which would not be accepted. They are determined almost immediately, but in order to remove the carrier, no special actions are necessary. Also, if you wish, you can connect an external SATA-HDD. The media center itself is also connected to the computer as a hard drive or flash drive. Watching movies at this moment is impossible, but it seems to be completely normal. However, the presence of Ethernet almost completely eliminates the need to connect directly to the computer, since the device can run from a folder on the internal drive. Access to file storage (EXT2 / EXT3 to choose from) is carried out via SMB or FTP protocol. There is still SSH, but I have not tried it. It can also work as a media server and connect to media servers and balls in the local network.

The device is replete with a variety of additional services - here you and Internet radio, and Internet TV, and the incarnation curve rocking Transmission files, which will be discussed further.

Although, actually, there’s nothing much to say about the rocking chair - after trying to download anything, the “box” left for the night turned on in Standby mode simply hung. Thank God, it was the only time she hung, otherwise I would be upset. Also, she mercilessly braked when viewing something and simultaneously downloading. In general, the ugly client was banished from the list of running services.

In principle, this can be corrected, but as I have already said, I am fundamentally lazy to do it. And I don’t see the need for a special rocking chair at the media center.

Another thing is YouTube. This is, really, the Chinese have done it - so it is done. It is not very convenient, however, to go through the catalog, but these are also trifles to which you can get used.

The special pig enthusiasm was caused by the ngrab plugin, which allowed me to arrange the video recording of TV programs from my DreamBox DM500s satellite receiver directly to the catalog in the media center. Recording is done in VOB files.

Yes, I completely forgot. The user community has created a universal application that allows you to install additional components on a number of media centers, including my box. I used it - it's easy and convenient. At least, I have not met any tangible problems. Additional components have already gathered about 50 stuff, among them there is even such an exotic, as the port of Subversion-server.

Now that we can watch. Or, rather, about what we can not watch. The only problem I had with the file, the sound of which was encoded in WMA 64 kbit. The sound is constantly interrupted and clicks. But I took it to the ancient age of the codec, since the avishka was packed in 2001. All the rest (almost 600 gigs of bitty video) works more than satisfactorily. The same can be said about DVD-images with movies.

For all the time of use, video codecs DIVX, XVID, H264, WMV have been tested (there were no problems, as with WMA), MPG, MP4, 3GP. Sound codecs: MP3, AAC, AC3, WMA. Containers: VOB, MKV, AVI.

Shortcomings

Of course, the ideal is almost impossible to achieve, but we must strive towards that. Moreover, getting the perfect immediately, we do not feel how big, powerful and complex the subject.

I hope the next firmware updates will be able to work with playlists, which is currently completely absent. Also, it would be nice if they taught the little thing Russian letters when renaming files or creating directories.

It would be logical and convenient if the red button on the remote did not turn off the device, but translated into Standby. And it is very difficult to relearn a small, indistinguishable from other “Zzz” after several generations of players, where the red button is the standby mode.

And of course, it would be useful if the device could track updates of its own software and warn its owner of the appearance of them.

Actually, this is all that was not enough for me.

Summary

Over 12.5 thousand rubles, including the cost of the hard drive - this is, at the moment, just a wonderful device with an excellent price-performance ratio. I think in two or three years, when the concept of a media center is firmly entrenched in the heads of the public, devices of this class and purpose, like the E-Great M32B, will become cheaper, but now, I think, it is worth the money paid for it.

I did not publish my own photographs, but I managed to get borrowed from the Internet purely for aesthetic reasons - I like the advertisements that are on the Internet more than my own ones. Moreover, I would not disclose any nuances: everything that can be found on the network looks the same as what you get in reality.

I hope my essay will be useful to you if you decide to buy yourself an M32B or something like that.