[evilcartman]

I am looking to upgrade my NMTa110 to the Tvix 6600. The sluggish of the interface is actually starting to give me a brain tumor I think. No more NMTs for me and than awful html interface.

I have a few of the cheaper players (wd live, asus) and they are actually way zippier that the a110 but they are lacking my most beloved features of the a100: in play navigation, specifially:

0-9 bring you to % of the title time and left and right take you to exact time markers. I also love the tiny innocuous OSD say in the upper left corner compared to the annoying one in the WD Live that you cannot quickly get ride of.

I absolutely love being able to get anywhere in a movie instantly having to push only 1 button.

I also wondered why my $100 dollar WD can FF and RW at 16x while my overpriced NMT is stuck at 8x and cannot even rewind half the formats, though the instant 30sec increments go well to make up for that.

My question is, how does the 6600 compare to these features? And knowing how important they are to me, will I be annoyed or love the 6600?

[speaker]

Originally Posted by evilcartman I am looking to upgrade my NMTa110 to the Tvix 6600. The sluggish of the interface is actually starting to give me a brain tumor I think. No more NMTs for me and than awful html interface. I have a few of the cheaper players (wd live, asus) and they are actually way zippier that the a110 but they are lacking my most beloved features of the a100: in play navigation, specifially:

I have the 6600 connected to my network (wired, not wireless). The manual advertises rewind and fast-forward speeds from 2x-32x. I've only gotten 4x and above to work for .mpg, and .vob files. Any other file type (avi, mkv) will only rewind and fast-forward at 2x. This may just be a network issue. Folks who plan to watch material on an internal hard drive or USB device may not experience this. As I use neither, I don't know how they'd perform. 2x rewind and fast-forward is smooth for all file types.

Originally Posted by evilcartman 0-9 bring you to % of the title time and left and right take you to exact time markers.

Not available with the 6600. There's only a GOTO function where you enter the hour, minute, and second. It's very well laid out though. It displays the current hour, minute, and second so you can make your jumps easy without having to start at 00:00:00. For example, let's say you're watching something that's 2 hours, 30 minutes, and 50 seconds in length and you're halfway through the movie. When you press GOTO it highlights the current time, which would be 01:15:25 (hour 1, minute 15, second 25). You can increment or decrement the time values using the up and down keys. You can also use the numeric keypad to enter times. It's also smart enough to not let you select or enter a time that doesn't exist. For instance, if you're watching a file that's 59 minutes long, the hour field is disabled.

Originally Posted by evilcartman I also love the tiny innocuous OSD say in the upper left corner compared to the annoying one in the WD Live that you cannot quickly get ride of.

By OSD, I assume you're referring to the pop-up info text. It covers about 20% of the screen vertically at the top, and 100% of the width. It only appears manually and must be deactivated by the remove. There's no secondary OSD that shows less info.

Originally Posted by evilcartman I absolutely love being able to get anywhere in a movie instantly having to push only 1 button. I also wondered why my $100 dollar WD can FF and RW at 16x while my overpriced NMT is stuck at 8x and cannot even rewind half the formats, though the instant 30sec increments go well to make up for that.

During playback, you can press the up and down buttons to jump back or forward 15 seconds. It does emit a strange popping sound through the TV speakers every time I use it though. It's annoying, but I'm learning to live with it.

Originally Posted by evilcartman My question is, how does the 6600 compare to these features? And knowing how important they are to me, will I be annoyed or love the 6600?

I chose the 6600 over something like the WDTV Live because it had a GOTO time function. Yes, that was actually a deal-breaker for me. While I'm annoyed that rewind and fast-forward do not work as advertised, I'm fairly satisfied with the playback options of the device.

[Kei Clark]

Originally Posted by speaker I have the 6600 connected to my network (wired, not wireless). The manual advertises rewind and fast-forward speeds from 2x-32x. I've only gotten 4x and above to work for .mpg, and .vob files. Any other file type (avi, mkv) will only rewind and fast-forward at 2x. This may just be a network issue. Folks who plan to watch material on an internal hard drive or USB device may not experience this. As I use neither, I don't know how they'd perform. 2x rewind and fast-forward is smooth for all file types.

Odd, what types of files do you normally use, and which version firmware?

I can cycle through the FF and RW at 2x 4x 8x 16x and 32x then back to play again either via the network or on local hard drive.

During playback, you can press the up and down buttons to jump back or forward 15 seconds. It does emit a strange popping sound through the TV speakers every time I use it though. It's annoying, but I'm learning to live with it.

Haven't heard this either. Is this using the TV speakers via HDMI or stereo inputs?

[evilcartman]

By OSD, I mean On Screen Display. Not the one that comes up when you press like the info button, but the one that comes up when you FF or RW or change the play state.

The WD is the same big one all the way across the last 4th or 5th of the bottom screen. Lasts for what seems like a minute but is probablly 5 seconds or so. You cannot turn nor toggle it off live with Direct TV. You must navigate to a mune and turn it off, which is way too much work to do when you just wanted to rehear 2 seconds of dialog.

I didnt buy a huge a$$ TV to see half a dozen square feet of Direct TV or WDs progress bar. I want to see the friggin movie. Not visual spam. I can tell if I am rewinding or paused without a friggin banner ad!

What I would love is to be able to disable any and all on screen notifications unless I specifially call them up. Most VCRs ended up letting you do this but it took years.

I am with you Speaker. What others see as tiny things can be deal breakers. When you spend 10s of thousands of $$$ on an AV setup, you shouldn't be annoyed every time you push a button or try to do something. I have not bought a DVD since the first or second one would not let me skip the damn commercials. I can be forced to watch those for free with broadcast.

We can control very little of what happens to us in this life, but my own TV / movie viewing during my own free time, I insist on having it my way. No matter how small, nuts, or idiosyncratic it may seem to others.

The Popcorn hour has a near perfect interface for me feature wise. But it is slow as balls, crashes often, and chokes on files WD plays with ease. It is also probably easier to have your friends act out a movie in front of you than make a play list for the thing. You cannot even play files consecutive in a directory. LAME. I have probably lost a week of my life in the past year just waiting for my A110 to do $hit. And they want me to shell out 3 or 4 bens for the C200 and spend another 3 filling up the empty bays? That laugh was almost worth the suffering. I'm convinced they call it the Popcorn Hour because it takes an hour to boot up and every time you press a button, you have time to make popcorn.

[speaker]

Originally Posted by Kei Clark Odd, what types of files do you normally use, and which version firmware? I can cycle through the FF and RW at 2x 4x 8x 16x and 32x then back to play again either via the network or on local hard drive.

I'm using the latest beta, 1.9.1 Beta 5. Rewind and fast-forward only works for .mpg and .vob. All others (.avi, .mkv, .ts, etc) can't deal with it. Attempting to fast-forward beyond 2x can cause some .mkv's to freeze during playback. It doesn't freeze the entire player, just the playback for that one file. Pressing stop resolves it.

Originally Posted by Kei Clark Haven't heard this either. Is this using the TV speakers via HDMI or stereo inputs?

HDMI. The popping sound occurs every time a file starts playing or when I use the jump back or forward 15 seconds button. It emits two quick popping sounds right before playback begins. Muting the 6600 or turning the volume all the way down makes no difference. The popping sound is always the same decibel, regardless of the 6600 or TV's volume setting. Strangely enough, turning the volume all the way down directly on the TV doesn't stop the popping either. The only way I can be rid of it is to mute the TV directly.

I've never experienced this popping with any other device (HD cable receiver, Bluray player). It feels like the 6600 and the TV are temporarily losing their connection with one another and this popping noise is the two signals getting back in sync.

[Kei Clark]

I rather think of the M6600N as the very reliable but a little dull media player. It has quick response to remote presses, obviously the chip design leveraged fair amount of power for stability. It doesn't yet support the nice custom icons, and it does not yet support DTS/MA, and the wireless still needs work. But it stays useable even if I leave it on for days on end. The best feature on this I found is the file navigation whichis an improvement from past players. There is rarely any surprises in the HDMI handshake, and it is cool and quiet even with a hard drive installed.

[smills]

Originally Posted by speaker I have the 6600 connected to my network (wired, not wireless). The manual advertises rewind and fast-forward speeds from 2x-32x. I've only gotten 4x and above to work for .mpg, and .vob files. Any other file type (avi, mkv) will only rewind and fast-forward at 2x. This may just be a network issue. Folks who plan to watch material on an internal hard drive or USB device may not experience this. As I use neither, I don't know how they'd perform. 2x rewind and fast-forward is smooth for all file types.

Have you tried the same file from HDD, over the network (wired and Wireless) ?
I tested Lord of the Rings Extended ver 1080p mkv (20gb) on the HDD (32x), via NFS wired (32x), via NFS wireless (2x and it freezes) - actually with wireless it doesn't always even play the file.
The network has everything to do with the ability to stream data effectively.

I've also had some files that just don't FF more than 4x, but that was not a fault of the player but rather the header of the actual file.

[speaker]

Originally Posted by evilcartman By OSD, I mean On Screen Display. Not the one that comes up when you press like the info button, but the one that comes up when you FF or RW or change the play state.

When you press play a small, square, grey, semi-opaque play icon appears at the top-right. It remains for 2.2 seconds. Pressing rewind, or fast-forward causes the square to appear as well, and it stays on screen until you press play again. Pause stays on screen until you unpause. There is no big banner stretching the entire screen. I had to actually go and check to see which one's existed as they're so unobtrusive that I didn't remember them. Tvix did a good job with these. I had a previous player with obnoxious OSD icons during playback that didn't seem to want to go away in a reasonable length of time. With the 6600 I don't need to deal with that.

Originally Posted by evilcartman What I would love is to be able to disable any and all on screen notifications unless I specifially call them up. Most VCRs ended up letting you do this but it took years.

There are not settings that allow you to disable any of the auto-OSD's.

Originally Posted by evilcartman I am with you Speaker. What others see as tiny things can be deal breakers. When you spend 10s of thousands of $$$ on an AV setup, you shouldn't be annoyed every time you push a button or try to do something. I have not bought a DVD since the first or second one would not let me skip the damn commercials. I can be forced to watch those for free with broadcast.

The latest OPPO bluray player has a yellow button that's able to skip right to the movie, bypassing all the intro stuff. It just jumps to the biggest vob.

Originally Posted by evilcartman We can control very little of what happens to us in this life, but my own TV / movie viewing during my own free time, I insist on having it my way. No matter how small, nuts, or idiosyncratic it may seem to others. The Popcorn hour has a near perfect interface for me feature wise. But it is slow as balls, crashes often, and chokes on files WD plays with ease.

While I've been ragging on the 6600, I still think it's an outstanding player and I have no regrets about purchasing it and I'm an extremely picky person. For me, the most important part of this player is that it just works and delivers beautiful picture quality. It has never frozen on me, which I find shocking. I expect a player to lock up once and while, but this thing runs for hours without incident. The interface design is tremendous as well. For every one thing I dislike about the player, there's a half-dozen things I do like.

Originally Posted by evilcartman It is also probably easier to have your friends act out a movie in front of you than make a play list for the thing. You cannot even play files consecutive in a directory. LAME.

The 6600 does play files consecutively without a problem. I've read reviews of some players that said 1) Press Play to play just that one file, 2) Press Enter to play all files in a directly. This is ridiculous. When you play a CD there isn't a device in the world that has a button to play one track then stop. When you play a DVD there isn't an option to play one chapter then stop. And yet, some of these media players implement a play-one-file-then-stop function in a directory of files. Thankfully, the 6600 isn't this stupid and performs logically.

Originally Posted by evilcartman I'm convinced they call it the Popcorn Hour because it takes an hour to boot up and every time you press a button, you have time to make popcorn.

Well, the 6600 takes about a minute to start up, but I don't care. I tend to leave it on all day. I never hear the fan, and since I don't have a hard drive in there I don't have to worry about overheating. This thing doesn't actually get warm at all. It's always cold to the touch.

[Kei Clark]

Originally Posted by speaker I'm using the latest beta, 1.9.1 Beta 5. Rewind and fast-forward only works for .mpg and .vob. All others (.avi, .mkv, .ts, etc) can't deal with it. Attempting to fast-forward beyond 2x can cause some .mkv's to freeze during playback. It doesn't freeze the entire player, just the playback for that one file. Pressing stop resolves it.

Just tested with a blu-ray rip and iso, mkv that contains h.264 video, transport streams that contain both h.264 and mpeg-2, all worked fine over network with 2-32x ff/rw.

HDMI. The popping sound occurs every time a file starts playing or when I use the jump back or forward 15 seconds button. It emits two quick popping sounds right before playback begins. Muting the 6600 or turning the volume all the way down makes no difference. The popping sound is always the same decibel, regardless of the 6600 or TV's volume setting. Strangely enough, turning the volume all the way down directly on the TV doesn't stop the popping either. The only way I can be rid of it is to mute the TV directly. I've never experienced this popping with any other device (HD cable receiver, Bluray player). It feels like the 6600 and the TV are temporarily losing their connection with one another and this popping noise is the two signals getting back in sync.

I don't know if you have a way to test on any other TV, but the audio popping is not normal. You may want to try reverting to the original firmware then try upgrading again. If that does not fix the problem, it may be a good idea to talk to your dealer about an exchange.

[speaker]

Originally Posted by smills Have you tried the same file from HDD, over the network (wired and Wireless) ? I tested Lord of the Rings Extended ver 1080p mkv (20gb) on the HDD (32x), via NFS wired (32x), via NFS wireless (2x and it freezes) - actually with wireless it doesn't always even play the file. The network has everything to do with the ability to stream data effectively. I've also had some files that just don't FF more than 4x, but that was not a fault of the player but rather the header of the actual file.

I just tried a USB memory stick and it still can't fast-forward beyond 2x with a 720p .mkv file, or an itty bitty .avi. I haven't bother putting a hard drive in the player to test because 1) I don't have one lying around, and 2) even if it did work, I prefer network playback.

I have the Tvix wired to the network router through a powerline adapter, which I remember you originally suggested (by the way, thanks for your recommendation).

It's capable of smoothly streaming anything of any bitrate as long as I don't attempt to go beyond 2x. I've never bothered with wireless after hearing of so many problematic posts regarding its performance.