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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Guy Incognito @ Jul 12th 2008 11:36AM
1. The remote is god-awful. The documentation is god-awful.
2. I would like faster FF/Rewind speeds - 8x just isn't fast enough.
3. I don't know if this is possible but I would like to be able to play certain files in a folder. Currently, I can only choose either to play 1 file or all the files.
kcmurphy88 @ Jul 12th 2008 4:06PM
Considering many other solutions (e.g. TVersity transcoding Xvid to Mpeg for a DirecTV box) where rewind isn't even available due to the datapath gyrations needed, I'll settle with 8x rewind.
Guy Incognito @ Jul 13th 2008 9:53AM
"(e.g. TVersity transcoding Xvid to Mpeg for a DirecTV box) where rewind isn't even available due to the datapath gyrations needed"
Please speak English - I can't understand you.
Since most video files I have don't have chapters, fast forwarding to say the 40:00 mark takes 5 minutes at 8x speed - and it seems longer than that. That takes too long and is annoying. Even if they could bump it to 10x I would appreciate it.
Or if they had a button on the remote that could skip 5 minutes ahead it would be wonderful.
kcmurphy88 @ Jul 13th 2008 2:25PM
Guy--
Most systems for moving stuff between a computer and a TV need to process the data while this happens. Almost always the data is stored in a format that is different than what the TV box needs.
For example, most downloaded video files are in either Xvid or DivX format. A very common set-top box is the DIrecTV DVR, which can play files over ethernet, BUT they have to be in another format, Mpeg for it to play them.
There are several popular programs for streaming files between the computer and TV box. THey do two things -- they connect the two boxes together on the ethernet and they convert the file from one format to another.
Problem comes up when you want to alter the flow, with, say, rewind. The software has to stop the conversion it is doing, and go back through the computer file and start over. IF you want REWIND, and not just SKIP BACK, it would have to convert the file backwards, with is awfully hard to do if not impossible. So they don't do it, and some software doesn't even do the SKIP BACK thing.
Since Popcorn Hour accepts many video formats AND understands Windows File Sharing, it doesn't need any software on the computer and doesn't need any translations. So "rewind" is mostly just a matter of accessing the file backwards. To get speed rewind, frames are discarded. There are a few technical issues still, but not nearly so many.
My comment was that I was just happy to have rewind -- how well it works isn't nearly as important. Many "free" solutions don't offer it.