Please help someone with no idea - NAS type media adaptor thingies

It arrived and all is working and I'm very impressed but I did have several problems.

1) I connected to my TV with HDMI but nothing happened after the Viewsonic 3 birds logo.
After 30 mins I ended up putting the RGB in and it went further but it was all in Japanese :eek:
I began clicking everywhere until I found a menu with an English option and then looked at the Video Output and had to change to HDMI - voila

2) I couldn't login to my PC for the shared drives because it wanted a username & password but I don't use one.
After messing for 30 minutes I decided to change my PC password and noticed what my username was.
I entered both of these on the Viewsonic and voila but the problem is I don't want a password on my PC.

3) The WiFi dongle worked immediately and I'm streaming no problem but that meant I couldn't plug my external USB drive in.
I spent ages trying to insert my HDD into the eSATA/USB port but it wouldn't go (first time I'd seen one of these).
I was finally convinced it should go in so I got my magnifying visor out to measure up and eventually got it in but what a tight fit.

Everything is working OK now and I can stream from my PC to the VMP74 or vice versa and all around the house :)

I haven't got IPlayer working yet (it says coming soon) but tried the web browser shortcut and still didn't get it streaming.
There is a firmware upgrade though.

Thanks for the tips.
 
Hey dude. Very strange, that first problem! I just hooked it up with HDMI and it loaded fine first time. Glad you got it sorted, though. :)

The iPlayer functionality is indeed part of the new firmware. If you've got it hooked up to the net, you can update the firmware through the settings menu, and the iPlayer, YouTube, Live365 etc. links then show up automatically in the favourites menu.

EDIT: Just tried putting my USB stick into the eSATA/USB port. That IS a tight fight, LOL!
 
Upgraded and all working now :)

Update -
Spoke to soon - it's going back :(

It took ages to setup and I could only do it by putting the RGB in first and then kidding the HDMI to work.
After about 3 hours the sharing stopped but when I tried to put it on my main TV it all went to pot.
Once again I had to trick it into working using RGB and quickly switching to HDMI but once it had been on about 2 minutes it starts to snow until it turns off.
When it was working it was brilliant though.
 
Last edited:
dmpoole said:
Upgraded and all working now :)

Update -
Spoke to soon - it's going back :(

It took ages to setup and I could only do it by putting the RGB in first and then kidding the HDMI to work.
After about 3 hours the sharing stopped but when I tried to put it on my main TV it all went to pot.
Once again I had to trick it into working using RGB and quickly switching to HDMI but once it had been on about 2 minutes it starts to snow until it turns off.
When it was working it was brilliant though.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a duff unit. Poor show. :(
 
I've never looked at these boxes before, very impressive specs for the money. I've been running an HTPC for the last 6-7 years (currently a W7MC setup, media browser DVB T2 tuners etc)

Just thinking to myself that when they can build in TV tuners to these boxes my HTPC will be redundant.........then I spotted the PlayonDVR :eek: When they start fitting DVD-T2 tuners it looks like the HTPC days will be numbered.....
 
dmpoole said:
Hurrah -

My replacement VMP74 has arrived

Boo -

This one is faulty:(
I've just got 3 parrots on my screen and a flashing LED that goes between green & yellow on both HDMI and RGB.
Click to expand...

Jesus, not having much luck with these are you?!?!? :eek:

Mine's still going strong, working just fine from day 1.

Which retailer did you order them from?
 
dmpoole said:
Obviously I can't say but Google tells me it's the cheapest place.
I can't fault the customer service though and faulty products aren't down to them (like anybody selling on other companies gear).
I'm now wondering whether to pay an extra £100 and have a PlayonDVR.
Click to expand...

Have a read about, there seems to be various issues with the DVR side of things. Enough to put me off for 6 months or so whilst the bugs are ironed out. AC Ryan do seem to have fairly active support though, which is nice to see.

There's also rumours of a DVB-T2 version for Q2 of this year.
 
Foghorn Leghorn said:
Have a read about, there seems to be various issues with the DVR side of things. Enough to put me off for 6 months or so whilst the bugs are ironed out. AC Ryan do seem to have fairly active support though, which is nice to see.

There's also rumours of a DVB-T2 version for Q2 of this year.
Click to expand...

I've been reading the manual and the interface looks awful.
 
I'm still waiting for a working VMP74 but decided to look around because I'd want at least a couple of these devices.
After a bit of browsing I came across the SONY SMPN100 for £99 which looked the answer to my dreams.
I headed over to AVForums where it was being praised but posters kept mentioning the SONY BDP-S370 can do this and that also.
The BDP-S370 is a Bluray player that does all the same things as the SMPN100 and that is also £99.
I came home with it about 1 hour ago and it is wonderful.
It immediately found my shared drive and played everything I clicked on (apparently MKVs can only be played from the USB port though).
It also has loads of online content such as Iplayer with BBC HD (wow, I watched a bit of Wonders Of The Universe), You Tube (found an uploaded video of one of my bands that I didn't know about), and loads of other stuff.
One surprise is a channel called Moshcam with loads of live concerts on including a 1hr 22 mins of Flogging Molly live in Sydney (worth the £99 alone).
I'm not sure if you can add an external hard drive and use it has a NAS but I've decided my PC will be the main server for all the content anyway.
Another bonus is my Android phone can control it.

I'm really impressed with this streaming device and I haven't got a Bluray disk to try in it yet.
 
dmpoole said:
I'm still waiting for a working VMP74 but decided to look around because I'd want at least a couple of these devices.
After a bit of browsing I came across the SONY SMPN100 for £99 which looked the answer to my dreams.
I headed over to AVForums where it was being praised but posters kept mentioning the SONY BDP-S370 can do this and that also.
The BDP-S370 is a Bluray player that does all the same things as the SMPN100 and that is also £99.
I came home with it about 1 hour ago and it is wonderful.
It immediately found my shared drive and played everything I clicked on (apparently MKVs can only be played from the USB port though).
It also has loads of online content such as Iplayer with BBC HD (wow, I watched a bit of Wonders Of The Universe), You Tube (found an uploaded video of one of my bands that I didn't know about), and loads of other stuff.
One surprise is a channel called Moshcam with loads of live concerts on including a 1hr 22 mins of Flogging Molly live in Sydney (worth the £99 alone).
I'm not sure if you can add an external hard drive and use it has a NAS but I've decided my PC will be the main server for all the content anyway.
Another bonus is my Android phone can control it.

I'm really impressed with this streaming device and I haven't got a Bluray disk to try in it yet.
Click to expand...

My Brother got one SONY BDP-S370 from me and he loves it also like yourself he uses my OLD networked shuttle with a 1tb and 2tb hard drives shared using windows media player 11 that is tucked away inside a Bedroom cupboard also Iam using the htc app to control it. very nice blue ray player to be honest.

ps you said you use your main PC for server, what program do you use on it to share your media?
 
Last edited:
Winner! just found the replacement for my aging and noisy PS3. Thanks for the info. Can only find them for £150 with stock to sell. Mr sounds neear me only has ex-demo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom