Review: Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player

atkulp writes "The convergence of PC media with the home entertainment system is something that has been promised for several years now. Tech-savvy computer users can easily have gigabytes of music, images, and video on hard drives, locked away from the living room setup. Many of us are looking for a simple solution that will allow our stereo/TV equipment to simply become network devices so they can consume any shared content. On the surface it sounds like a simple proposition - yet few devices can achieve this goal, and of those even fewer do it well. Some people resort to just plugging a computer into their setup so they have all of the features and media support, but finding good 10-foot interfaces can be challenging." Read on for atkulp's review of Oritron's networked DVD player to see how well it meets the all-in-one ideal.

I tried a computer-based setup and found that my wife and younger children had trouble figuring it all out. At that point I decided I needed to wait for a hardware-based solution that would work well without requiring a clunky computer near the TV.

Enter the Oritron

Having decided that nothing was available yet, you can imagine my excitement when I saw a networked DVD player in early October. This was the Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player, also known as their On Media DVD player. This unit plays many audio and video formats -- even photo/JPEG discs. Where it really shines, though, is in its ability to play streaming content over the local network. It can switch between DVD and network content with the click of a button, and is very flexible in supported formats.

What does it do?

But what can this device actually play? Through the disc slot it plays DVD/+-R/+RW, audio CD/-R/-RW, VCD, SVCD, and CDs full of JPEG images or MP3/WMA music. Over the network, it plays MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, JPEG/TIFF/BMP, MP3/WMA, and most AVI files (DivX and XviD for starters). Yes, that's right, it plays DivX over the network! You may ask why it plays AVI-based files only over the network. This is due to the interesting way that the device handles video: any format that is not handled natively is transcoded on the fly on the PC-side. This is why there is a system requirement of 1.2GHz for the PC (though one of my On Media server boxes runs just fine with a 1GHz Athlon). When an AVI file is selected, it converts it to television resolution on-the-fly. No need to pre-convert your files. This means you can watch full-quality on your laptop and desktop (with the higher monitor resolutions), and TV-quality through the unit from the same file. It will not stream DVD's (encrypted or not). It also won't stream a VCD/SVCD per se, but will stream the actual MPEG streams that are encoded for VCD/SVCD when named properly. No proprietary video formats such as Real, QuickTime, or Windows Media Video will play. I do wonder though, if someone were to write appropriate AVI-style codecs for them, if it could be managed somehow ...

The player's interface is mostly well done. I have some complaints that I'll get to in a moment, but overall it works well. Upon first turning on the unit, the player's LED display greets you with "Hello" while the TV shows the logo. It then checks for a DVD in the drive and if present immediately starts to load it. At that point (or if there is no DVD) you can press the On Media button on the remote to switch to network content. (Actually you must wait for this sequence to complete. You can't turn it on and right away press On Media.) The LED display switches to "Online," and lets you browse servers. The next time you switch to On Media mode it will go straight to the last server selected. Going back to the server list is quick and easy. Once a server is chosen it provides options for Pictures, Video, or Music. Selecting one (with the arrows and OK button on the remote) provides you with options for Folders, Playlist, or All. "Folders" shows you all folders on the shared PC. My complaint here is that it flattens them out. All folders appear at root level, which will affect how you name them. "Playlist," of course, lets you select pre-made playlists of files, and "All" shows a single flattened list of all files contained on the server for the chosen media type. Selecting a file starts the media playing.

Music plays, without any fancy visualizations, right on the menu screen. The bottom shows the title information, but you can still continue navigating to other media while it plays. MP3 music can play during a photo slideshow (this is not true of WMA however). Video plays full-screen with media information during the first few seconds along the bottom, or when needed using the Display button. Forward/Reverse works in ten-second intervals (which is also true of music), and no DVD-style slow-mo or zoom options are available. The quality is great, though. Transcoded DivX files look like DVDs (based on source quality of course), and lower quality clips play at the best quality possible. I have played full-screen and widescreen and all ranges of quality and I have never been let down by this unit. It works as advertised.

How does it work?

The unit needs to be plugged into your LAN. Instead of providing a CAT5 outlet on the back, it has a PCMCIA slot for a 16-bit wired or wireless 802.11b card. This is not the same as CardBus, which is 32-bit. You must get a 16-bit PC Card and it must be one on the company's approved list. This includes D-Link, Orinoco, Linksys, NetGear, and Microsoft products, so it's not too difficult to find. Best Buy had both the wired and wireless version of the LinkSys cards and may well have had other offerings as well. I was glad they chose this route rather than custom-branded cards at high prices.

I tested the unit with both wired and wireless cards (both from Linksys) and am pleased to report no difference in functionality. I have DHCP setup on my network, and after plugging in the wired card it just works. There are network options screens to enter static information but I didn't test those. After plugging in the wireless card it showed me a list of wireless networks in the vicinity and a simple selection got me online. It supports WEP security (wouldn't want to type all that from the remote though!), and both infrastructure and ad hoc configuration. The wireless option only supports 802.11b, but due to their method of streaming this is not a problem and the content is smooth.

PC setup is a breeze. You install the On Media software on any PC containing sharable content. Sadly there is no non-Windows support. This may be in part due to the complexity of real-time transcoding and the Universal Plug-and-Play used for network communication that plugs into the associated Windows services. Of course there's no reason why ports of the software couldn't be made, but it would not be a simple translation most likely. Once the software is installed you must select folders to scan for content. This can take some time the first time. In addition to crawling through all the folders you choose, it generates TV-friendly versions of all of your images. This is the only case where it must change a format in advance (let me stress though, it never changes any of your original files). The photo resizing is a good thing. I have a 4.2MP camera and I popped in a CD containing full-size photos. It played them all without a hitch, but there was a noticeable delay as it resized them. This is avoided with the streamed photos due to the pre-sizing. The player does not automatically rescan your folders, however you can set a schedule for it to do so. I use this so any files recorded by my PVR are added to the shared files list for easy viewing. The only downside is you can't setup schedules per folders, just one scheduled interval (though it can include as many folders to scan as desired).

Something nice about the network implementation is one PC can serve multiple units, and one unit can connect to multiple PC's (though only one at a time unfortunately). In addition, on the PC side you can see any connected players in the server interface. Since the player's network settings allows you to rename it you could see "Bedroom," "Living Room," etc. based on your setup.

I called the support number before even getting the unit to get some questions answered. The service people were knowledgeable and didn't take too long to answer, but English wasn't their first language. An attempt at more information via email didn't yield much more information, but they responded within a day. If you dig into their websites and manuals you see references to Koss. I'm not sure if they are manufacturing or supporting the unit, or some other role. I just found that interesting.

Pros:

• Well laid out remote with hotkeys to jump to music/video/pictures
• All the A/V in/out connectors (composite, S-Video, component, digital and 6-channel audio)
• Wide range of streaming content with smart choice of transcoding
• Easy network setup for wired or wireless environments
• Great quality of all supported media - you wouldn't know it's streamed!

Cons

• Would be nice to play even more content types (Ogg Vorbis, Real/QuickTime/WMV)
• Remote feels too light, makes you wonder how tough it is
• Server could be more flexible with scheduling options.

Conclusion

There are a number of things I would like Oritron to work on, but they aren't showstoppers. More granular forward/reverse, remember position in file if you turn off the unit during a movie, and even better choices for navigation would be nice. They make it clear that the unit is firmware upgradeable, though, so some of these things will hopefully be remedied in the future. The actual network-side of the unit is handled by a product called NetPlay which is licensed by Digital5, a company that just creates and licenses network DVD options for other companies. They will be forced to keep innovating to compete with other, similar offerings, so hopefully we will all benefit.

Overall, I would highly recommend the NPD3117. It's what I've been looking for in most areas. I believe there is even more that they could do to make this unit perfect but it's the closest thing I've seen yet. A great unit!

Some technical notes:

1. As noted above, the AVI streaming only works for certain AVI types. The On Media website lists the exact FourCC codes that are recognized. I'm not sure why there is the FourCC restriction though. Since it uses the codec to transcode the video it shouldn't care what type of file it is. It has occurred to me that by being creative with codecs one could create interesting hacks that would be streamed to the unit. VNC, static internet portal (headlines, weather), internet music, and web cam streaming come to mind. Email me if you are interested in discussing further...
2. According to a company spokesman, server software and firmware updates are coming very soon. According to the same person, certain features (like internet radio) will only be added to future products (I hope they don't forget about their early adopters!). Some "logical next step" features like an integrated web browser probably will not be made available due to interface/experience concerns. They want to position themselves as industry leaders in this area so expect more devices to come in the future.
3. The server software only imports media from local fixed drives. I wanted the ability to also import/play DivX content from local CD-R's. I solved this by mounting the drive into an empty NTFS folder. Now it just scans that folder like any other folder. There is a brief stutter when starting a video from CD, but then it plays as flawlessly as other media.