Evesham iplayer - the Freeview PVR you've dreamt about!

[explicitlyrics]

Did I miss something or were the random references to Netgear intended in that article? Surely you meant Evesham... The references were on pages 3 and 8.

[MarkR]

I enjoyed your review Bob. Ouch.

I didn't know recordings split by Iplayer (1)(2)(3) would automatically play one after another. I am hoping if you split a file not recorded on the iplayer and name the parts *(1).mp2 *(2).mp2 it will play them sequentially. That would be handy.

Copy protected HD recordings sounds worrying. Does the copy protection stay with the recording so if you export and then re-import it still works? Will a protected recording exported to a USB drive play off the USB drive?

I tend to agree with all your conclusions - Its been badly implemented - particularly the HD side - ethernet and DVB. The crashing isnt good either or scart SD output quality. That said in the past Netgem did get round to fixing most things in the end. My SD Netgem STB is excellent - a reason I took a chance on this one. We will see.

My plusses - I think the HDMI output quality is superb - as good as can be expected from the bitrate. Exporting to USB drive for transfer to DVD without reencoding is excellent too.

Bob, you have given us "early adopters" alot of support and help through this thread. Thank you. You say you can't think of a good thing to say but I think secretly you like it, even if you don't know why.

[Bob Crabtree]

Did I miss something or were the random references to Netgear intended in that article? Surely you meant Evesham... The references were on pages 3 and 8.

Not quite, what I wanted to say was "Netgem".

That's because, as I pointed out on the first page,

The iplayer is designed and made in France - by Netgem, a French outfit, oddly enough.

Thanks for the heads-up, though, now sorted!

[Bob Crabtree]

Good review Bob. If you don't mind I'd like to present a "second opinion".

Damian,

No, I think that other folk's opinions are hugely useful.

My review is simply a snapshot in time (okay, I had the iplayer for more than two months) and I certainly don't pretend that my opinion as a reviewer is any more valid than anyone else's.

I must say I've warmed to the iplayer over time. Bear in mind that I only have an old SD TV, that I didn't have access to the HD trial, and that I am, without any shadow of a doubt, a complete computer geek.

Just like you, I'm a geek - though my geekishness doesn't compare to that of some of my colleagues.

However, as the final-thoughts page makes clear, the iplayer isn't being sold as a geek's toy, and so the review is written from the perspective of iplayer being a piece of consumer electronics kit.

I agree entirely with many of the negatives levelled at the iplayer. 2Gb file limits, slow networking performance, a poor browser. Yes there's no denying those. And there were some that weren't listed - my iplayer still reboots itself shortly after being put into standby mode, pretty much without fail. And many of us have had our hard disks wiped after powering off and on. Not good attributes for a piece of consumer electronics.

Well, given the many useful comments you've already made to this thread, I would never have doubted your agreement!

But try hard and there are positives. Its small, and I like that. Apart from an occasional hard disk seek, its completely silent. No fans here. No huge media PC consuming gigawatts of electricity.

Indeed that's true. I was also going to add a funny, "Yeah but think of the power and cash people will save by not buying one", then thought better of it because, fact is, a lot of non-techie people who might buy would only save on electricity, cos they'd have spent the cash and end up not using the iplayer - certainly not using it as much as the features-set and hype would have led them to believe they would.

As a pure PVR, its fast. I wish my NTL settop box could display a 5 day programme guide and do DTV text as quickly.

Again, you make a valid point. And, perhaps, a week or two down the line I may revisit the review and add in some positives. But my concern about doing that is that it will encourage some people to buy a product that simply doesn't deliver in so many ways on the promises made for it.

Exporting over a network is slow. But does it matter? Set the export going, put the iplayer into standby and the export still happens. In my environment, where the iplayer predominantly uses an always-on NAS appliance for both exporting and streaming, it really doesn't matter how long the exports take. Just leave it overnight.

Yes, I think it does matter - and it will matter a WHOLE lot more if and when HD broadcasts arrive on Freeview. But, even now, it matters.

And what seriously hacks me off is that the network performance is so dire compared to what it could and should have been.

As the review shows only too clearly, the potential performance of 100Base-T Ethernet - for export and playback - is massively more than iplayer delivers and that, to me, is utterly unacceptable.

And it's unacceptable even if, as I believe is the case, the protection of TV-broadcast movies may well lay at the heart of many of the issues with iplayer's export capabilities.

Also, while I appreciate that you, Damian The Geek, are working with iplayer in one particular way, that way is not the way that the non-geek buyer would expect to work and, additionally, not a way that Evesham even tells people they can use.

Where in any of the info about iplayer does it say that for network use it can work with anything other than a PC running Windows Media Connect?

Speaking of streaming, having a PVR that can display my photo collection on the TV is one of the key reasons I bought it. Its a little clunky, as all iplayer things are, but the photos are displayed very crisply and its become a really pleasant way of showing family and friends our collection.

Have to say that, although the iplayer does indeed let you do this, its way of doing it is really very sub-optimal, with none of the clever stuff that makes slide-shows more enjoyable - fades (or other neat transitions); good matching of background music (or commentary); whatever.

When it comes down to it, its still difficult to recommend the iplayer for most people.

Oh, indeed, and that's a point made quite forcefully in the review, I'm sure you'll agree.

But, for me, the main reasons for that are the price and the lack of twin tuners. Fix either of those and suddenly it would be a lot more appealing. Priced at 150 quid, you could forgive it a lot...

I'm sure, for you personally, that's correct, but the product would still be no more suitable for the average person even if it were priced at £150.

What you've made me realise, though, is that the final page in fact didn't include one additional stick with which I should have beaten iplayer - its only having a single tuner.

I did, of course, mention this fact quite early on in the review but really should also have brought it up again on the final page.

[Bob Crabtree]

I enjoyed your review Bob. Ouch.

We aim to please (well, the readers, at any rate!)

I didn't know recordings split by Iplayer (1)(2)(3) would automatically play one after another. I am hoping if you split a file not recorded on the iplayer and name the parts *(1).mp2 *(2).mp2 it will play them sequentially. That would be handy.

I simply never thought to try that and, now that the iplayer has gone back to Evesham, I won't be able to.

I can't imagine that this will work but would be fascinated to hear whether it does - and, if it does, to learn about some different scenarios you can envisage where this feature would be useful.

Copy protected HD recordings sounds worrying. Does the copy protection stay with the recording so if you export and then re-import it still works?

Well, of course, you can't actually import anything into iplayer but I'm 97.43% sure (okay, maybe, just 97.41% sure) that I did export some HD broadcasts to a USB-attached HDD, copy them to a PC then copy them back to a USB-attached HDD and find they were still playable directly from iplayer (though at no stage were they ever playable with any of the many video player apps I have on my PC).

Will a protected recording exported to a USB drive play off the USB drive?

Oh yes (as the Churchill dog might say).

I tend to agree with all your conclusions - Its been badly implemented - particularly the HD side - ethernet and DVB. The crashing isnt good either or scart SD output quality. That said in the past Netgem did get round to fixing most things in the end. My SD Netgem STB is excellent - a reason I took a chance on this one. We will see.

And I genuinely hope that, in fact, your bet pays off - it's just that it's not a bet that I personally would undertake or that I feel able to suggest our readers undertake.

My plusses - I think the HDMI output quality is superb - as good as can be expected from the bitrate.

I genuinely didn't feel qualified to make any useful comparative comments about this but did think that even on the set I was using - that not-overly-expensive Evesham Alqemi 32SX (which doesn't offer full HD resolution) - the picture quality of HD broadcasts from the iplayer was very lovely.

Exporting to USB drive for transfer to DVD without reencoding is excellent too.

That, in my view, is probably the iplayer's very best feature but it's a damn shame that USB hasn't been better implemented with iplayer.

Transfers need to be a whole lot faster and the iplayer's handling of USB needs to be a whole lot more responsive (in that, like with a PC, you just connect a USB drive and it's seen virtually instantly).

It's not acceptable, in my view, that you can often need to cycle the iplayer fully on and off for a USB-attached hard disk to be seen.

And, of course, there remains the utterly daft situation where there is no support for NTFS on attached USB drives and none for files larger than 2GB on USB-attached FAT32 drives and NTFS drives accessed via a network.

Okay, people who have the confidence and knowledge can take advantage of ext2 but that's a cludge only suitable for use by technies not ordinary human beings.

Bob, you have given us "early adopters" a lot of support and help through this thread. Thank you.

I'm grateful for your thanks but, truth is, if anyone thought it worthwhile to count up, I reckon that they'd find that the bulk of the genuinely helpful comments will have come from others.

I've kept people up to date but most of the genuinely novel stuff, such as about ext2, has come from others.

You say you can't think of a good thing to say but I think secretly you like it, even if you don't know why.

Not entirely untrue. It was sorry to see the iplayer go back because I enjoyed having the ability to export movies and turn them into DVDs but, truth is, I could probably do that equally well using a Freeview USB stick tuner connected to my PC.

Fortuitously, I just happen to have a bunch of them in for review - all using the new diversity technology, the importance and usefulness of which - I'm starting to think, sadly - I have hugely over-rated in the recent news stories I've written about this technology.

[MarkRy]

Thanks Bob. Re HD copy protection - is it DRM or the an HDMI issue do you think? Or something else? Does the iplayer embed its name in the recording? Would your recording play on my iplayer?

The reason I would like the (1)(2) linked recordings to play sequentially is that say I split up an HD home movie (or any sizeable file / download) into 2gb chunks I dont want to keep going back to select the next chunk. T2 extreme was a good example. There are 4 HD wmv files that make up the movie. Putting them on the USB drive I can watch the HD movie without using my PC (DRM needs to be removed - US proxy server required to activate a 5 day PC licence - ridiculous)

[Bob Crabtree]

Mark,

Thanks for the info.

As for the queries - pass on all but the last one!

And, in that regard, if you PM me with your postal address, I'll send you on dual-layer DVD some unadulterated BBC HD recordings that I made on iplayer - so you can discover for yourself whether they'll play on your iplayer.

Of course, you'd need to get them onto an ext2-formatted USB drive before you'd be able to attempt to play them but if you can do that, then you're welcome to that DVD.

[chrestomanci]

Thanks Bob. Re HD copy protection - is it DRM or the an HDMI issue do you think? Or something else? Does the iplayer embed its name in the recording? Would your recording play on my iplayer?

If you read the report from the BBC Trial (912KB PDF - right-click to download) it says that the test broadcasts where in the clear (not encypted), and that the set top boxes used did not have viewing card slots. This means that the broadcasts that the iPlayer receves are not encrypted. There are two possiblitites: Either the iPlayer is encrypting the HD recordings it saves to the network or USB drives, (due to dodgy pressure from the entertainment industry). Or people are mistaking DRM for other software issues when they are trying to transcode the recordings.

For example, DVB transitions (whether terrestrials, satellite etc) use a packet size of 188 bytes. I have a vague recollection from when I was working at Sky that the DVB-S2 used for Sky HD broadcasts use longer packets (240 bytes perhaps?). If the BBC did that for their HD test, then all existing DVB demux tools such as ProjectX will be unable to demux the stream, and most people will probably the error is due to DRM.

[Bob Crabtree]

If you read the report from the BBC Trial (912KB PDF - right-click to download) it says that the test broadcasts where in the clear (not encypted), and that the set top boxes used did not have viewing card slots. This means that the broadcasts that the iPlayer receves are not encrypted. There are two possiblitites: Either the iPlayer is encrypting the HD recordings it saves to the network or USB drives, (due to dodgy pressure from the entertainment industry). Or people are mistaking DRM for other software issues when they are trying to transcode the recordings.

For example, DVB transitions (whether terrestrials, satellite etc) use a packet size of 188 bytes. I have a vague recollection from when I was working at Sky that the DVB-S2 used for Sky HD broadcasts use longer packets (240 bytes perhaps?). If the BBC did that for their HD test, then all existing DVB demux tools such as ProjectX will be unable to demux the stream, and most people will probably the error is due to DRM.

chrestomanci,

You're a worryingly smart bleeder, you are!!



Seeing your posting, I've looked again at some of the few BBC HD recordings I still have here and can see that, in fact, the playback problem I'm having on the PC is not to do with encryption!

Instead, this problem is indicative of the fact that the PC I'm using (Athlon 64+ 3200; 2GB RAM; ATI 9600 graphics) is simply not powerful enough to untangle the convoluted structure of the AVC/MPEG-4 video Codec that the BBC is using to compress these broadcast.

That thought never even crossed my mind before, simply because the file sizes are so massive, relative to SD, that I didn't even think to consider whether they were using a different Codec (which, at the back of my mind, I knew they must be doing) and what the impact of that would be.

VERY stupid, I know but that's the truth.

I have a beta here of a program whose name I can't mention and this is able to play the files, albeit only in a small window with no sound and at a greatly reduced frame rate.

However, this program has no ability to transcode such files into anything else though it can actually produce them (well, AVC variants of some sort) from files of other types.

It's also the case that VLC can almost play them - but, here it ends up falling over soon after I open up an HD file (and that's with the latest version - vlc-0.8.6a).

So, what I want to know is what app - if any - is out there that can open these files and then transcode them?

I thought that QT Pro (V7.1.3 here) might be suitable, but it's not, it won't even open them.

Anyone got any ideas?

Oh and MarkRy, I'll still be sending you those HD recordings and some other bits I promised in my PM.

That way - and assuming your PC is powerful enough to play this stuff - we'll be able to confirm my latest chrestomanci-based theory.

[goldfinger]

Why bother with anything else that VLC (videolan.org) it can play most formats and most codects, including MPEG-TS and BBC HD recorded TS (H.264).

[SpawnofSonic]

I have got to say utter disappointment, i honestly thought and expected more from Evesham on this. A great review shows the potential pitfuls with this product and it's definately now off my purchase list.

Hopefully something decent will appear on the market soon

[Bob Crabtree]

Why bother with anything else that VLC (videolan.org) it can play most formats and most codects, including MPEG-TS and BBC HD recorded TS (H.264).

Personally, because, as I said in my most recent posting,

It's also the case that VLC can almost play them - but, here it ends up falling over soon after I open up an HD file (and that's with the latest version - vlc-0.8.6a)

[gavcav]

hi bob,
fantastically in depth review..i've just got the i-player hd and i must say i was expecting more in the way of tv picture quality.
in saying that,it brought to my attention the fact i needed to upgrade my analogue aerial to log leriodic digital.after doing this,things have greatly improved.
i read your review with a lot of interest,but i did come to conclusion that i personally,found you focused on things that i find secondary when using the i-player..for me,i wanted a HDMI equipped,digital STB with HDD and also to be ready for when/if freeview begin to tx HD?
not,as i felt you did,comment mainly on the ability to use various usb drives,moving files and general interaction with your pc..yes,i'd like to eventually have the ability to link wirelessly from the i-player to my laptop and play my music via my hdtv..but at the moment i'm more than happy with it as a digital STB PVR with HD capability..but a great review,one of the best i've read..congrtulations...regs gavcav

[chrestomanci]

chrestomanci,

You're a worryingly smart bleeder, you are!!

Thanks You make me blush.

Seeing your posting, I've looked again at some of the few BBC HD recordings I still have here and can see that, in fact, the playback problem I'm having on the PC is not to do with encryption!

Instead, this problem is indicative of the fact that the PC I'm using (Athlon 64+ 3200; 2GB RAM; ATI 9600 graphics) is simply not powerful enough to untangle the convoluted structure of the AVC/MPEG-4 video Codec that the BBC is using to compress these broadcast.

That thought never even crossed my mind before, simply because the file sizes are so massive, relative to SD, that I didn't even think to consider whether they were using a different Codec (which, at the back of my mind, I knew they must be doing) and what the impact of that would be.

VERY stupid, I know but that's the truth.

I have a beta here of a program whose name I can't mention and this is able to play the files, albeit only in a small window with no sound and at a greatly reduced frame rate.

The way I see it, there three issues with playing back the stream: The encapsulation (Transport stream format, AVI file etc), The Codec used (MPEG-4 AVC), and the file size and data rate. (20 MBits/Second).

The codec should be easiset to solve. If you search for it on Google, you get the Wikipedia entry, and the section of the Doom9 forums about it. The codec, that is also known as H264 is widely used, on everything from mobile phone video messaging to high def TV. In theory this would mean that anything that can decode any H264 recording, should be able to decode the BBC-HD broadcasts, though not necessarily at realtime speed. The complication is the many different profiles. About 2 years ago I was working on the design of a hardware encoder chip for H264, but only for the baseline profile used on phones. So a phone decoder would not cope with the BBC-HD broadcasts.

Another way of decoding the stream, if you can get it into the correct format, would be the assisted hardware decoder in the latest graphics cards. I have read that H264 decoding has been a feature of 7xxx series nVidia cards and X1xx ATI cards. The Doom9 formus would also be a good source of information on players for the codec.

The second issue is the encapsulation. If the transport stream uses the same 188 byte block size as standard def broadcasts, then I would attempt to demux the stream with ProjectX. If it demuxes it sucessfuly, you will get a series of elementary streams, that may be easer to find a compatible player for than the transport stream, obvously the playback will be without sound. The other appraoch will be to play the TS stream without demuxing it. I know that recent versions of mplayer will play TS streams without demuxing first, and mplayer ususaly plays practicaly every documented video format, so that would be the first I would try. There is a windows port of mplayer avalable, as well as windows.

The third issue is the file size & data rate. Appart from using a powerfull PC, I would look into hardware accelaration. As I said some recent graphics cards are able to hardware accelarate H264 playback. I think mplayer also uses open-GL to accelarate some aspects of playback, though probably not as much is possible.

However, this program has no ability to transcode such files into anything else though it can actually produce them (well, AVC variants of some sort) from files of other types.

So, what I want to know is what app - if any - is out there that can open these files and then transcode them?

If you can get mplayer to playback the stream (even at reduced frame rate), you can used it to transcode. mplayer comes with mencoder, that can use any format that mplayer can decode as an input for re-encoding. However, I have found mencoder quite difficult to consider, so it would not be my first choce if other transcoders work.

I have had alot of sucess under linux with an aplication called avidemux. It is totaly misnamed, it does not demux AVI files, it transcodes them. It can read and encode into a lot of video formats including H264, so it should be capable of transcoding, but transport streams are not a supported contaner format, so it would be necessary to convert the recording to a different contaner, or demux the stream and load the video and audio seperately. The other problem with AVI demux is that it is linux only.

If someone could put some of a transport stream onto a DVD-R and post it to me, I could try demuxing it and loading it into avidemux on my linux box and seeing if it can be transcoded that way.

I thought that QT Pro (V7.1.3 here) might be suitable, but it's not, it won't even open them.

That is almost certainly an issue of contaner formats. If you could repackage the recording to a differenet container format, then Quick Time would be a good choice of player.

[Bob Crabtree]

hi bob,
fantastically in depth review..i've just got the i-player hd and i must say i was expecting more in the way of tv picture quality.
in saying that,it brought to my attention the fact i needed to upgrade my analogue aerial to log leriodic digital.after doing this,things have greatly improved.

Thanks for the kind words! Glad to know that the review enabled you to get better reception by a change in aerial.

i read your review with a lot of interest,but i did come to conclusion that i personally,found you focused on things that i find secondary when using the i-player..for me,i wanted a HDMI equipped,digital STB with HDD and also to be ready for when/if freeview begin to tx HD?

I fully understand what you are saying but the question that a reviewer would have to pose - as I did obliquely - is whether the current asking price is reasonable for a unit with the features you specifically wanted.

And, I didn't think it was. I would have judged things differently if those other features which go towards justifying the high price had worked well but they didn't and this made the small size of the internal hard disk a serious limitation.

And, as I pointed out, that limitation will be seriously exposed as and when HD transmission arrive on Freeview.

not,as i felt you did,comment mainly on the ability to use various usb drives,moving files and general interaction with your pc..

Trouble is, these features would make the high price more acceptable had they worked well.

yes,i'd like to eventually have the ability to link wirelessly from the i-player to my laptop and play my music via my hdtv..but at the moment i'm more than happy with it as a digital STB PVR with HD capability..

It's good to know that you are happy with what you bought - and I have little doubt that there will be some others who feel the same way.

Unfortunately, a review tends to be a one-size-fits-all thing, so there are always going to be people for whom the problems one highlights are not problems at all.

But, I have to say I'm still comfortable with the tone of the review and its overall conclusion despite the perfectly valid comments you make.

but a great review,one of the best i've read..congrtulations...regs gavcav

Thanks again for the kind words!

Cheers

Bob

[HD Guy]

Wow! What an exciting product!

May I ask where I can download the owner's manual? Thanks.