Micca EP950 1080p 3D Digital Media Player with Gigabit Network, USB 3.0, and 3.5″ HDD Drive Bay (Realtek 1186)
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- Realtek 1186 Video Processor Provides Best-In-Class Video and Audio Decoding Performance
- 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet LAN and Optional 802.11n WiFi-Ready For Fast and Powerful Networking
- Advanced Media Library Feature With Album/Movie Cover Art Display and Easy Search Functionality
- Supports all popular video formats including BDMV, BD-ISO, MKV, MOV, WMV, TS, M2TS, MTS, FLV, AVI, DVD-ISO, VOB, M2P, MP4, MPG, DAT, ASF, TP TRP, SWF
- Supports all popular audio formats including DTS-HD Master, DTS, Dolby True HD, Dolby Digital Plus, AC3, LPCM, ADPCM, FLAC, APE, LC-AAC, HE-AAC, MP3, OGG, WAM, WAV
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The EP950 is a premium digital media player designed to easily organize and playback HD videos, music or photos from USB drives of any size. With robust network connectivity and optional WiFi wireless networking, the EP950 can play streamed media content over the network or the Internet. Whether playing heart warming home videos in the comfort of a living room or rendering a jaw dropping blockbuster movie experience in a home theater, the EP950 is exceptionally versatile, making it a great choice for all media playback needs.
Next-Gen Powerful
When it comes to performance and features, the EP950 excels in all the important areas. It incorporates the powerful Realtek RTD1186 processor for stunning video quality and fluid playback at up to 1080p full HD resolution. Its Gigabit Ethernet LAN port is up to 10 times faster than the network on previous generation players. For unmatched storage capacity, the EP950 has an internal 3.5″ drive bay and supports hard drives larger than
Micca EP950 1080p 3D Digital Media Player with Gigabit Network, USB 3.0, and 3.5″ HDD Drive Bay (Realtek 1186)
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Road Train
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Dead Island – Walkthrough Co-Op w/ Kootra, SSoH & Nova Ep.34: Dats Mah Hammer
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It Helps us Zombie Slayers www.youtube.com Dead Island walkthrough / playthrough with creatures Kootra, Sp00n and Seamus. Come with us as we venture into the land of zombies and touch their boobies.. We also loot alot of items and stuff and stuff. Completely MLG pro at this game. Kootra: www.youtube.com Sp00n: www.youtube.com Seamus: www.youtube.com Fan Mah Facebook: www.facebook.com Follow Mah Twitter: twitter.com Shirts: www.redbubble.com The island of Banoi is a lush, tropical paradise in the South Pacific where its flagship Royal Palms Resort serves as the ultimate getaway for vacationers with money to burn. However, all good things must soon come to an end – and the picturesque resort falls into madness, carnage and chaos after a mysterious and contagious zombie outbreak claims its once peaceful atmosphere. Cut off from the rest of the world, only four individuals who strangely find themselves immune to zombification have the power to protect the remaining survivors from the horrors of the island, to discover what’s really going on and find a way to escape before their own fatal ends.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Tips:
February 11, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Outstanding Network HD Media Player! The search is over…,
I went through quite a few media players recently. Almost gave up on idea of finding the one that plays full HD rips flawlessly. The perfect player for me would be one that is reasonably priced and plays direct (m2ts) HD rip with 24p and HD audio over network from NAS, 3D is welcome too. 1185 based players were close, but were dropping audio during playback, occasionally. Popcorn Hour A-300 was horrible bug fested player. Dune HD TV-101 was almost there, but could not hold the candle with HD Audio and does not play DivX encoded video.
This player based on 1186 Realtek chip and handles full HD video and HD audio flawlessly:
24p – check
Audio sync – check
TrueHD – check
DTS-HD – check
Subtitles -check
3D-SBS/TOB – check (activate from player popup menu during playback, once in 3D – player’s playback menu and info popups would work in 3D mode)
3D-SBS/TOB SRT subtitles – check
SMB shares – check
NFS shares – check
UPNP streaming – check
It plays iso and BD folder fine. Menus sometimes not shown – plays movie straight.
I tried 3D iso – some will show menu, some not. You can configure player to prompt for iso playback mode. “Direct play” plays 3D movie version correctly on every iso I tried so far. When “BD Lite” or “BD 1.0″ used it may not show 3D movie for playback or just plays 3D movie straight. TV switched to 3D mode automatically. I am sure there will be few 3D bugs there, but it is not critical for me. Besides, my preferred method is “Direct play” and it works correctly.
As far as non 3D player – it works flawlessly and quite impressive for brand new product, just released . No fw updates yet published, but I feel like not updating fw, because I do not have any issues yet.
Thanks to Realtek and Micca for making it available. Job well done!
At the moment, this player will wipe floor with the likes of Dune-HD or Popcorn Hour. Not to mention full 3D support.
Time has come to retire WDTV HD Live. It took a while, WDTV is quite a player, but stable only with older fw 1.03.49 and older… With WDTV, it gets more and more crippled as a player with every fw update.
Issues found:
1) Rare audio dropouts with DTS-768Kbps audio tracks. It was present in earlier Realtek based players as well. This is very rarely used DTS bit rate, usually present in SkyHD movies. The remedy is simple – just convert it to more common DTS-1536Kbps and problem solved.
2) Some times it takes a few tries to power on the unit from remote. It works ok, but with very short power button press on remote. Looks more like a jitter, long press would turn unit on and then immediately off, so it looks like unit never turned on. This is being like this for many Realtek based players. Front panel on/off touch button works fine all the time.
3) Some AVC BD rips could cause a micro stutter in 24P mode, disabling 24P mode corrects the issue.
4) Only one movie with DTS-HD Master causes micro audio drops every 10 mins or so (nothing special about this movie, may be audio encoding issue, not the player). Remediation: Set “Deep Color”=off. I consider it as useless option anyway. I never encountered movie encoded with more than 8-bit color, increasing HDMI data bandwidth by 25/50% with no benefits.
Note, it is “micro” issues, most folks may not even notice it.
Still, very small issue considering product is just released.
Good Luck!
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|February 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm
technically brilliant – immature company,
The device, and all that it does is awesome. Totally worth the money, in my opinion this is the right price vs feature set – I think it is probably equal to or superior to the popcorn hour, and *can* boot to Android which is a plus.
If you’re anything like me, you spend days agonizing and reading about the realtek 1185 vs the 1186 chipset, and trying to rationalize why Popcorn hour is $300+ for the same feature set, and the CPU is 750 on this vs 900 there, and read reviews online of people struggling with the 500 of 1185 chipset…blah blah blah.
In conclusion – technically this device does everything I could ask for, and is the best raw value.
The bummer for me is I’ve owned it for a month, and had to engage support a half a dozen times (which can only be done via email)..each time I get a response timely (the next day) but it’s always a 1 sentence answer. The company is growing and focusing on just getting their product out there, that all the foundations of how to make the device usable to the end user eludes them. The fundamental programming is great (user interface etc)..all that’s fine. The problem, is no guide or documentation exists anywhere.
Here are my examples :
1.) Mine came with firmware 1.0.2.6 out of box, I inserted a new hard drive, with all my media formatted NTFS with Win 7. The device could read but not copy. Support said I had to wipe my 100gb of data and let the device format. I did. Device formatted and then could not find the hard drive any longer. It saw it in setup, but couldn’t read it in the user interface. So Micca tells me to re-flash firmware. Except – they didn’t have any firmware on their site for download, and the link they sent me was fake. They posted it to their site that day, and it solved the problem for me (flashing via USB). I flashed to 1.0.26 – that struck me as weird. Also this version of firmware introduced a new hard coded asian channel called Hi something. It’s weird..I can’t even read it..why is it in my face all the time now?
2.) No document says anything for how to make the BT Client work, even in other EP models Micca reps tell people to use a 3rd party app <sigh>… nowhere does it say how to use it..only turn it on/off. I found a folder on the hard drive named BT..so I tried copying a torrent file there – nope nothing. Then Micca emails me back and says navigate to the device in web browser via IP..and it should work. The web server has error 500, failed to start. Still working with Micca on how to fix this.
3.) It says wifi optional, but they actually only install the drivers for 1 wifi chipset. There are maybe 5-8 manufacturers who created that chipset, and so you have to buy that specific wifi dongle from some manufacturer. None of those are guaranteed to work, except the 2.5 star one sold by Micca, but they are *likely* to work. In no document or link is this information found, once again after contacting Micca – I got info link to EP600 compatible wifi dongles… I guess I should have read other model manuals more. That seemed silly to me… the least they can do is test a few dongles against their product and install some generic drivers to open that up. I bought that dongle, and it works, and I’m happy. Frustrated that there is no clarity anywhere about it.
That’s only 3 of maybe 4-5 issues like that I’ve had. Everytime I solve one problem, a new roadblock presents itself. I feel like I want to like Micca as a company, cause this is a cool product that is fundamentally innovative and blends the realm of TV streaming with being rid of physical media. However, they are just feeling the pains of being an immature company. Growing pains make a company awkward. I would advise they open up a forum so they can crowd source these problems, and shift much of their support burden away. I’m sure I’m not the only one with these issues. It would also serve as a centralizing point to prioritize development issues.
Fundamentally the device is good, the bulk of the interface is usable, it’s fast, at least somewhat intuitive – and plays media great. If my consumer experience were strictly based on the tech device – it would be 5 stars. Probably in 6-9 months they will have caught up with my issues. However, my consumer experience for now is painful. I’ve had my exciting new toy for 4 weeks, and I still can’t use it to it’s fullest extent. What should have been fun to open out of box and plug in and do neat stuff with, instead has turned into a multimonth pain of copying a giant library back and forth several times and still not working fully. I have to dock 2 stars strictly because nothing should take me more than a month to make work, and I’m an advanced IT person for a living – I expect the user challenge is insurmountable for the average Joe – at least until these issues are resolved out of box. I believe they will get…
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|February 11, 2012 at 4:13 pm
Plays everything, has all the connections, cheaper than the competition!,
I’ve been looking for a decent Media Player for at least 18 months, and this is by far the best one I’ve found for my needs. As for connections, it has:
1 GB ethernet port
1 external SATA port (both data and power)
2 USB 2.0 ports (A, Female)
1 SD memory card slot
1 USB 3.0 port (B, Female)
1 HDMI port
RCA composite and component video and audio out
RCA Coaxial port (function unknown)
One optical audio out port.
The unit can accommodate 1 3.5 inch internal SATA drive.
My primary use for this media player is to play video recordings for debriefing, so the fact the Realtek 1186 chip plays .mts files out the starting gate is a definite plus. The addition of a USB 3.0 port, an external SATA port and a gb ethernet port provides for many options to shunt video to/from storage devices quickly without overloading the USB 2.0 bus. The remote control is SO much better than Previous media players I’ve used that I think it’s great, though I suspect there is at least some room for improvement of button placement etc. (like moving play/pause buttons from the bottom of the remote to the center…). Anyhow, buttons are clearly labeled enough that one can figure out their functionality without consulting a manual, which is a definite plus. Once the player is booted up, it is very snappy and responsive to commands from the remote, definite plus.
So far I’ve tested mp3s, mkvs, divx AVIs, jpgs, and mts files, all seem to play snappily with little lag between button press and media playing. When displaying JPGs the player automatically goes into slideshow mode, with the ability to change slide show settings (random sequence, repeat, fades, time to transition, etc.) This is actually very cool, tempting to use it just for picture viewing! Video was a little frighting at first, as at 1080 60p out, the TV’s dejudder caused any camera panning to induce a vertigo effect. Once I turned off the TV’s dejutter, video looked fine.
As for Cons, the boot up sequence takes a little while, from turning on the unit to getting a menu it takes 30-45 seconds. It takes an additional 15-30 seconds for connected devices to be recognized, so feels more like a computer boot time than most gadgets. Though it seems to shut down quickly, trying to restart it immediately after shutdown the unit seems to resist, so I suspect the shutdown sequence takes at least 10-15 seconds as well. The device has a fan which fires up as the device turns on. It’s resonance can vibrate things near by. When dampened by something, the sound is barely audible from 6 feet away. I’m not sure about the permanence of media library, but I was having some harddrive issues when the media library seemed a little fritzy, so unknown at this point. It doesn’t come with a USB 3.0 cable of any kind, nor an hdmi cable, it does come with a (6 inch?) ESATA extension cable, and a composite video out cable. To use the USB 3.0 port, some esoteric cables/gender changers will likely be required.
I haven’t tried any networking with the Unit, either wired or wireless. I tried playing one Blu-ray ISO, which seemed to work with no menus, but I didn’t investigate this feature too much. I haven’t tried any 3d content. I haven’t tried any of the Video/Audio outputs except hdmi, for my needs that maybe the RCA stereo out from the Composite Video should do the trick. And I haven’t tried any of the internet features of the unit, it has a built in browser, support for Android 2.2 and any apps that can run on it, a section for “premium apps” (12-20 internet widget thingies), etc. Anyway, all of this functionality is interesting, but untried by me at this point.
So in summary, with a good remote, good to very good screen navigation menus, snappy response times, a multitude of connection options, and a price that as of this review is 100 dollars less than similar products with a realtek 1186 chipset, the Micca EP950 seems a winner. If you are considering this product for it’s more advanced features (namely playing 3d content), it might behoove you to wait for the product to mature, newer firmware to be released, and competing products to be introduced to drive down prices.
I’m giving it 4 stars only because the gadget is still new to me and there may be serious issues lurking underneath (networking, anyone?) but for my uses it’s more like a 5 star Digital media player.
Hope that helps!
Update: 12/29/11
New Pro: the unit will play music and show pictures/jpgs simultaneously, definitely useful for making those vacation photo presentations just a little more enjoyable…
New BIG con: it doesn’t play video in slow motion. I know most people won’t miss this feature, and very few other media players seem to support slow motion playback, but for anyone who want’s to view fast action video…
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