Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 10/5/2005, 4:20 PM
I checked it out but didnt see if if supported H.264 AVC, WM9, etc... and I didnt see a price or a place to buy it. :(
Serena wrote on 10/5/2005, 4:33 PM
US$3500
p@mast3rs wrote on 10/5/2005, 4:57 PM
$3500 is a bit high just for playback.
fldave wrote on 10/5/2005, 5:03 PM
I started following the support forum for the Roku player about a year and a half ago, haven't checked it out for the past 6 months. Their HD1000 / Photo Bridge has been playing HD off of the network since day one. A few people thought it was kind of buggy at first from what I gathered, but I have no recent info.

http://www.rokulabs.com/products/photobridge/specsheet.php

Has anyone on this board had any experience with it?

$300 for the box, $400 with some photo/video content. Ethernet and USB external device support.
Serena wrote on 10/5/2005, 5:07 PM
Indeed. It appears to be aimed at the commercial advertising market (shops, booths, etc) so I guess is meant to be both flexible and idiot proof. Since it contains a small HD (40GB) I guess it isn't only a player because it will accept a download to the HD. You could probably do much the same thing with a powerful laptop (if could install a suitable graphics card).
farss wrote on 10/5/2005, 5:23 PM
Certainly it's aimed at the commercial market and for that the price doesn't seem too over the top. I've read through the manual and it's good for upto 50Mb/sec. They're also recommending the Hueris encoder which is about the same price as the box, still if you want a way to playout your HD movie in a cinema that's not that expensive an option. We're paying around $1K for a 400 seat cinema per session, add to that $2K per session for a 2K res pojector and the price of the box doesn't look that bad.
And no it only plays back mpeg-1/2, I'm reliably told they're still the only codecs suitable for cinema quality projection.
Bob.
Serena wrote on 10/5/2005, 5:40 PM
Bob, that's a good point. In any theatre environment quality and reliability are essential and priced against other professional production products it isn't expensive.
Serena
Liam_Vegas wrote on 10/5/2005, 8:30 PM
And the other option (which I have) is the AVeL LinkPlayer 2 ($249) or their new unit sold as a JVC unit. ($399)


Serena wrote on 10/5/2005, 9:13 PM
Liam, those devices interface between computer and display? Are they stand alone? That is, without computer?
Serena
bruceo wrote on 10/5/2005, 9:56 PM
They can play the HD files right off a DVD with no computer required. I recommend WMV9HD. It plays Mpeg4 but not H.264
p@mast3rs wrote on 10/5/2005, 10:46 PM
Just what exactly does JVC offer that justifies a $150 overcharge? The name? Thats way weak. All they do is rebadge it and hike the price. They did nothing except label it "ProHD" and they did nothing to the player except license to sell it. Im done with JVC and they're screwing over of the customers.
B_JM wrote on 10/6/2005, 9:26 AM
sure is not the FIRST ... not even the 5th or 6th unit ...

ive been using HD playback boxes for years ... like the alcorn mcbride , multivision and quvis systems .... and there are several others ...

the alcorn mcbride unit has been around for at least 5 years or more ...

a full d-cinema quvis player with two streams (wavelet compression) and 10 channels of uncompressed audio can be upwards of 20k ++ , so this is cheap unit in retrospect ..