What media formats are supported?

When you look at the marketing material for streamers these days it’s normal to see a whole plethora of supported formats. However, anyone familiar with streaming knows what a minefield codecs and containers can be and so whilst at first glance it may look like a particular streamer can play pretty much any format of file ever invented it’s only when you come to try and play something that you discover what the streamer really can and cannot play. But for completeness, here is everything we’re told the Neo supports:

• Blu-Ray Media
  Full Menu navigation and playback, BD-Live
  NOTE: BD-Live requires an external USB or eSATA Blu-ray drive.
  Subtitles Support – HD
  Auto 24fps support
  
• Video Support
  Full HD 1080p
  • Codec format:
    – H.264 HP@L4.1 to 1080p
    – VC1 MP@HL, AP@L3
    – WMV 7/8/9
    – MPEG-2 MP@HL to 1080p
    – MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP@L5 to 10 Mbps (Xvid)
    – MPEG1/2/4 SD
    – H.263
    
  • Container format: AVI, Xvid, MOV, MP4, MPEG2-PS, MPEG2-TS, DVD ISO/VOB/IFO, MKV, ASF, AVCHD, DivX, WMV, M4A, M2TS, MTS, MP1, MP2, MPG, DVR-MS.
    
  • Blu-ray (external USB Blu-ray player not supported)
    
  • Auto 24fps support
    DVD support with Full Menu & Navigation
• Subtitles
  HD + placement supporting SRT, SMI, SSA, SUB, TXT, DVD, PGS
  
• Audio
  Dolby® Digital (AC3), Dolby® Digital Plus, TrueHD
  DTS 2.0+, DTS HD 7.1 and DTS HD MA 7.1 (passthru)
  MP3 up to 320 Kbps or variable bit rate (VBR)
  WMA8 and WMA9 up to 192 Kbps or variable bit rate (VBR)
  WMAPro, AAC, FLAC (to 5.1, 192Khz), PCM/LPCM/WAV (to 5.1, 192Khz)
  Internet radio (streaming MP3)
  MKA
  
• Photos
  JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF
  Slideshow on the fly changes
  Slideshow Transition mode with 7 HQ effects inc. Ken burns
  Slideshow music source via radio or local or network
  
• Internet content
  YouTube
  Video On Demand Acetrax – EMEA (Coming Soon est Oct.)
  Music/Radio via Shoutcast and Radiotime (Coming Soon est Sept.)
  Photos via Flicker and Netgear Readynas photo
  Others inc Embedded RSS feed, Customised RSS feed, Weather feed & forecast
  
• Movies & audio metadata
  Metadata support via embedded, external cover (.jpg) and fully tagged (folder)
  Metadata software provided (Tag Tool) automatic (videos & audio)
  Movie Cover art display via preview – single row, multi row.
  Audio Cover art display via preview – single row, multi row.
  Play content from local source
  
• USB ports x2 (front/back)
  Memory Card Slot (Front SD/SDHC)
  eSATA port x1
  External DVD/BRD optical drive support via USB or eSATA
  
• Play content from your Network
  Wired Network connection (10/100) x1
  802.11n Wireless Network connection *Via optional – WNCE2001 not included
  Network support – CIFS/Samba/DLNA/UPnP AV, NFS, Win7 PlayTO
  Network access – auto discovery, dynamic update, manual addition
  Customisable share display options
  Saveable Network shortcuts

Perhaps the most exciting part of the above, at least for me, is the ability to stream blu-rays with full menu support.
DVD menu support has been a feature of previous EVAs but blu-ray menu support is brand new.

In my opinion the above specs (copied from NETGEAR’s own marketing literature) leave doubt as to whether ripped Blu-ray ISOs are supported or not. This seems quite unusual given marketing folk tend to overstate the capabilities of a streamer rather than understate them. Indeed, it’s not unheard of for them to quote features that are still on the developers to-do list and will not be incorporated into the firmware for quite some time! But regarding Blu-ray ISOs, I can confirm that the ARE supported. Well, certainly the ones in my collection are.

If you want to use the BD-Live features of your Blu-rays then you need to specify a “BD-Live cache” location as mentioned previously. If you fail to do so then expect to see a message similar to the screenshot on the left when you try and access a BD-Live option from your movie.

Does the Neo upscale and downscale?

Since I first published this review I’ve had dozens of people ask me whether the Neo does any scaling of the source material so I thought I’d add it here!

The answer is, “yes it does”. In the Neo menus you can specify the resolution of your display and the Neo will scale all video to that resolution. So, if you have a 1080p display then set the Neo to 1080p and everything, including DVDs will be scaled to 1080p. If you set it to 480i then everything (including blu-rays) will be scaled to 480i and so on.

If you already own a particularly impressive scaler then during movie playback you can manually set the resolution of the Neo to the resolution of the movie and let your scaler do the upscaling or downscaling. Personally I think the Neo does a fine job of scaling already and so I simply set it to the resolution of my display.