NETGEAR NeoTV 550 (NTV550) Review – Page 4

Probably the main thing people will be using the NTV550 for is to play movies so we’ll start by covering the functionality for movies:

Video playback and functions

There are various ways to browse your media and with all of these options you can either browse by filenames or by cover art:

Recently added: This option is quite self-explanatory; it simply lists the new additions to your media collection.

Folders: This allows you to browse all the folders/directories in your media collection and to select your media just like you would if using Windows Explorer. As mentioned previously, by default you only see the shares you’ve previously asked the Neo to scan but you can switch to all shares using the [aA] key.

Categories: This is where your tags are used. So, you can filter your collection by Genre, Rating, Year, Duration, Director, Actor, Decade, File type and Folder. This filtering is cumulative. So for example, you can filter first by Genre and then within the chosen Genre you can then filter the Genre down by, say, actor.

However, you can only select one filter value for each category. So, you can’t for example select all films directed by Ang Lee or by Chris Columbus.

Lastly, All x video(s): This simply displays all your videos in a nice long list. For a large collection this option may not seem that useful at first. However, if you hit the Popup menu button the list is switched into Cover View. This allows you to browse you whole collection by cover art. You can either display cover art in a single horizontal row or in a 10×3 format as shown in the screenshot to the left. The NTV550 supports episode/TV series which means all episodes from the same TV series appear under only one cover image rather than every one of them appearing individually. Once you’ve clicked on the cover image for a TV series the Neo then displays all the seasons/episodes from that TV series in a list. The same logic applies for box-sets and the like. This behaviour is configurable although under the firmware I’m using it is not obviously exactly HOW you configure it since it currently applies some sort of “clever” collation algorithm to determine what files constitutes a TV series. However, it is clear NETGEAR are working hard to improve this functionality because the algorithm has been changed many times during the time I’ve been using the Neo. I would hope that the user guide will explain the logic being used to allow you to tweak your folders and images to suit. UPDATE: See my Movie Wall How-to

As you browse through your collection you can press the i button on any video to display media information for that particular video. By “media information” I mean the tag information stored against the particular movie. If none is present then it’ll simply display information like duration. Pressing the [i] button once more displays technical information for the particular video such as file size, file location, bitrate, file format, aspect ratio etc. (often referred to as “Media Info”)

The NTV550 supports “fanart” which will be displayed when viewing the video information. If no fanart is found the folder.jpg (cover art) file will be used (the 1st and 2nd screenshots below). In this scenario the cover art is stretched and zoomed to fit the screen. I personally don’t like this behaviour and think it would be better if there was the option to have a simple plain background rather than a stretched image when no fanart image is present. The 3rd screenshot shows how things look when a fanart file is present.

On many screens the Neo has a split screen layout with the filenames on the left and the cover art image on the right. For long filenames this results in some clipping of the filename. However, when your cursor is resting on such a filename it will automatically start scrolling and so you do get to see the full filename but I would like the option to switch off the right hand pane to enable me to see the full filename instantly without having to place my cursor on it.

Alphabetic filtering: You can filter your video collection down by using the numeric/alphabetic keypad. The Neo uses “multi-tap” text entry so if you want to enter the letter C for example, you have to hit the number 3 button three times. Strangely the alphabetic filtering uses a “contains” filter rather than a “starts with” filter. So, if you enter the letter C you’ll get all videos with the letter C in them rather than all videos starting with a C. As you type more characters tho the list is quickly trimmed down and so it is actually quite easy to quickly find the file you want.

List sort order: The sort order for videos is rather disappointing in that it doesn’t ignore words like “The” “A” etc when sorting. So, all your videos starting with “The” (for example The Lord of The Rings, The Magic Roundabout, The Polar Express) all appear under the Ts. I would have preferred the Neo to ignore the “The” when sorting as I think The Lord of The Rings should appear under the Ls. However, I can appreciate that different people have different views on this and so it would have been great if there was the option in the menus to manually specify which words you wanted ignored when sorting.

Manual overrides during playback: As mentioned previously, during video playback you can call up various menu options to change things like the aspect ratio, resolution and framerate to override your current settings (remember: you can tell the Neo to automatically detect the frame rate and aspect ratio settings for you). You can also change the soundtrack and, if the video supports multiple angles, then you can change these too.

I did come across some videos where the framerate was incorrectly detected by the Neo (this is evident during slow panning) but these were always corrected by hitting the “TV Mode” button and changing the framerate manually.
There didn’t seem to be any consistency with this issue, some played fine while others didn’t. Whether this is a problem with the video encoding itself (eg. the video “lied” to the Neo) or whether the Neo simply got it wrong I do not know but since I could quickly correct it I’m not too fussed about it really.

Picture and sound quality

I found the overall picture quality to be excellent. I did compare a few videos (both DVD & Blu-ray) to the originals and found the colour rendition, brightness, black levels etc to be also excellent and very true to the originals. You can manually adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation via the use of the “TV Mode” button if you wish.

I compared the sound to the original videos too and found this also to be excellent.

Here are a few screenshots of some videos playing on the Neo but my camera really doesn’t do the picture quality justice (it’s obviously not the fault of the photographer!)

HD Audio Capabilities

The audio capabilities of the Neo are really rather impressive:

The Neo can decode the following:

Dolby TrueHD – can decode to 2.0 or 5.1 channels
Dolby Digital Plus – can decode to 2.0 or 5.1 channels
DTS HD Master Audio – can decode to 2.0 channels

The Neo can passthru the following:

Dolby TrueHD – can passthru up to 7.1
Dolby Digital Plus – can passthru up to 5.1
DTS HD Master Audio – can passthru up to 7.1

I’ve tested quite a few different videos and can confirm the above is not just “marketing speak”, the Neo really can do all that! However, I did come across one or two videos where the Neo did not decode or passthru the audio correctly but these examples have been reported to NETGEAR, the devs have been able to replicate the bug, and so I’m sure these will be fixed in due course.

Regarding the decoding of DTS HD Master Audio down to 2.0 channels and not also down to 5.1. This is a Dolby licensing issue; Dolby only grant the 5.1 decoding licence to traditional Blu-ray players and not to streamers. Wonderful.

I’d like to think Dolby will relent at some point, especially as things are steadily moving away from traditional media players and more towards streaming (erm, things have already moved in my house!)

I guess at some point copyright laws prohibiting people from ripping purchased music and video disks will have to be relaxed somewhat as well!

Multiple simultaneous video and audio outputs

For those people who are interested in being able to output video and audio on multiple outputs simultaneously you’ll be pleased to learn the NeoTV 550 supports this. So, you can have video on HDMI, component AND composite all at the same time. You can also have audio on the digital and analogue outputs at the same time too. You couldn’t ask for more really!

Subtitles

The list of supported subtitle types is equally impressive:

Container: MKV
Internal UTF8, SSA, TXT, Vobsub, Vobsub compressed
External SUB/IDX
External text subs

Container: AVI
External SUB/IDX
External text subs (SRT, SMI, SSA, SUB)

Container: MP4
Internal Nero
External text subs

Container: MPG
External text subs

Container: M2TS
Internal PGS
External text subs

Container: WMV
External SUB/IDX
External text subs

Forced Subtitles

The Neo also supports forced-subtitles. As far as I’m aware this is the first NETGEAR streamer that is able to do this!

Trick play & zoom

The normal trick play functions are present to enable you to ffwd, rewind and skip to the next/previous chapter.

In addition you can search forwards and backwards at the following speeds: 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, and 32x. I found the Neo to be very responsive when searching forwards or backwards at any of these speeds and as soon as you press the play button the Neo would immediately re-commence playing the video without any annoying lag or pauses.

Another great feature is you can use the cursor left and right keys to rapidly jump to anywhere in the video without having to wait for the video image to flick through. Think of this function like when you press the stop button and then use the ffwd or rewind buttons on a VCR, it’s much quicker to advance the video than it is by hitting the ffwd or rewind buttons when the video is actually playing. You do remember what a VCR is, don’t you?
To activate this feature during playback you press the Popup menu button to display the timeline. Then hit the cursor right or left button to move the timeline marker left or right whilst the video continues playing at normal speed. Then hit the OK button when the timeline marker is at the desired place in the movie. You can change the rate at which the marker moves by hitting the left or right cursor key multiple times.

You can also search forwards and backwards at below normal speed: 1/8th speed, 1/4 speed and 1/2 speed.

As previously mentioned you can use the TmSeek (timeseek) button to jump to a particular point in the video. I found the responsiveness of this feature to be impressive. Unsurprisingly, the time taken from the moment you press the OK button to the moment the video re-commences playing from the chosen point depends on the bitrate of the video you’re playing; On a blu-ray ISO for example it takes just under 2 seconds to re-commence playing yet on a 4Mbps divx file it’s instant.

In addition to the above you can also zoom the picture if you so wish using the Page Up and Page Down keys on the remote although I can’t really think of a good reason why you’d want to do this. I prefer a streamer to stay true to the original recording but I guess if the original recording is bad (e.g. homemade footage) then you might find this feature useful.

You can also pan the video image (up, down, left, right) by using the cursor buttons after zooming in. To pan downwards (and thus push the image up the screen) you press the down key. To pan to the right (and thus push the image to the left) you use the right cursor key and so on.