Hallo! Mede8er is dying?

[seba1970]

J Know ,but still delude myself,

[yashar19]

I am a video+audiophile. It seems to me that technology has reached a point where technology is becoming gimmicky. I love blurays. The HD Video and Sound quality cannot be beat. I have a huge bluray collection with about 2000+ Movies and over 100+ TV Shows which i have most ripped on my server. The mede8er X3d series are the best media players I have ever seen. Nothing comes close.I have been using mede8er for over 3+ years. I use a combination of 3 mede8ers in my home for local playback and plex for playback on tablets and phones. I wish I had a player that can do it all but it seems that is not possible.  I have tried all types of solutions. I have tried different media boxes like kodi, apple tv, roku, western digital, amazon fire tv, New Samsung TV with app, Panasonic VT60 with apps, and an htpc. All of these with a combination of xbmc, plex or their own native software. As far as streamers (Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, HBO, etc) the best ones are amazon fire tv, apple tv, and Roku3, Panasonic tv apps and samsung tv apps work really great. They run circles around the mede8er.  But I dont think that is what the mede8er was made for. It really does not have any apps that work really well, even youtube works kind of slow on it. As far as local content, The Mede8er bar none works better than all the rest. IMHO I don't think anything comes close. The amount of support they have given and upgrades that have been made to this player since 2012 is unprecedented. The amount of improvements they have made is incredible.  A lot of companies will come out with a product and within six months, they completely abandon it in infancy, stop all updates and are on to the next thing. I recently purchased my 3rd mede8er without any hesitation of even going back out there. For what I have or anyone who has a lot of local content, nothing is better. I am not saying that there are not slight improvements that can be made, like being able to search by actors etc. The UI of Plex and XBMC is a lot better than the mede8er but they do not play local content with HD Video+ HD Audio (DTS-HD or True-HD) or Bluray 3d even close to the level of mede8er. Most of my movies are bluray remuxes put in a mkv container, or slightly compressed blurays, and they play without any issues at all on the mede8er.  I Tried that on plex and xbmc with different boxes and combinations, and bottom line, way too buggy, freezes a lot, too many issues to list. I love their interface, but what is the point of looking so good and having all these features if I am going to have problems watching the movies.

IDK, I think TV companies and media companies are moving too fast which is what is driving all of these changes. You buy a TV, Media players, surround sound system today, and next year they are all supposedly obsolete and you need to buy the next one. Not only do you have to replace the tv, you need to replace everything (AV receivers , media players, etc). It does not make any sense. After Bluray and HD-DVD fought for HD supremacy. Bluray won and seemed to be finally becoming the dominant format over DVDS and then bluray 3D bacame a thing. After a couple of years of that we now have 4k, now 4k with hdr etc. So all the 4k tvs that came before 2016 are all dinosaurs. They are useless for 4k. I brought a new TV recently (samsung 8000 series (UN65KS8000FXZA) wich has 4k and hdr support natively. I have tried netflix shows on 4k and some amazon content on 4k, and some 4k youtube videos. The youtube videos are extremely impressive but the 4k content as far as movies and tv shows, I am not impressed. They are extremely compressed. They don't even look better than my blurays. Heck while TV is still trying to catch up on just plain old 720p HD (which a lot of them upcovert to 1080p) and some dolby digital sprinkled in. There are still  a lot more non HD channels than HD channels. Even on subscription sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime, most of their content is non HD.

I am definitely attracted to 4k blurays. I mean 4k uncompressed seems craaaazyyy. But i am not rich, I just cant afford to throw away just about all the equipment I have and start all over. Right now there are maybe a few hundred titles on 4k blurays so far (if that). Worst yet, there are not any really good 4k media players out there yet. What is even the shelf life on 4k when 8k seems to be knocking on the door already. when will they let everyone catch up? TV is so desperately behind, so are streaming services. 4K is still in its infancy and I would not be surprised if it takes a death knell a year from now circa 2018 to 8K.  I know the death of disc media is slowly coming. Internet media for consumption is the future. It is all too easy to buy/rent a movie on apple tv, amazon, vudu, playstation network, xbox network etc. They are being sold for the same price as blurays for a 3rd of the video and audio quality. It is faster and easier than going to the store and purchasing discs or waiting for them to come by mail. Instant gratification. Plus some aspects of our technology has not caught up. In the USA, our internet speeds lag behind and we are not where we should be as far as storage. There are still so many people in the USA with DSL (max 6mbits per sec). You can barely play a watered down netflix hd with that type of connection. If these services were streaming uncompressed 1080p and full hd-audio, their services would never work right. It would be a freezing and stuttering mess.  I do occasionally buy HD movies online (apple tv, vudu, etc). The ones that were never released on bluray so i can get an HD copy. It seems most people prefer what is easy instead of the quality that bluray offers. For now, I am going to stick with bluray and the mede8er until I see where 4k goes.  And if mede8er does eventually release a 4k player, i definitely will be willing to try it because I know they will support it. I have ranted long enough.

[jer1956]

External media players filled a hole in the market. Millions of Non Smart TV's needed someway to access Internet and Lan Services. Indeed, there is a case to be argued that the small companies that created them also created the demand for those services. So big companies made it main stream by integrated the Media Player in the TV. So now Smart TV's are the norm, and that means every 4K TV, is Smart. They already come with 4K VOD from Netflix etc, and an adequate lan client for upnp. There is no longer a hole to fill with an external player. We can only look back to the last 10 years with nostalgia.

4K 8 bit was always a cul-de-sac. We have had unused 10/12 bit Deep Colour for years. Current HDR only requires 10 bit panels. What next? True HDR, using 12 bit panels? You are right to perceive inbuilt obsolescence.

[dxer]

Can we expect mede8er will produce new media player with 4K support soon or they will not be producing any media player ?

[jer1956]

The 4k player often mentioned is being developed by Mede8er.eu, not the main company. The mod's on this forum are out of the loop.  As i have mentioned before, all chip makers shifted to ARM designs after the 1186 era. So supply went from two...Sigma and Realtek, to over 10. It's only possible because they all use the ARM sdk, not their own. So new chip makers started with a level playing field. So porting code is too costly, if not impossible, when everyone else is making Android/Google TV boxes using the ARM sdk without adding extra costs. 

[Lupissimo]

There is a new Zappiti mini 4k player available. (249€). If there is no news on a Mede8er 4k successor, I will have to switch to the comptetion, as much as I would like to stick with a mede8er product. Are the European Mede8er people not allowed to post here??

[jer1956]

No one is stopping them, but neither can we force them. They will say what is going on at their own pace, and where they chose too. 

[Nick Nickel]

I can not wait anymore I've ordered the Zappiti Duo 4K HDR.

[jer1956]

Competition in an unprofitable market is not really competition, more stupidity. The last player AC Ryan made was too up market and bankrupted them.

249€ is way more than most people will pay, and around the price of that last AC Ryan. AC Ryan is now just a name bought from a bankrupted company and stuck on a cheap clone.

[foxter]

What is new? Is Mede8er dying or dead? Year passed without changes. What did developers do during this year?

[jer1956]

The 1186 chip code is beyond further development. Even if working on code it would have been for a new chip entirely. All chip makers now use ARM based designs and Sanji International didn't find one up to their standards. The core functions....the codecs....where not as good as the 1186. It had taken a lot of effort to get the best out of the 1186 codecs and they didn't like facing doing it all again in a less profitable market.

[monkeywash]

What is new? Is Mede8er dying or dead? Year passed without changes. What did developers do during this year?

What else do you want it to do? Pop down the shops and get you a pint of milk when the adverts are on? Or just play HD files really really well?.. Oh hang on, it does that already...

[Wheatpd]

Just read this entire post and there are quite a few well balanced views. I've had my MED600 for about 4 years now and, like other contributors, I've encountered hardly any problems. Looking back, I do feel that this product line has been well supported and, for playing videos, I've not come across anything that meets my current needs better.

I still have an HD television although am starting to consider if I should upgrade to 4K. What puts me off upgrading is the point that Yashar19 makes in his excellent contribution, 4K is still developing and I do not really want to have to upgrade all of my equipment to support 4K if it is not likely to be around for the medium term. Also I must sit at least 12 foot from my TV so not convinced that I will necessarily see all of the brilliant 4K detail at that distance.

We live in a commercial world and, as somebody else mentioned, standalone media players were always a niche market - most consumers are not interested in this type of stuff at all as it all too techie for them. So, whilst I might not like the firmware being on a beta version of firmware for over a year (it offends my 20 year IT experience), if I were in Sanjii's position, I probably would feel that it's not economic spending money on further development or even testing and releasing a final version. I must admit that I have become very used to coming on this website in anticipation of a new firmware release and have to remind myself that my Mede8er is still working fine!

[crackerick]

I very much agree with that and so glad to be able to buy a box that does so much when there are big companies that seem to live in a closed small box figuratively speaking, as was said support their product for 6 months and thats the last you get before you're bullied into buying a new one.

[goozh]

I can not understand who even thinks today to use these miserable mede8er devices!? Mede8er is full of bugs, the interface is straight from the 90's! And now seems only positive thing (subtitle downloader was lost..
Forget these toy toasters and buy a modern smart tv and use kodi! or go to OpenELEC Mediacenter, and forget about this laughable problem..