I think I want one, but here are my questions.

[ipodmusicman]

Internally it can take only one 3.5" drive up to 2TB.  It is one of the only media players that can take up to 2TB.  As for USB, it has 2 USB ports in which you can stick any size drive, NAS, etc into.  It also has 1 slave USB port so that you can hook it up to your PC and see it as a drive and copy files to it.

[dudleygb]

cool thx, u know an aweful lot about it, when u getting yours

[Insomniac]

I have just plugged an unpowered USB hub (which probably isn't a very good idea, especially if you're going to try plugging in unpowered 2.5" USB drives) and connected the following:

1. a NexStar MX dual-bay enclosure with 2 x 1TB HDDs configured as 1 concatenated 2TB RAID drive
2. a NexStar MX dual-bay enclosure with 2 x 1TB HDDs configured as JBOD - 2 separate drives
3. a 1TB USB Flash drive

That's 4 'drives' in all plugged into the hub (no more room as the flash is a 'fatty'), besides the internal HDD (C)  These  drives show up as F, G, H and I.

Then I stuck another USB flash drive directly into the 2nd USB 'host' port and that one became drive J.
That's 5 drives now, and I still have my LAN...

I'm afraid I don't have any more USB drives on hand but this is an extreme test - larger drives will take a little while (few seconds) to show up, depending on how much content there is (no of files) - mine were 95% full of large movie files.

I probably wouldn't recommend plugging in more than 2 drives at a time - use a LAN.

[ipodmusicman]

If all goes according to plan, I plan to get a 50" plasma in Jan 2010 and so will get a Mede8er at the same time.   The problem with this whole move is the whole chain of events - first I need to have a new cabinet custom made (which I've already designed in Google Sketch-up) -just need to get a quote to have it made, then the TV, then the Mede8er and then a HD PVR.  

 I have the buy-in from the wife too which is always good.

[Mede8er2]

The Mede8er can take 1 X 3.5" SATA Hard Drive internally and 2 X USB HDD's.

So you can run a 2TB internal HDD and 2 X 2TB USB external drives.

So you can run 6TB at once and interchange drives as you like.

[LightAds]

Will the USB port be able to have enough thruput to display FULL HD 1920x1080 via a 480 mbps cable?

[Insomniac]

Yes - USB 2.0 throughput speed is more than capable of handling the bandwidth required for Full HD 1080 rendering.

[dudleygb]

i still got the popcorn ppl telling me their unit is better lol
i bought a mede8er already and I'm putting my faith in local support.
I got my unit up and running last night and playback and UI is really nice and crisp. Can wait for the dongles, I've been told any Realtek based WIFI dongle will work?
The popcorn does have some nice stuff though...like being able to change software , usenet downloader and auto IMDB lookup for cover art....anything like this going to be coming onto the mede8er at any time?

[sarje]

Hi Insomniac,
Which code do you use under media centre PC's on the Logitech site?
Mede8er is not listed, I can find the Playon HD, is that the one to use?

[Insomniac]

The PlayonHD should work just fine - the remote codes are the same as far as I'm aware.

[Loewe81]

I think this is a good Thread to raise some questions from my side.
1. What about the quality of picture (jpg) viewing on the TV? At the moment if I connect my Laptop via VGA to the TV the images are not very nice, so I have to view them on the Laptop directly. I have a Panasonic TH42-PX80 (with 1024x768 pixels), how and where will the scaling be done?
2. I read already about the possebility of an about.jpg in a movie folder, which seems the be very cool. But what about MP3 album covers. This information is already included in the MP3tag. I saw there was the same question in another Thread, but no answer yet. I don't want to create a seperate image for each of my album again.
3. How does the internetradio working? Is the view the same like on the shoutcast website? Can I also add a stream-URL manually if I don't find it? And can I add favorites for internetradio streams?
4. I plan to connect the Mede8er via HDMI to the TV and via optical to the AVR. Does the Mede8er realize this and send the video signals to the HDMI and the audio (Dolby, DTS whatever) to the optical connector?
5. If I buy the Mede8er including a HDD, what model/manufactor will be used?

So, I guess this is enough for the moment. Waiting for your answers.

Ciao Stefan

[Insomniac]

1. What about the quality of picture (jpg) viewing on the TV? At the moment if I connect my Laptop via VGA to the TV the images are not very nice, so I have to view them on the Laptop directly. I have a Panasonic TH42-PX80 (with 1024x768 pixels), how and where will the scaling be done?

  A: Photos are displayed in 'HD' - I'm not too sure myself what specification would constitute an HD photo but I can verify that the quality is very good (This is an explanation from the specs page). I cannot answer scaling - I'll have to get back to you.

2. I read already about the possebility of an about.jpg in a movie folder, which seems the be very cool. But what about MP3 album covers. This information is already included in the MP3tag. I saw there was the same question in another Thread, but no answer yet. I don't want to create a seperate image for each of my album again.

  A: The music section will be a future focus - this has been addressed in other threads as such. It is an intention to rework the music GUI; supported of embedded images is part of this projected development. There is no timing for this at this point.

3. How does the internetradio working? Is the view the same like on the shoutcast website? Can I also add a stream-URL manually if I don't find it? And can I add favorites for internetradio streams?

  A: There is no SHOUTcast website - the GUI is fairly basic as can be seen from these GUI images. You can save favourites but at this point one cannot add their own urls.

4. I plan to connect the Mede8er via HDMI to the TV and via optical to the AVR. Does the Mede8er realize this and send the video signals to the HDMI and the audio (Dolby, DTS whatever) to the optical connector?

  A: This is perfectly possible - you can set within the setup which digital audio output you wish to use.

5. If I buy the Mede8er including a HDD, what model/manufactor will be used?

  A: The hard drive brand and model will be determined by the reseller - the factory does not ship a Mede8er with an internal HDD - please take this up with the reseller you purchase the unit from, or specify your HDD with them.

[dikkiedirk]

So far I havent been able to get any of the HD-audio formats(Dolby or DTS) passed through over HDMI. Is this ever gonna happen?

[Insomniac]

Hi dikkiedirk,

There is a list of supported formats on the specifications link from the Mede8er.com home page.
These 'HD' audio formats are listed as 'under development' and have never been a marketed feature to my knowledge.
None of the firmware updates to date have listed the inclusion of passthrough of any 'HD' audio formats within their changelogs, so I'm not sure where the idea that this functionality is available is coming from - please advise if you can identify a source so that this can be addressed. I'm sure that the Mede8er brand is not one to be associated with deceitful promises.

According to the specs page, 'HD' audio support (downmix, passthrough, etc) is under development - Mede8er, as is every other Realtek-based media player, is in the hands of Realtek for the delivery of this functionality.

Mede8er cannot provide any further information on delivery timing in this respect until said timing is forthcoming from Realtek. Please bear with us in this respect - nobody is too sure of the the reason for the delays, whether it be licensing issues, Hollywood's resistance to the inclusion of this functionality in media players, hardware issues, code delivery, etc - pick your rumour...

Know this - once Realtek release this functionality to the market, Mede8er will be as eager as yourself to include this support into their media players...

[Loewe81]

Hi Insomniac,
many thx for your detailed answers. But I have still some additional questions.
1. As I already mentioned I have a TV with 1024x768 pixels, is there an option within the Mede8er settings where I can define the output format, so that it matches the TV resolution and the TV haven't to scale anything?
2. According to the Internetradio, is there a feature (or maybe in future releases) to record the stream to the HDD? And like with the Ripcast application it would be nice to have an option to split each track or to record into one file only.
3. What about videos in small resolutions from digital cameras (640x480), has anyone experiences on the quality of the upscaler?

Ciao Stefan