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03-Sep-2009
Realtek vs Realtek vs Realtek vs Realtek vs...
It has now been 2 months since the launch of the first players based on the new Realtek chipset. They have been a busy 2 months with a grand total of 9 Realtek players now launched. The situation is very similar to that of the many Sigma 8635 / Popcorn Hour A110 clones that appeared over the course of 2008/9, but this time it’s happening much earlier and much faster. A deluge is what was predicted and a deluge is what we have got. We have:
128x: Xtreamer, DViCO Tvix 6600, HMB Media Palace
127x: Woxter i-Cube 750 MKV,
107x: Mvix Ultio (MX-800HD), ACRyan PlayOn!HD, ASUS O!Play HDP-R1, MediaGate M2TV, IcyBox IB-MP305
So, the key question facing many buyers now is which Realtek player is the best? Are there significant differences between them?
Firstly, the variations in chipset number mean very little. The 1282, 1283, 1262, and 1073 all give identical video decoding performance. The differences come in whether they can encode (128x at MPEG4, 126x at MPEG2, 10xx not at all) and some minor physical interface differences. The only performance difference is in the overclocking of the Xtreamer to 450mhz rather than the standard 400mhz.
The Realtek firmware underlying each player is similarly standard and is what provides all these players with very comprehensive format support. This basic firmware is so good that some manufacturers are making very few modifications to it. This is why the interfaces of many of these players looks very similar and, in some cases, you can even load firmware meant for a different player (*we in no way recommend this! It is more than likely to permanently break your player).
So far, this is not very helpful in making a choice, I know. Luckily we are coming to the one and only difference, and it’s the single most important factor in making your choice. Whilst some manufacturers have been happy to give you a hastily rebadged version of the original Realtek firmware, others have made significant changes to improve and add features.
If you check out the various Realtek player user interface videos and screenshots posted on this site, you will probably notice one thing. The basic user interface for the Realtek players is ugly. Very ugly. It looks and functions like it was written entirely by engineers. It’s functionally very good but it’s none intuitive, and certainly not something you’d want to show off in your living room. It also lacks many important features; no music or movie jukebox, no Bittorrent, problems with file tags, a nasty 24p bug… A long list.
It’s no use owning a device with the latest hardware if the software you’re locked into using is substandard and shows little sign of improvement. With cutting edge hardware like the Realtek Media Players, you want significant software support to fix the inevitable initial bugs, and provide the features you will come to rely on that will never be part of the chipset manufacturers software. To this end it is vital that you do some research into how well supported the player you are looking at is. Through this site, other sites, and forums you should be able to ascertain how committed the manufacturer is to their product.
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