RE: Pinnacle Showcenter Review

["Tony Butler" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> A quick review of Showcenter, as promised, I tried to keep it

Thank christ - I was starting to feel guilty about not doing one myself -
though in fairness, I was too disappointed with the initial release to
bother to set it up "properly"......

> little annoying. Apart from that all was well. Version 1.??
1.2 IIRC

> comes packaged with the Showcenter, but version 1.5 RC is
> available for download, so I immediately did an upgrade. This
> provides a firmware upgrade for he player too.

A pucker 1.5 will be released in a few days, though I don't know if it adds
anything not in the RC....

> going to be a disappointment. The remote control is plasticy,
> badly laid out, clumsy and unresponsive. The box itself is

Yes yes yes - it is pants.  The unit itself is nice and "feels"
pro
(ignoring the leds), but the remote is such a pile of cheapo pants - and it
is nigh on impossible to read what's on the buttons because they are so
shiny...

> On balance I still think it is an excellent product, although
> all its functionality is limited, and there is lots of "would
> be nice" things, lets remember that this is only release 1.5,
> and it has come a long way since release 1 (about 6 months ago).

You say that, but I can't help feeling this is one more example of a
product
released to the public that is not actually finished.
With all these things having flash upgrades, rather than give you great new
features over time, half the time IMO, they are fixing bugs that should
never have passed the testing phase and/or giving you functionality that
should have been included from day one....

The lack of dolby digital downmixing, which will not make it into 1.5
either, is unforgivable IMO.

> It is now possible, and simple to browse our digital photo
> collection, listen to MP3's and watch a selection films

Yes, albeit a tad slowly - puny processor and a web based interface do not
make for a responsive UI.
Still, even SWMBO is using it now, so it's not too shabby.
One failing on the mp3 front is you cannot start playing a track and then
go
find another to add to the playlist - the mp3 decoding and web browsing are
done on the same processor (separate from the video decoder) and it's just
too puny to handle mp3 AND UI duties :(

I think it works best for the convenience of films and mp3's if you want to
play a whole album or existing playlist.
Photo playback is okay, but photos on a TV never look that great IME
anyway....

> disk in a player:) The unit also interfaces with a surround
> sound decoder to give the full experience of the original
> DVD, and can playback the AC3 audio from either the ripped
> VOB, or from the reduced DivX or XVid file.

Indeed - though if you want to play back the AC3 track through the TV
(Because you are a SWMBO and don't like amps) then you are stuffed.
I rip all my movies with an AC-3 and an MP3 track to cover this scenario
since the SC lets you switch between audio tracks.

> One more thing
> to one of the sub-menus. There is a sourceforge project
> called OpenShowCenter which provides an alternative to the
> bundled software.

There is also oxylbox, another gpl type replacement UI, and indeed the
software for the neuston media player can be used, so it's nice having that
variety.
At least one of the open source jobbies will work on *nix too.

> My Showcenter is here to stay. It may be a little rough
> around the edges, but I'll give it some time, and hopefully
> things will straighten out. My experience is limited by a

I would agree - a little rough, a few omissions, but hopefully they will
sort it out in the coming months.

> cant surf the web from my box. I have not (yet) got a tuner
> card for my PC

Having a Tivo, I'm not even going to bother trying that - I can't imagine
it
beating that for sheer ease of use.....

> There are many other features etc which I have not commented
> on, please feel free to ask via email....

You forgot to say that the support forums use the worst interface known to
man ;)

And to answer Mals question, the navigation is not super speedy, no - but I
don't have the MVP to compare against and say if it is faster or slower....

Cheers for doing that review Simon,

tony