The Egreat M32B

Have you ever wanted to watch your media files on your HDTV rather than on your computer? If you have, you probably know that your options have always been limited by certain factors – how far your computer is from your TV, what codec is needed to play the media file, and the list goes on and on. Up until recently, I would transcode and stream via TVersity to the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but with recent updates to the software, system consoles, and some other annoying problems, I decided to search for a cost-effective alternative. After searching on the AVS Forums, which are great whenever you’re building a home entertainment system, I happened to stumble upon a new type of player known as as Network Media Tank.

NMTs are at best a stripped-down HTPC that plays a huge variety of media files. Here is a small list of video formats/codecs it can handle: H264, MKV, Mpeg2, and Mpeg4. The selling point for me was the ability to play back MKV and h264 with subtitle support. The choices I had were Popcorn Hour A110, WD HDTV Media Player, and finally Egreat m32b I went with the Egreat because of the drop in SATA drive prices, having USB ports on the back, that you could copy files to the HDD in the player, and that you could install a slim line DVD player in it.

Using my NMT on an almost daily basis for almost three months to watch either fansubs or the latest releases, I would have to say I am happy with my investment in it. For watching HD rips of 1080p or 720p content, if it is encoded correctly, it plays smooth and the sound is good on my home theater set, but of course not as good as the original Blu-ray. With MKV fansubs it displays the subtitles as normal text. You can change the font size and color to either 6 solid primary colors or a mix of the two like black text with white outlines. A major flaw that I have encountered with use is in regards to subtitles. When there are softsubs for songs on the top of the screen, they are placed on the bottom of the screen and push, spoken dialogue, if any, out of the picture, and if there is any kanji it gets shown as blocks. The only other file that the NMT hasn’t been able to play is OGM rips which I had to recode as AVIs or mp4, which isn’t that big of a deal but might bother others. There are other neat little things about this player I would like to include, from being able to change the resolution on the fly from 480i, 480p, 720p, to 1080p, the ability to set it up as a Samba server client, the ability to stream videos to it, and lastly being able to stream torrents to it.

So if you’re in the market for an HTPC and don’t have the $500 or $600 to shell out (though that is getting cheaper in this economy), I would recommend this, though only if the majority of your files use H264 (usually in MKV). If your files are mainly xvid (usually in AVI), I would recommend a PS3 for playback since you would also be able to play Blu-rays and games.

P.S. This is my first article so be gentle with me. I’ll be writing more from now on, especially in the next two weeks because of all the anime that will be ending, and will do some full reviews based on them.

EG m32b playing Toradora MKV