Customer Reviews

PRISMIQ MediaPlayer

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

I already have a linksys wet11 hooked to a router in my living room for XBOX and my PS2. Therefore, I cannot comment on the wireless card problems that people are having. With my setup the unit was plug and play with no problems.

1. Audio Navigation - I have an assortment of MP3, Ogg, and FLAC files on my computer with a total of about 18,000 music files in total. The native interface has some problems that have already been mentioned. My main problem was the lack of FLAC support. I decided to download a product called "slimserver" from the internet that works as a server for Ogg, FLAC, MP3, etc... files. It has a much better interface and works with the Prismiq's web interface (see Prismiq's forum for installation instructions). The only problem would be the fact that the built in web server on the Prismiq is slow. However, once it is up and running, songs can be added to your playlist on the fly and the sorting (genre, artist, album, etc.. is great). It even adds the ability to add Moodlogic (which I have tested)and Itunes (which I haven't tested) playlists.
2. Rhapsody support - This is great for addicts of the service. I wasn't interested until Prismiq offered a 30 day trial. With a selection of over 600,000 songs, it has allowed me to dig deep into many artist's portfolios before wasting money on a CD. As of now, Rhapsody will not play through the Prismiq digital outputs.
3. Pictures - The ability to get your digital photos on your TV is a great feature. It allows you to create a a slide show with a specific folder and also allows you to play a specified song whenever the slideshow is being seen. It will also allow the slideshow (without an audio file attached) to run while you listen to the internet radio or your music files. The pictures are not the quality of Roku's HD device, but they are good enough on my 57 inch HDTV through the S-video output.
4. Movies - I have a Tivo, so this doesn't get a lot of use on my Prismiq. I do have a few home movies that look great on the device. I am also able to take advantage of the widescreen format of my movies.
5. Web interface - If you have DSL or a cable modem, you will not want to use this device for web surfing. It is very slow. However, I have bookmarks setup for slimserver, internet radio, and my email. Without the web interface, I would not be able to use slimserver and the product would not get nearly as much use. Therefore, I am happy that they have included the ability.
6. Other features - News stories, local weather, screensaver (you can customize with your own picture), chat (I have never used).

Overall, I am happy with this device. It does have some flaws and if you have a lot of files, you will not be happy unless you have the slimserver setup. It is not the last device that I will buy because I will upgrade with a HD device that plays FLAC files natively sometime in the future. However, for now, it has provided me with a lot of fun!

This product has great potential but the people at Prismiq constantly ignore its users.
Check out www.prismiq.org
These forums are hosted by Prismiq but they simply ignore most of the postings. The main issue you'll encounter is the dreadful way you navigate your MP3 collection. This is the #1 complaint in the boards and has been for quite sometime. They've recently released an update but it added Rhapsody support and didn't even touch on the MP3 navigation problems. I bought this in December when it was $250 and now it is $200. I knew there were problems but Prismiq support was very active and assured everyone they would be fixed. Now that the XMas rush is over, support has disappeared and they ignore the numorous request for enhancement. They also fail to address this as a major problem with their device.
My advice to anyone considering this product is to look for something better. If you decide you want this despite my warnings, checkout out prismiq.org and read the user comments and notice the lack of Prismiq responses to those comments.
Oh, one thing they did do with all the complaints, they created a Complaints section and moved them in there.

OK, starting with the bad - if you intend to use the wireless aspects, you pretty much must have a wireless-G network. This is not only so that you can stream video (as pointed out on the PRISMIQ website) but also because the set of wireless-B cards that PRISMIQ now supports/recommends is a hodgepodge of discontinued or difficult to find cards. Found out the hard way that my Linksys WPC11 card (probably the most widely available B card out there) is not supported (even though the documentation enclosed said it was :X) So, I was essentially forced to upgrade to a wireless-G network (at least PRISMIQ supports the most commonly available Linksys G card).

Once I got past that hurdle....all smiles. What a great product. Beats the pants off of any similar device in terms of breadth of functionality (audio, video, images, web, IM) but also in terms of connectivity (S-video & coax digital audio outs). Quibbles:
1. Browser stinks (same as in most hotel on-TV browsers - weird resolution, no cookies, no javascript, no activeX - so basically almost unusable, but that's OK, not why I bought it)
2. UI for audio tracks a bit cumbersome in that the listing is not artist-album but simply a flat album listing, meaning if you have 400+ CD's like me it can take a loooong time to scroll to find your desired album. Hopefully this will get worked out in a future software update.

Otherwise, a really great product. Sound quality is excellent & video quality is very good. Setup is a snap (provided you have the right card ;)), though it helps to set it up using a TV next to your PC to save you round trips.

I was so excited when I bought this unit. I have a had it over a year now. It has been sitting on my receiver turned off for the past 9 months, only to be turned on hoping the next update will "fix and improve" the unit. Every so often updates come out with so-called "fixes and improvements" but the main issues are still not taken care of. The user interface is awful. An 8-Track had better navigation between songs and organizational tools are non-existent. Don't plan on sorting 100's of MP3's with this unit. The unit has no DD 5.1 support. It only has 2 channel output. The unit cannot be controlled from a PC. It can only be controlled from the basic on-screen (TV) interface. The unit also has problems completing a video. The web browser is slow and only usable for the most basic of sites. You must also leave a computer turned on AND logged on for the Media server to work.The software that runs on the PC is massive (100Mbytes) and a resource hog but still has hardly any features. This unit has potential but is not ready for prime time. Don't be fooled by the reviews or wow factor. I thought the unit was cool the first time I used it only to be disappointed afterwards. It is up to version 4.1 as of this review and still has away to go. Keep an eye on the PrismIQ but as of April 2004 I would keep looking...

I have finally sent this back after a month of trying to get it to play more than one song before locking up. It simply does not work as advertised. It locks up constantly, the media server software is a CPU hog (I have a P4 3Ghz) and crashes all the time, the media manager software is amateurish, it constantly loses connection to the wireless network and when it does so you have to hard reset the unit. I mean losing the connection is one thing but having to pull the plug is ridiculous. The interface is very poor and slow. Tech support is laughable. They actually told me that they didn't know when they could help me because they were too busy working on their new DVR hard drive version!! Disappointed is a great understatement.

Expensive, bad support. Good idea, bad execution. Beware, hardware only support MPEG1/2, other format are transcoded first. There is other product out there cost less and support MPEG4 hardware decode.

Overall, I think the frontend of the server and the box are low quality work. Using Linux but unwilling to deliver the code base. FF/RW doesn't even work properly on most movie.

Server side keep sending out discovery packet non stop (kind of like a low yield packet storm) but the player still from time to time lost connection.

Last thing, the case design is horrible, cheap plastic. Remote is bulky, uncomfortable to use, and feel cheap (imagine a HP calc with a $5 calc).

If I were you, I will try other products in the market or wait a little while longer. Huappauge MediaMVP is more configurable in terms of the front end (but you have to do manual transcoding if it is not MPEG1/2, but peoples are working on replacing the server).

I personally use Sony RoomLink, which I think is better except it requires Sony GigaPocket (only come with Sony computer). But Sony hardware which is expensive, so I brought one of this PrismIQ box. What a bad mistake.

I am currently looking forward to hookup my Huappauge MediaMVP, which the case design is not that nice either. But still 10 times better than PrismIQ. The remote is more a normal design, with my not so bad experience with Hauppauge PVR250 card, I have some hope for the MediaMVP.

I have been looking for a media player - and was astounded to find Prismiq. I was only looking for mp3 and jpg player but this one has two features which are really awesome -- the Internet Radio (which I have programmed stations from all the over. I used to use stream ripper to rip and burn on CD to listen in the living room) and second, the MPG Player (imagine watching your mpgs and divx in your living room in the big screen).

The jpg slideshow with music is wonderful. The mp3 allows m3u import which is great since I use MusicMatch playlist.

Additional thing to consider: the RCA output is not very good at least not on my Sony Dream system. The coaxial digital output is great but is in RCA coaxial not optical. So you need to go to Radio Shack or Frys to get a $15 converter and optical cable $15 - plug them into our optical input of your receiver. It is incredible then! Both Mp3 and 128kbps streaming radio come in amazingly well with surround sound now!

Last thing is the output - it has 4:3, 16:9 and 2:235:1 but the 16:9 didn't quite work with my plasma- but was ok with the 2:235:1. I am running 4.0.1 software. Not sure.

This is an awesome product!

I've read reviews of those who had trouble getting this unit to work. When I took mine out of the box, I had connectivity issues as well. When troubeshooting the failure to connect, I had not considered the idea that my PC could be the problem. The Prismiq locked up, or had no functionality when the main screen finally appeared, and my PC even locked up a bit or skipped when the Prismiq software was running and the Prismiq unit was on (but not when it was off). All that because my PC's LAN card was either not working properly, or was not compatible. Go figure. The PC was fine on the network with no sign of failure. I admit, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the connectivity problem before checking the LAN on the PC. Had it not been for my notebook, which connected fine the first time, no problems, no issues, I wouldn't have considered the PC as the problem. Once I replaced the LAN card, the PC worked fine with the Prismiq, and both the PC and notebook worked at the same time with the Prismiq. I found that particularly amusing. Some people had bad performance problems with their Prismiq. For this, I'd have to look at the computer where the media is stored. No one mentioned their computers, just the Prismiq. The computers should be fairly modern PC's with 2GHz or faster processors, and lots of memory (RAM) - at least 1GB, preferably more. For this type of use, you just can't have too much memory - especially if you're running other applications on the PC, which I don't recommend when using the Prismiq. One thing I note is manufacturers understate their "minimum hardware recommendation" for video applications. Always have more than the manufacturer suggests. If not the network or the PC, I really don't know. My Prismiq is a wired connection, so I have the full bandwidth of the network, and my computer has plenty of memory and processor power - it was designed for video applications. As well, I use Zone Alarm as my firewall, and still have no problems getting connected.

Once the connectivity issue was resolved, the Prismiq worked just as it was suppose to, playing all the advertised media types, showing pictures while playing MP3's, and browsing the internet. The audio and video was in sync when playing video files, including DVD files (.vob files). The flaw is in the software installed on the PC and the firmware on the Prismiq. On the computer, the software doesn't have the user friendliness I've come to enjoy with most file handling applications. On the Prismiq it doesn't show a full filename (or title) because of the limited screen space. It also tests your ability to organize your files on your computer because it lists files in a manner inconsistent with how they show up in Windows Explorer. Prismiq could do better by showing a more familiar file listing such as a directory tree. I could go on, but I find if I take more time to setup specific directories, rather than groups, (adding a root directory containing subdirectories of media files) the files show up in a more organized manner on the TV.

I can't complain, however, as I love the ability to play recorded TV and movies stored on my computer through the Prismiq in my home theater, as well as store all my audio CD's as MP3's, then play them on the home theater. This eliminates the need for CD's, DVD's and video tapes. I also like the software's ability to monitor the media directories on the computer so when new picture or video files are added and others removed, Prismiq automatically updates its list. Overall, I'm glad I purchased this unit, and plan to purchase another for the master bedroom. I hope this helps.

This device does a lot of things for an incredibly low price. I use it for listening to my music collection, streaming the Rhapsody music service and listening to Internet radio. Purchasers should DEFINITELY read through the Prismiq forums (at www.prismiq.org) and also make sure to get a SUPPORTED wireless card if planning to use for wireless. Some of these cards are hard to find and/or discontinued. Once I found one and installed it, the unit worked beautifully on my wireless g network. Sound quality is very good, the Rhapsody interface is really great and the ability to add any .pls or .m3u radio station is great (I've added about 50 stations from all over the world). Haven't tried phone support, but every email I've sent to Prismiq support has amazingly been answered in under 30 minutes. Recommended for those who've got a bit of basic networking knowledge to work the set-up properly. Once this thing gets going, it's really great.

I bought the PRISMIQ MediaPlayer to replace a broken 25 disc CD player. I have my entire music library on my computer in Windows Media format. I wanted a device that could play that media from my computer over my wired network. The PRISMIQ MediaPlayer looked like a perfect fit. Unfortunately the audio playback quality is terrible.

I used the MediaPlayer for several hours. On average, every other track I played was distorted. The distortion included slow play, intermittent pauses, play stopping halfway through the track, etc. It felt very much like listening to streaming media over a 28.8 modem connection.

I experienced the distortion both when I was navigating the menus and when the MediaPlayer was idly playing music. Navigating the menus caused immediate and reproducible problems. When I left the MediaPlayer alone to play music I experienced fewer problems. But there were still many problems. I consider 1 distorted track per 100 tracks played too many for a device in this price range. My experience was closer to 50 distorted tracks per 100 played. That is not acceptable at any price.

As an earlier reviewer said; the PRISMIQ MediaPlayer is an excellent idea poorly executed. Even if the audio playback worked perfectly this product is poorly designed. The software is something only a Linux fanatic could love.