Myka BitTorrent Device
Posted by andy in Video, tags: BitTorrent, Media Center, MPEG-4, XviD
I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these Myka boxes. They seem to be the Holy Grail for an Open Standards Set Top Box. They play all the formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264/AVC, DivX, XviD, WMV, VC1) you are likely to use if you use ripped or downloaded content and as they have BitTorrent and RSS onboard they can do the work for you. With a little judicious scrapping of RSS feeds you can create a custom feed for the content that you want. As far as outputs go you have everything you could want (HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite, with SPDIF (Optical or RCA) and RCA Stereo for audio).
Why should I have to buy a box from Apple and another box from Blockbuster and yet another from NetFlix. Ideally I should be able to buy whatever hardware I choose from whichever manufacturer and subscribe to any services I desire from any provider.
Now, I know I am being terribly optimistic but that is how I want it to work. Media that is locked to one specific hardware/software platform is not convenient for the user. What we really need is a way of authorising the content to playback on any device the user chooses regardless of the actual platform at the time. The simplest form this could take could be something like an SD card with the user’s digital certificate for authentication and an IP connection for validation, if the card is not present then the content does not play. This is simple to implement and manage and easy to use. An extension of this could be to have the certificate on the user’s mobile phone and have it validated over Bluetooth, so long as the user is in range the content is authorised. This way the content is locked to the user not the device. The user is free to use whatever platform he prefers and is not tied to an outdated unstable operating system.
Until the big players get together and learn their lessons from VHS vs Betamax, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD and the obvious parallel of downloading video as XviD with MP3 vs CD, consumers want one format that works everywhere. It’s not about stealing content for most people, it’s about convenience. It has always been safer to lock the content to the user but it requires cooperation by the providers and manufacturers and as they are all trying to get all the money and lock everyone else out rather than their share of it, in the meantime consumers have a conduit to content in a vendor neutral format.
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Cool – with a couple of caveats:
1. Only 1080i output, not true HD.
2. No screenshots of the UI. Linux products often have ropey UI’s and it is of some concern to me that the Myka site has no screenshots whatsoever. Since the Myka team were asking for input on UI design in March 08 it will not be a mature UI. Worryingly Fred of the Myks forum asked on May 13 2008 hoe the UI was “coming along” and there has been no reply. I suspect Myka are taking pre-orders before even completing their UI. Very suspect.
3. No indication of max bitrate for H.264 content playback.
4. What about MKV support? VIDEO_TS folders? Support for Flash?
5. Remote Control? No indication if it comes with one.
6. The device supports remote logins. Using which protocol(s)?
7. No support for 5:1 audio
8. RSS support?
9. Wi-Fi security protocols? WPA support?
10. Is ethernet connection 10/100 or 10/100/1000?
11. Can it read HFS+ formatted drives? As a Mac user this is very important.
12. Support for AFP? I doubt it! And iTunes Music Sharing? Can I not play my iTunes library through this thing?
13. Is 256MB DDRAM really enough? If downloading torrents and playing video at same time wont there be lots of memory swapping (=poor performance).
14. The processor is a 450 DMIPS SOC. Is this a 450 MHz processor? Surely not.
15. No ‘n’ support for Wi-Fi
16. Price point too high.
17. Myka 500GB only $150 short of Core 2 duo Mac Mini, and the Myka 160GB is $20 more than a 160GB Apple TV.
18. Myka appears to take 3.5″ drives. The 500GB model especially could get very hot and make lots of fan noise (although this remains to be seen).
19. What torrent client is it using?
20. UPnP? Firewall?
21. support for iPhoto, flickr, youtube
22. Will it have a web browser?
The answers to some of these questions are in the forums (apparently there will be uPNP support), but many remain unanswered (like gigabit or not). Why should I have to dig through forums to answer these q’s. All this info should be on Tech Specs page. Moreover a promise on a forum post for a given feature may not come to pass when the device finally ships.
So many questions.. How can Myka expect people to pre-order this device without answers to (most of) them? And without screenshots?
doz
Thanks for the points you make Doz, I appreciate your interest. Let me help to provide some of the answers:
1) A pity, but certainly no deal breaker for me. And given the lack of 1080 content anyway, it will be a while before this becomes an issue.
2) I agree I have seen some horrible Open Source UIs, but then again I have seen some real nasty ones from major manufacturers too. But like you I would like to see some screenshots before I part with my cash.
3) As the Myka supports the H.264 High Profile (up to level 4.1) it’s max bitrate is 50 Mbits/s, same as Blu-ray, etc.
4) As the decoding is done in hardware I think a lack of hardware MKV chips is an issue, they plan on releasing firmware upgrades to add new codecs & container formats. No idea about Video_TS folders although I would like to see support for those too. No news on Flash either, but for me it is not an issues as most flash video is extremely low resolution and so I have no desire to play it on my TV.
5) Their site states that it will have a remote control.
6)
7) Dolby Digital supports 5.1 audio.
8) It has RSS support although exactly what form this will take is crucial to my use of the device. I needs to be able to take an RSS feed and filter the results for things like codec, quality etc, as well as filter by episode for example so you don’t get endless copies of the same one.
9) No details have been given yet, but you would expect a minimum of WPA-PSK. Have not seen a G based WiFi product that does not support WPA.
10) I would hope it was 1000 (Gigabit), but 100 would be enough, though not ideal.
11) Almost nothing reads HFS+ except if it is manufactured by Apple. I would never format an external drive in HFS+ purely for that reason. While FAT32 or NTFS have some issues at least you can plug them into pretty much anything and have it work.
12) Again AFP is a very niche protocol for Apple users. SMB (CIFS) and NFS are the 2 must haves.
13) 256MB is enough for the Apple TV and lots of other STBs. As you don’t have to run a massive OS and the decoding is done in hardware this should be fine.
14) Again doing the video decoding in hardware massivly reduces the overheads on the system so a 450MHz processor is reasonable.
15) No N WiFi that is a shame.
16) I agree on the pricing. Although it is aimed at a completely different audience than the Apple TV or the Roku NetFlix box, $299 as a base price point is too high, for that you should be getting a much bigger drive than an 80GB, so most folks would buy this “cheap one” and shove their own upgrade drive in.
17) Again I agree, but if you want a dedicated box…
18) Could go either way here. Will just have to wait and see.
19) As you can tell from the logo they have licensed the Official BitTorrent software, just which exact version remains to be seen but probably the 6.+ version based on the uTorrent code with the inbuilt RSS would be perfect as that is light and tight with the best features and a great web interface.
20) The BitTorrent client is uPnP, is that what you mean or are you asking about other features being accessable from the web?
21) I doubt these will be available. There is some interest from the developers in a Myka API/SDK so that would really bump up the features if they went ahead with that.
22) Again it would be a nice feature, but without a keyboard it is a bit limited.
I am looking forward to getting my hands on this pioneering product. While it does not do absolutely everything it does the 3 key things I want from an STB (Video to TV, Large Hard Disk, BitTorrent with RSS) I know that D-Link and Netgear are working at adding BitTorrent features to their Routers and NAS products and as time goes by more manufacturers will jump on the bandwagon.