1. Mede8er MED500X
2. Xtreamer
3. DVICO TViX M-6600N
4. A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD
5. HMB Movie Palace

That's the five units we reviewed recently and that's how we feel they stack up in my personal TOP 5... and here's the reason why...

1. Mede8ter MED500X: The simple presentation includes a carrying bag, Wireless N USB stick (for Europe) and a complete package from A to Z. A big fan, very silent, NFS and SMB both integrated and overall features are well done and mature. It can still use a tune up here and there but overall the Mede8er is inside my top 2 personal RealTek based players. Thanks to it's price of €150 it made the top position over DViCo and thanks to it's more mature options and package in general including NFS and Samba, it made it on top of the Xtreamer as well. (review comes later this week )

1. Xtreamer: Obviously has the best bang for buck at €99 but the current issues with streaming performance makes it end up as a runner up to Mede8er which does cost more, but is in general more mature. The fan noise doesn't help it either. The interface is better than the Mede8er however not good enough to make us forget about all else. A firmware update might change it but this is simply how I feel today.
2. DvICo TViX M-6600N: Only the price is responsible for this as the M-6600N is the most robust and mature player amongst the RealTek players so far in our humble opinion. At €269 it's however the most expensive RealTek player out there but with a fully reworked interface, NFS and Samba and until today still the only one that completely passed our reference testing with heavy HD files. Integrated wireless and almost noiseless operation (just like Mede8er) still make it a good option, but pricy. Extendeable as recorder is a benefit too however it will still cost you extra again...
3. A.C.Ryan: Interface wise some enhancements have been made but still overal RealTek can be seen on the unit too much. The recent questions marks placed around DTS downmix not being possible on units purchased before August is of concern to us. Other than that, the A.C.Ryan needs to get some updates out to compete at a higher level with the competition. The brand has open communication and has always come across as willing to move forward and delivering good support however that does not make the player better and this is still about the player.
4. HMB Movie Palace: Pure, and I do mean pure RealTek based player which comes out very poor in many tests except audio and video which somewhat were ok. The main core however is video and if that fails... oh well... you end up at the end of a list like this...

More details here. mpcclub

New features:

1. BD ISO playback support.

- Can’t supports menu navigation.

2. Change from SD UI to HD UI.

3. DTS HD Master Audio down-mixing and pass-through.

- Pass-through(5.1ch )

4. Dolby TrueHD down-mixing.

- Pass-through(5.1 PCM format)

- Direct pass-through (5.1ch) will be prepared soon.

5. Internet Radio.

A. “Internet Radio” menu added in main OSD.

B. *MyRadio* link to MyRadio folder in internal HDD first partition root directory.

C. .plsx extension detection support for internet radio.

D. Same file format for .pls and .plsx

E. User can use internet radio files residing in their internal or external HDD.

6. Photo thumbnail display.(in “Photo” menu)

A. Preview button toggles between “Preview off/Preview on/Photo Thumbnail” in “Photo” menu if there is any photo file in that folder.

7. Network virtual Remote Control.

A. URL http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/rc for mobile device.

B. URL http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/rc2.

C. Multilanguage support from keybord to search, rename etc.

D. Usable from PC/IPhone/mobile hand phone(including web browser)

8. Hostname Change Support

A. Web setup->DDNS/Hostname

B. \\hostname (to access Samba share), http://hostname:portnumber (to access web service).

9. UI effect sound.

- Setup->System->Effect Sound.

10. Video playback window size decreased in internet menu.

- Press zoom button to switch to middle size, full screen, small Screen.

11. Zoom and navigation support for Weather map in internet -> weather menu.

12. Home menu UI can support multi language.



Improvements:

13. Improve HDMI compatibility.

14. Audio volume normalize.(except AAC, WMA pro).

15. Network playback streaming speed up.

16. Change Music Jukebox UI.

17. Change weather UI.

18. Change video playback information window.

19. Change wireless Network UI.

20. Increase subtitle window size

21. Changed loading image for internet menu.

22. Changed keyboard UI for internet menu.

23. Reduced changing time between wireless and wired network.

24. Language added (Arabic, Estonia, Hungarian, Slovenia, Vietnam) in web interface.

25. Internet Video preview displays current time/total time and progress bar with buffering bar.

26. Fan speed manual setting from 0 ~ 200.

27. UTF8/UTF16 auto detection when no selection of Unicode in SUB-T/ID3TAG .

28. After pressing “Enter” button on video file, direct playback while preview is on.

29. Detection of external ODD improved.

A. If can’t detect, go to “Home” and press “Eject”. It will retry to detect.

B. To eject DVD go to “Home” menu and press “Eject” button(when DVD is detected).

30. Fast forward from 0.8x to 2.0x displays subtitle also.

31. Delete function added to remote control “Delete” (3) button.

32. Change folder/file list in alphabetically order.

- A, A1, C4, a2, b3 -> A, A1, a2, b3, C4.



Bug fixed:

33. 24p cinema mode

34. FLAC file playback including id3tag.

35. Support MKV internal idx+sub subtitle.

36. Movie including FLAC audio codec playback support.

37. Sometime crashes when displaying Folder JPG in preview window.

38. Max 16 character input in keyboard changed to Max 128 character

39. Direct numbers input from remote control to keyboard.

40. DEL/SP key problem fixed for Chinese keyboard.

41. After returning from NAS Mode, photo crash problem fixed.

42. Audio file play problem solved from UPnP client.

43. Play/Pause both works for Internet Video playback.

44. Rumania code page changed.

A. ISO-8859-2 -> ISO-8859-16

45. Chinese missing character support.

46. Samba Share of windows 7 can’t be seen.

47. Center alignment of Arabic subtitle.

48. No subtitle displayed while playing video if 1080P 24Hz set from setup menu.

49. WPA key 64 characters not display.