i m just getting it now, very slow.

one thing, before it started to dwnld, chinese instructions appeared alto everything I have is in eng.

will it all become chinese or stay eng when i confirm the upgrade?

yes, just checked. took overnight to get it!

so far, did not notice much diff.. did you observe any change, improvement?

xbmc after xunity installation is less stable - tends to crash more often... no good...airplay works fine with ipad and ipadmini, auto detect. sometimes need a few seconds for it to detect, sometimes need to off/on the ipad.

non-apple... think need some addon to make airplay work.

can. that's wat i mean by works fine.

all utube videos, personal videos and photos will come out big and bright!

atv3 = appletv?

i oso looked at atv b4 i bot the q5ii. i realized the atv cost more n much of the stuff, you pay to get it. not the gadget for me.



while this q5ii is not that powerful, and the streaming at some sites can be slow, it serves its purpose for its price, at least for me - xbmc, chinese channels, youtube, serve as backup media player, etc. it also takes away need for some astro channels, actually i wonder how astro can get away with charging the news package when most of the news channel incl al jazeera, news channel asia, cnn and bbc are all now available easily free everywhere.

i primarily use the q5ii use to watch world news and tv series while the kids love utube and animation/anime at xbmc.

for blockbusters, i still get bdmv/dtshdma stuff elsewhere and playback.

i do not know much about the 3D features, never had the dune, but i have both himedia q5ii (q10ii is more powerful) and acryan (acr3 has 3d). my limited comments will be...

different users look for different features but it is probably true the "ultimate machine" will be one that can do these 3 smooth, clear and hi quality:

#1. playback smoothly dwnlded files of all common formats incl bdmv, dtshdma, 3d, etc.
#2. streaming using lan between pc and all gadgets whether hard wired or wifi
#3. stream online all kinds of video and audio from live tv stations, xbmc, tv series, chinese, korean, hd movies, soccer, cnn, cartoon network, etc.

#1 is easy - all 3 models you described can do that. in terms of navigation, reliability, firmware upgrade, video and audio quality, i say acr is better than himedia but i dunno about dune.

#2. there should be no problem if hardwired but wifi gets tricky. acryan does not stream hd material over wifi well. audio and lower grade video ok. never tried, but i suspect it will be the same for the himedia.

#3. acryan does not offer much online streaming features besides a few simple ones like news and weather podcasts. youtube has been disallowed, licensing issue, i believe. himedia is the one that is more dedicated to this. while not perfect due to traffic congestion, bad integrity sites, isp speed limit/throttling, etc., i am quite happy with its performance for my needs - world news, chinese movies/tv series, youtube, kids stuff, old and new movies (dvd version of hobbit: desolation of smaug is available at xbmc now). to me, this suggest astro is no longer worth it, about to go for good.

3d is an interesting subject. while many get excited, i think those who go for 3d walk away from it after a month or 2, go back to 2d due to either limited files or too tiring for the eyes.

my conclusion would be if you dwnld and playback hi grade files more, acr is yr best bet. if you will stream more and use other addons more like banking and trade stocks like on pc/ipad, himedia will be yr choice. it can playback files well too.

one thing i will have to wait and see is how durable are himedia players. i hope my q5ii can last as long as my acr which is 4 yrs old now.

fyi.. if u dun oledi know...

validated xbmc is now frodo 12.3.

not sure but seems a few more things working better after updating to 12.3.

very pleased with mashup's livestream-> ilive. >100 live tv stations worldwide, all working now - news, sports, food network, cartoons, etc.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9Re7E1bm8

ok, sd only, not hd...

sorry, correct term is
"Latest Stable Release"

i just tested this on q5ii with both wired and wireless lan.
works well, good, even for 50ft wireless.
but astro-otg hd stuff will come out non hd. good enuf for small tvs, but appears sd on larger tvs.
guess hard to expect even 720p for any streaming.

the good feature of astro-otg is it contains some, not all, old episodes of certain shows, so can catch up, like what other apps offer on androidtv.
so, if u hv or can get an active astro id, u can have one more fairly good app on q5ii. app is in playstore.


one more thing to share... if you find hitv channels lag and slow, try this one. best so far, i find. 720p comes out ok, usually.

腾讯视频
http://v.qq.com/

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Jan 19 2014, 12:24 PM

no need workaround.
first u must register a valid astro account to get id and pw.
then install the app on q5ii from playstore, just like any app.
open app, id and pw asked, key in.
and viola!

same simple procedure for ipad.

in play store, it is listed as astro on the go, logo is astro go.

think in one other thread, someone explained it can't work on q5. cant remember which one...

there was no such display. just press install, and it gets done.
same thing with ipad.
think if device is supported, auto detect, it just go thru...

can only tell you:

Q5II is capable of playing bluray M2TS (BDMV folders) = yes, direct with file manager native player via usb.

no idea if using xbmc, samba, wireless, etc....

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Jan 20 2014, 08:27 PM

for my purposes, q5ii is good enough - streaming news, tv series, b grade movies, china tv, kids stuff, browser, u tube, astro go...

was told u can configure to dwnld with torrent but i never tried not even for playback.

i prefer to torrent on pc much easier, playback via ac ryan which gives better video n audio.

i have bd player, ac ryan, q5ii, astro beyond, 10mbps unifi - good for ipads, corners of the house, and whatever gadgets visitors bring.

astro will be terminated soon.

about lagging, many of them lag esp hd. even 10 or 20mbps becos it is due to infra, traffic and isp blockages, not likely yr speed. still, if u look hard enuf, u can find some hd channels ok, no lagging.

q5ii is great for streaming hollywood/chinese tv series, less popular movies (watch n forget), news, kids, utube, browser. i use hitv, cloudtv and xbmc 90% of the time - these 3 are good enough, no real need for others.

for higher grade stuff incl bdmv n flac, get files n playback on ac ryan for superior video. but ac ryan pohd/mini is really a media player, can't stream, can't utube.

q5ii can also handle playback 1080p, bdmv, dtshdma, 3d, i tested. not using it now but may come in handy one day, serve as backup player.

possible i hv been lucky - i spent money on ac ryan and q5ii n not others, found both boxes excellent, compliment each other to suit my total needs.

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Jan 23 2014, 01:40 AM

i think 10 mbps will improve overall esp,when u may hv other things at work like ipads and pc. my exp is that alto it is 10 mbps, the streaming m dwnld of certain contents any time is capped by unifi at 1mbps. for 5mbps, the cap is 500kpbs. since smooth streaming really needs only 200kbps for so, maybe 500kbps for hd, higher speed may help. but i m quite sure the bulk of the problem is not yr speed but the other bottlenecks out there.

my q5ii is direct cable LAN connected to router. i tried it wireless 50 ft away, much weaker but still works for some channels.

i hv not tried playback via network folders with q5ii but i wud expect it to work well if cable lan. wireless is always tricky for hd files. i tried that with acryan wireless, works good for small files, but stutters for even 720p, audio loss for dts.... not hopeful it'll be better with q5ii if wireless n big files. i m used to keeping stuff on portable hdds, backups, so I just plug in the hdd to acryan, q5ii or bd player... they all work perfectly but like I said, acryan gives best video n audio.

somewhere out there, we wait for an ultimate machine - one that accesses all apps n addons, streams everything perfect, playback to deliver best video n audio.!

think not as most if not all are uni audio. i hv not come across dual audio.

been doing more tests, my findings for hitv on q5ii 10mbps unifi....

.. daytime more lagging, night time much better, incl hd
.. hitv, best channel is vqq. youku n others not so good
.. if lagging, switch to low def using the control bar activated by ok remote... can see the buffer is good... setting remains for all hitv channels until u change again... low def resolution is still acceptable but is not as good as mid def which looks like 480
.. 40ft wireless still work but is marginally inferior to wired

not sure but laptops n tablets seem to work better, maybe small screens appear sharper with low res actually?

I use wireless mouse bot in some other shop, useful. remote is ok if used to it but is no good when using it as keyboard

like to share this with q5ii and maybe other models...

check yr settings, display, see if it is set correctly. if set to 720p/50hz, picture not so good.

for some strange reason, some hd/1080p tvs dun accept the highest setting 1080p 60hz for some players.

but can try another tv, set it correctly and it will stay there even when u revert to orig tv.

i checked that becos the same thing happens with one of my other media players.

note: above only for hdmi output, has no effect with composite+l/r output which i think is preset and fixed.

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Jan 30 2014, 05:46 PM

if u play files from hdd via usb, file manager, it shud work smooth as silk, good for just about any file type.

probably no use but check the settings for video output, display and audio and see if anything set very wrong.

another thing u can do is try playing with another tv and if same problem appears.

lastly, is the 1080p file mkv or some other type? popular ones incl avi-mkv-mp4-m2ts shud b no problem.

This post has been edited by AVFAN: Jan 30 2014, 02:44 PM