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Well, don't forget that this IS a mobile solution. So getting it to your PC is not a big deal. But yes, there is some inconvenience there.

In my case, it is very easy to actually move the enclosure, but it's really a pain to have to also move the power supply to my office and re-attach it there. I have LOTS of cables on the back of my desks and doing so is really, really a pain.

So, yeah, while moving the enclosure itself is easy, having to deal with the power supply is not. This is why an ethernet jack with a samba server in it would be ideal.

Well, I am pretty lazy, and my computer is in a different building from my house, plus, did I mention I', lazy? Hopefully that rumored Intel Based Apple mac mini thingy will come out. Otherwise one of these days I'm going to have to put together a myth tv box.


matt

The MVisto is for 2.5" laptop hard drives, which are more expensive and slower than the 3.5" ones.

Alternatively, you can always get the TVisto for 2.5" if you really need something really small. It's linked from the article above.

Also if you look at the specs, seems like TVisto supports more formats... especially in Audio and subtitles.

For a commercial company, it does make sense of sense actually. Points:

1. MacPower, the manufacturer, doesn't necessarily develops the firmware too. In this case, they don't have developers on board to "force" their marketing/sales dept to support Linux as a desktop platform for it.
2. Most Linux distributions don't mount automatically and give the right RW permissions to normal users. This is a major support headache for all similar companies. They simply don't want to deal with it (and I personally would do the same, support people cost too much).
3. Formatting the disk (which is required the first time you put a new drive in it) under Linux is also not a "right-click affair". Again, support costs.
4. The recommended file system to format the drive with is NTFS. Many Linux distros don't come with NTFS pre-installed because of patent issues, so users would have to use either FAT32 (which is problematic with filesizes over 4GB) or HFS+ (which Windows doesn't support -- no other file systems are supported by the firmware).

My guess is that because the 2.5" is physically much smaller, they had to use less memory and maybe even less video-related electronics. For example, if the firmware of the 3.5" runs on 4 MBs with two chips of 2 MBs each, they had to run on a single chip of 2 MBs on the 2.5" version. And that would mean only one thing: removal of drivers and code in order to fit on the 2 MBs ROM.

Quality was really good. Only one DivX video from the 15-20 videos I tried was ignoring some frames (it was not dropping frames per se, it was just ignoring some of them, it seemed like an incompatibility with the switches used on the encoder that created that video -- which seemed to be Cyberlink's encoder).

Other than that, quality of sound, pictures and all videos was perfect.

Send me a (small) such file (or a download url) so I can try it. I have no .m4a files here.

ok, I encoded an .m4a file with the latest iTunes (non-DRM'ed) and placed it on the device. So, it doesn't play them. I even copy/renamed that .m4a file to .aac or .mp4 (just in case), and it would still not play them. So, I guess it doesn't support that particular file format.

This is clearly stated on the bottom of their page btw:
http://www.galaxymetalgear.com/Tvisto.htm
*** AAC stands for "Adaptive Audio Coding" and does not support AAC files created by iTunes!

If you want me to try a non-iTunes .m4a file, send me one and I will try it for you.

Edited 2005-11-29 23:14

Thanks for trying this. I have to wonder what kind of "MPEG-4 AAC" files exsit that don't use the MP4 container. Maybe raw bitstreams.

I guess this is the new world of multimedia, where devices support tons of bastardized, nonstandard formats instead of the standard formats.

> It says it supports VOBs, can it use DVD menus with VOB files?

I don't know about .vob files with menus (plain vob do playback), but it DOES support menus when the DVD is extracted as an .ISO instead. It is a much more prefered method to play DVDs via this device.

>Also any confirmation on FLAC support?

Not supported.

The device has --obviously-- two modes: one as a simple drive enclosure and one as an embedded multimedia device.

It is READ-only when Linux loaded when connected on the TV. It is Read-write when you connect the device to a Windows PC. You can't rename/edit/delete files when connected to TV (in linux mode).

Actually, I think i read mention that ntfs read/write support is stable enough in kernel 2.6.14.

1. DVB_544x480_Raw.vdr
Doesn't "see" it at all in the file list.

2. DVB_544x480_Raw-vdr.mpg (the above renamed)
Doesn't play it at all.

3. DVB_544x480_Raw.mpg (converted)
Plays it for about 3 seconds correctly and then exits abruptly. It seems to be either too high-res to decode or something else in that specific format that doesn't like.

Please note that normal .mpg video files play just fine (e.g. SVCD quality).

That is really nice, but unfortunately they dont ship it outside of US.

Yes it is. You will need an adapter for the different kind of plug, but the voltage is supported: from 100 to 240V.

Yes, your TV most probably has either S-Video and/or the normal 3 AV jacks (the red, white and yellow inputs). So yes, I am sure it works.

Edited 2005-11-30 07:58

Please email me in person, I might be able to help out with this.

Is there an ext2/ext3 driver for Windows XP? If so, where could I download it?

I'm currently using an extra FAT32 partition to move data back and forth between Linux and Windows, but having r/w access to my Linux home folder from Windows would be so much better!

There are 2 drivers with RW support, so you CAN use ext2 in Windows. Beware: no journalling (ext3). You can read/write to ext3 without journalling, so no problem there.

I recommend Stephan:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

But more mature is Matt:
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/

Matt rules with ext2fsd, which is a reasonably mature file system driver, around for much longer than Stephan Schreiber's Ext2 IFS. But using it with USB devices is sometimes a hassle.

Stephan Schreiber's Ext2 IFS may do for USB Harddisks and memory sticks, and is also easier to install and configure.

Stephan Schreiber: Neither different code pages nor UTF-8 encoded file names are supported. The driver always uses the current code page of Windows. The next version will support UTF-8.
Matt: codepage utf8 supported (but not working?)

Thanks! I installed Stephan's but still couldn't see my drives. Apparently, my ext2 partitions are in a Linux LVM partition which Windows doesn't know how to handle, so I'm back to square one. Do you any idea how to resolve this? My search on a LVM driver for Windows turned up nothing.

I'm sorry, but I think there is no software to handle Linux LVM partitions for Windows. Bad luck. You could consider to move your linux home directory to the partition where FAT32 now resides (first, format it to ext2 and make backups). Be careful.

Yeah, I've "misplaced" my user data enough times in both Windows and Linux to steer clear of any quick fixes. The safest way is probably to wait until FC5 is released, move my /home partition out of LVM, and use the FC5 installer to select the right location for the new /home mount point.

No, it does not have a fan. But it has holes in the alumninium base for the hard drive to "breath". So, regarding noise, it all depends if your hard drive you place in it is noisy or not.