Is Mezzmo Right For My Needs? (Oppo BDP-83. PS3, X-Box 360, Sony BDP-S590)

[Skippman]

I've been using TVersity for a number of years to stream audio and video content throughout my home for a number of years now. I have two theater setups, one in my bedroom and one in my home theater.

In the home theater I have a X-Box 360, a PS3, and an Oppo BDP-83.

In the bedroom I have an X-Box 360 and a Sony BDP-S590.


TVersity has worked great for the most part, only failing to transcode certain MKV files. Now that I've added the Sony BDP-S590 however, it won't transcode the MKV's into a format the BDP will support. This is a deal breaker for me. I purchased the BDP-S590 with the intention of replacing both my older Oppo DV-980H DVD player and the X-Box 360 as a media center with one device that did both jobs as well as played BluRays.

Several people on AVS Forum have recommended Mezzmo to me and after looking at your home page I have to say you are by far more polished and professional looking than anything else I've used/tried to date (TVersity, Twonky, Serviio).

My concerns are with Mezzmo's ability to transcode video on the fly into a format that the Sony BDP-S590 will support. Can Mezzmo do this? Does anyone have experience with it?

If it can't, how about the Samsung BDE5900/ZA or the LG BP620? I JUST bought the Sony and can still exchange it if either of these other players would be a better solution, although the reported issues with Samsungs BluRay playback leave me nervous about thier product.

Thoughts? Input?

Cheers!

- Skip

[Hashybot]

Just a thought. I also used Tversity for years, and recently moved to Mezzmo. The reason for this was the latest version of Tversity auto removed network drives after adding them. After the creator acknowledging this, he follow by releasing a newer version of Tversity with exactly the same flaw.
The short of the story is I moved to Mezzmo and never looked back. I hope someone can respond to your question, I thought I would share my experience with you. Good luck. :)

[JohnM]

Of course everyone here is a Mezzmo fan because it does beat the competition hands down. That being said you would do better to return the Sony BDP and get an LG or other brand. I have 7 Sony BDPs and they all work but the supported formats are pathetic in comparison. Essentially they will only see MPEG2/m2ts streams and do not support dts over dlna. What you should consider doing is taking the list of devices you want to co-exist with and making certain there is a common format.

[Skippman]

What you should consider doing is taking the list of devices you want to co-exist with and making certain there is a common format.

Elaborate on that please.

Is your point to set Mezzmo to output in a specific format that everything will understand? Or is your point to convert my rather massive media library to one unified standard?

[JohnM]

My point was only driven by my usage. I have about 10TB tied up in video media. That is with one format for each file. I can not afford to have each file transcoded multiple times so have elected to do it all into a format that everything can use natively. If you can not (or just don't wish to) do that, than you will need to set a reasonable limit on the amount of disk space used for transcoding. Also unless you have a really powerful computer real-time transcoding of HD movies is a non-starter (most systems can not do it).

[Dion]

Mezzmo is by far the best on the market right now. It's price is amazing.. It's support is amazing. And the features it offers are just uncanny. You should try the trial copy.

[Paul]

Hi Skippman,

Mezzmo has device profiles for all your devices (Xbox 360, PS3, Oppo, Sony BDP) so you should get nice streaming for each of them. We also have device profiles for LG BDPs and Samsung BDPs, so you can exchange your Sony BDP if you wish. First step, I'd suggest you download the 15-day trial of Mezzmo and give it a try. It's fully featured and that should let you see if you like Mezzmo. It is a little different to Tversity in the way it works but I think you should be able to get up and running with it. After installing Mezzmo and starting your Mezzmo server, go to the Media Devices dialog in Mezzmo to see the devices that Mezzmo has found & check that the most appropriate device profiles have been set for each device. The device profiles tell Mezzmo what formats to deliver to your device, so they are quite important. If there is *anything* you don't understand, then just ask. Also, if you have a new device that is not yet supported, then we're happy to create a device profile for you (and the other owners of this device).

[Skippman]

Paul, John, etc.

Thanks for the info! Paul I did as you recommended and installed Mezzmo on my server at the house a Core2Duo E6600 w/ 4GB RAM and 4 TB RAID5 storage off a 3Ware RAID card. It took quite a while for it to build my media library but I expected that to be honest. Having played with it I can tell you it WILL meet my needs as my MKV files I was having trouble with previously were able to be transcoded.

For about 4 min.

Checking on the transcoder tab at the bottom of the media interface it showed that it wasn't keeping up with the transcoding load placed on it. I had hoped the E6600 (2.4G) would be powerful enough to keep up with the load but I'm realizing that's not the case and I'll likely have to upgrade the hardware on the machine to support this. The only other things running on the machine are McAfee and iTunes. Closing iTunes yeilded no appreciatable improvements.

Am I correct in assuming this is a CPU related issue?

[Paul]

Am I correct in assuming this is a CPU related issue?

Great to hear that Mezzmo works well for you.

Transcoding speed is directly related to the CPU and memory on your computer and the files that you are transcoding. If your files are 1080p HD videos, then they will require more CPU/memory than lesser video files. In terms of CPU, we recommend at least a quad core CPU, but the more cores the better (e.g. i7). In terms of memory, 4GB RAM is recommended, but again the more the better.

If your current computer cannot cope with real-time streaming and transcoding on-the-fly, don't forget that you can use Mezzmo's pre-transcoding features to get around this problem. This lets you pre-transcode your files (e.g. overnight) so that they are ready to be streamed - without any further transcoding (thus removing the CPU/memory bottleneck). Right-click on a file in Mezzmo and click 'Pre-transcode File' to transcode a file. Or, right-click on a folder/playlist to pre-transcode all the files in a folder/playlist. or, click Tools/Pre-transcode Library to pre-transcode all your files.

[Skippman]

The only downside I can see to the pre-transcoding is the massive amount of hard drive space it would take to transcode the massive amount of video files that are in various formats. I think the solution to my problem is to attempt to eliminate the need to transcode as much as possible. I can spend $500 trying to upgrade a perfectly functional server to transcode, or I can eliminate the problem on the back end by using a better media hub like the WD TV Live box for $100. In price vs. performance I think that's the better option. I'm using Harmony remotes anyway so cluncky remotes aren't an issue.

How does Mezzmo work with something like the WD TV Live? I'm assuming given the massive ammount of CODEC's it supports natively it should reduce the instances of transcoding.

[Paul]

How does Mezzmo work with something like the WD TV Live? I'm assuming given the massive ammount of CODEC's it supports natively it should reduce the instances of transcoding.

Mezzmo works very well with the various WD TV Live models, and we have many 1000's of WD TV Live owners using Mezzmo.

Hopefully, some WD TV Live owners may post their experiences for you.

[JohnM]

Keep in mind that you can set a max size for the transcoded files folder. This will prevent you from using the entire disk but has the downside of needing to trancode the same file again. That was the reason for my decision to pre-transcode into a universal format that all of my devices can use. You can also save the files into a format that most of the important devices would use (home theater etc) and have the one offs transcode as needed. There really is no one correct answer, it depends on what your system is and what you want to accomplish. In my case it was easy because I standardized on one media player before building out the system.

[Hashybot]

How does Mezzmo work with something like the WD TV Live? I'm assuming given the massive ammount of CODEC's it supports natively it should reduce the instances of transcoding.

Transcoding for me on both my Live and Live Hub is almost null. I have around 7 TB's of video storage ranging from mpg,avi,mkv,flv and Mezzmo works flawlessly with them all. Even with audio codecs the story is much the same.

I hope this helps you decide better. :)

[FreeRyde]

How does Mezzmo work with something like the WD TV Live? I'm assuming given the massive ammount of CODEC's it supports natively it should reduce the instances of transcoding.
I purchased a WD TV Live Streaming Media Player for one of the upstairs bedrooms.
Combined with Mezzmo, we've been able to view or listen to every format we've thrown at it... and that's with Transcoding 'unchecked'.
I'm was so pleased with the setup, that I purchased a second WD TV Live box for another bedroom.
Mezzmo will also stream different formats to different devices simultaneously.

We use Mezzmo to stream to a PS3 downstairs also, but the PS3 has issues with a couple of formats.
I'm contemplating purchasing another WD TV Live box, as it surpasses the PS3 in that regard.

I tried 6 different media servers, and invested a lot of time tinkering with them, before discovering Mezzmo.
I am extremely satisfied with all aspects of Mezzmo, and rate it far above any other media server available.

[Skippman]

Well gents,

I picked up a WD TV Live yesterday and hooked it up to my bedroom theater. Here's the specs of what I'm working with.

Panasonic TH-50PX80U Plasma TV
Oppo Digital 980HD DVD/SACD player
Yahama RX-V1600
Motorola UVerse PVR

The WD TV Live is hooked up via HDMI right into my AVR and via GigE through two Netgear GS105 GigE switches (one at my router, and one at the home theater rack).

My server is a Core2Duo E6600 (2.4Ghz) with 4GB of RAM and a 3Ware RAID controller running my RAID5 array. It's connected via GigE as well.

It played back most things perfectly after setting the profile to the WD TV Live in Mezzmo. Other things it was sluggish with. Maybe I need to turn off transcoding for that device all together. I'll likely be buying Mezzmo this weekend as I love all it's features! Thanks for the feedback guys!

Thoughts on the lag issue?

[Hashybot]

Turn off transcoding. Ive ran many tests with both my WDTV Live and Live Hub and both work much better with it off. Also make sure to update your codec pack if you haven't already, I use Klite which has been very good to me for years. As a side note, I decided to change my device profile to a WDTV Live Plus, I'm not sure if there is much difference between both profiles but it seems to work well.

I hope this helps you.

[Skippman]

I'll try that when I get home tonight! Thanks for the tip. I've been using the CCCP CODEC pack, but haven't updated it lately. I assumed Mezzmo would provided the latest FFmpeg CODEC when I installed it.

Funny side note, when it was looking for images for Planetes (an anime about space debris cleanup) it put a picture from Planet of the Apes on the files instead. lol

[Skippman]

Turning off the transcoding really helped with playback. Mezzmo plus my WD TV Live box is an excellent combo. Now if I could only get the menu's to work the way I want to I'd be 100% happy.