The Prismiq

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While searching around for a product that would let me stream video files from my pc to my TV, I found the PRISMIQ, a black box of sorts that does a lot of what the home media option on the TiVo offers, but also lets you stream video and your desktop to a TV. It offers an ethernet port and something I haven't seen too often: a PCMCIA slot to allow standard laptop wireless cards to be plugged in, giving you 802.11.

by Matt Haughey July 29, 2003 in Products

Comments

FYI, the Prismiq won PC Magazine's Editor's Choice in a recent comparison of so-called "media hubs".

Posted by: Greg at Jul 29, 2003 3:29:28 PM

Very cool product. I hope to see more like it in the future. Here here for the company jumping in with this. The biggest downside of this product for me is the requirement of a Windows PC as the controller (but they say they are working on Mac OS X and Linux versions).

As a caveat, one should note from the PRISMIQ FAQ: "Streaming video over 802.11b depends on the quality of the video file and the environment of your home. While the maximum throughput of 802.11b is 11Mbps, the actual throughput is usually much less (depending on distance and the number of obstacles in the path of the wireless frequency). Video files encoded at a high bit rates (at or near DVD quality) are not recommended for 802.11b." This is not really specific to this product or PRISMIQ's fault, but I'm glad they're honest with this up front. In practice, many users will have difficulties using WIreless-LAN for video distribution (depends on the bitrate you can live with and your Wi-Fi power/quality in your environment).

I would really like to see this device use published open specs for the Network control/media and exposed APIs to allow control/interaction with the PRISMIQ box from other applications/systems. I see no mention of networking standards, such as RTP, SDP, etc.

Posted by: David Beckemeyer at Jul 29, 2003 9:01:58 PM

You're right David, one way for the prismiq pepole to gain some market share would be to open their device up a bit so that people could extend it and tweak it.

As it is, my TiVo with the home media option does most of the cool stuff this box does, but if it could do lots more or have hooks into other devices I'd be more inclined to consider getting one.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 29, 2003 9:44:03 PM

Regarding the API issue, I found their developer site.

Very cool.

Posted by: David Beckemeyer at Jul 29, 2003 10:10:14 PM

I just received mine after an interminable wait. (3 or 4 months sitting in a friends place in New York, waiting for a trip to me in Shanghai)

First thoughts - its pretty small. Its about a third the size I expected. More like a cable box than a media centre. Mine came in from the USA (hence the long wait). Pleasantly surprised to see it came with a universal 100-240v adaptor.

Setup was a piece of cake - plug it in, install the software and it worked (ver 2.1.1).

Its a little laggy - button presses take a second or two to kick in, they need to really work on the interface. It needs some indication or feedback - a button click sound or something. I found myself pressing buttons 3 or 4 times because I wasn't sure if they were pressed or not due to lack of response.

Interface is also pretty lousy - both on the PC side and the Player side. The player side is simple enough, but lacks organization or categorization. My initial import of my mp3's wound up as a single list. Playlist organization should be improved.

I started downloading the update for 3.1 software, - Prismiq has lousy bandwidth - 2-3k a second for a 33meg download.
Didn't get a chance to install it until this morning.

Thats the down side though - first things - I plugged it in and it worked. No bull, no fiddling, very easy. Thats pretty good for a beta product. - I'm calling it that - the software is being revised regularly, but its just not mainstream yet. The developers do take suggestions though - check the forums on www.prismiq.org

I'd give it a 3/5 - its promising -
Its possibly better than the small PC and I/R keyboard I have now / Laptop+Winvnc for playing media files.

Looks easier for end users anyway, and thats the major goal. To have a device normal people can use, and not just the geeks.

Lawrence.

Posted by: Lawrence Sheed at Sep 28, 2003 7:30:34 PM

Got one this week. Neat functionality but interface SUX. I ended up creating playlists on WMP and then importing them into the PRISMIQ media player. Their GUI skills are really lousy - unforgiveable really. As noted above, the TV interface is poor also and needs better layout of playlists.

Posted by: Matt at Nov 22, 2004 1:42:47 PM

The Prismiq

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