MyGica ATV510B Media Player - Wireless Connectivity issues

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sharkyZA

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Does anyone have any experience with one of these devices' wi-fi woes?
I'm struggling to get it to connect via wi-fi and the access point reports that it is connected to but the device is not happy.
http://www.mygica.com/product.asp?id=150
Have played back 1080p videos from USB HDD no problems but the wireless networking seems a little shaky.
atv510-top.jpg
 
A great deal of these Android media players have WiFi connectivity issues. Its WiFi connectivity may be fast enough for 720p, but perhaps not for 1080p rips - even its specifications explicitly mention 1080p from USB/SD card.

Does the device's WiFi pick up an IP address from your WiFi AP? Usually you'll need the WiFi AP to be bridged to your LAN where the streaming server resides, otherwise the media player cannot auto-detect the media player source.
If the WiFi is bridged, the IP addresses on WiFi and LAN should be in the same range. eg. both on say 192.168.1.*
 
You could try to attach an external USB WiFi adapter to see if that helps. 1080p content cannot usually be streamed over WiFi on most media players as mentioned above.
 
I take note that most of these devices have wi-fi issues - really sad.
Wi-fi issues I experienced are that the device will prompt for the access point's password and then at long last give a message that it could not connect to the access point. This was tested over multiple access points, all with no joy.
l even struggled to get intermittent wired ethernet operation.

This morning I returned to the supplier in Midrand and they tried upgrading the firmware and that did not solve the issue either at which point they swopped it out with another. That one I tested in store and it was able to connect to the wireless access point, but now at work its not connecting to the corporate wireless or an ethernet switch by cable.

This doesn't seem to be a rock solid happy box... I'll keep you guys up to date on whether this starts working or not...

Hold some thumbs that I didn't waste 970 bucks :-\
 
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Ok, I have some better news, I can get wireless connectivity now. My work wireless keyboard and mouse dongle that was plugged in seems to have interfered with wi-fi operation. Now using only the IR remote I am able to connect to the wireless and get to a shared folder for content.

I'll drop a line a little later on how the unit is to live with
cheers
 
I think I have found something significant in terms of connectivity:
On getting home with the device it would not connect to my home wi-fi access point. I found it terribly frustrating and decided to try connecting it with an old Mecer wi-fi router I had lying around. I just couldn't get it to work, so I defaulted the wi-fi router. No MAC filtering, no passwords and DHCP on by default. Voila, the media player connected and worked.
I switched off DHCP and I couldn't get a connection anymore after reboot. So DHCP seems to be a requirement from the network perspective.
When the device plays back video though is when it's lack of ability really comes through.
On playing back a 1080p homevideo it'll buffer 9 seconds, play 25 seconds and buffer again. Not quite what I had in mind for an entertainment solution. -- edit -- Ok, so this seems to be while it was updating it's library or doing something else as well. After leaving it a while and coming back it'll play back the same homevideo for more than a minute before buffering. --
On slideshowing pictures it's also a lacklustre experience. Sometimes hi-res pictures will not have been transferred to the device's memory by the time it needs to switch and it'll just display nothing.
The processer also gets tied up so much trying to get stuff in on the network connection that the user interface stops responding from time to time. Not nearly as bad as other products I have used but not outstanding by any means.
I'll post some more after I tried using a cable connection.
 
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I repositioned my internal wifi receiver in my Mygica media player and it's damn stable and a lot faster. Better than before but you will void your warranty.
The so called assemblers mounted the wifi receiver on the side of the box. It's a new device now and Xbmc is running like a dream. The whole process took me 10 minutes flat rate.
 
Where did you reposition the wifi receiver antenna to? I thought the placement issue was limited to the previous run of these devices? I say so because I found youtube videos describing where to move the antenna to and when I checked my device the antenna was already in the top front edge of the device.
D!onW!red is selling Medi8ter devices without HDD for slightly more than a grand - it may well be a much better purchase for people looking to buy. The extra nearly 200 bucks for the Medi8ter might just have been a much better spend looking back...
 
Plugged in ethernet. It's roughly 30 times faster. :) It can display a 400-movie folder on the network in a second or two, whereas on wifi it took upwards of a minute.
 
sharkyZA said:
Where did you reposition the wifi receiver antenna to? I thought the placement issue was limited to the previous run of these devices? I say so because I found youtube videos describing where to move the antenna to and when I checked my device the antenna was already in the top front edge of the device.
D!onW!red is selling Medi8ter devices without HDD for slightly more than a grand - it may well be a much better purchase for people looking to buy. The extra nearly 200 bucks for the Medi8ter might just have been a much better spend looking back...
Click to expand...

I repostioned the wifi to the front of the device on the top, near the IR receiver as the M3 has a shorter cable than the previous run. The newer devices (manufactured dates from December 2012 - current) also have this issue where the wifi is on the side.
This has not been addressed in all cases. Opening it up, was well worth it in my case and I'm also a happy customer. A point of note is that if you install any additional XBMC services or apps etc the device becomes slower. Same applies for DTS or True HD mastering ...

As for the Med8er yes thats a good buy and should have been your choice from the beginning as a series support scraper has now been added.

I like these units, and the frustration they bring :D

I own a Med8er, Xtreamer Prodigy, HTPC and yes a MyGica.
 
JvanD said:
As for the Med8er yes thats a good buy and should have been your choice from the beginning as a series support scraper has now been added.

I like these units, and the frustration they bring :D

I own a Med8er, Xtreamer Prodigy, HTPC and yes a MyGica.
Click to expand...

lmao... Liking the frustration they bring - I can relate but on a Stockholm Syndrome level probably. The myGica is keeping the wife entertained for now and the delays seem to only bother me so I'll just leave it for now... but next time I'm buying something else ;-)
 
sharkyZA said:
lmao... Liking the frustration they bring - I can relate but on a Stockholm Syndrome level probably. The myGica is keeping the wife entertained for now and the delays seem to only bother me so I'll just leave it for now... but next time I'm buying something else ;-)
Click to expand...

Are there custom roms available for your unit that might fix your issue? A minute is a long time to wait to bring up a file list. Is LAN instant?
 
sharkyZA said:
lmao... Liking the frustration they bring - I can relate but on a Stockholm Syndrome level probably. The myGica is keeping the wife entertained for now and the delays seem to only bother me so I'll just leave it for now... but next time I'm buying something else ;-)
Click to expand...

Hehe, it's part of the game I reckon. My better half also doesn't complain. Might be a guy thing were we notice problems on it.
Sorry for asking but are you running the stock android crappy firmware or are you on Xbmc? IMHO I believe there might be some heat issues and performance issues on this box that could contribute to the stuttering. I managed to what a 1080p episode of the new Marvel show without a hitch via the network. It's a combination of a lot of things that can go wrong on these units.
 
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Anyone experiencing video lag/audio sync issues? My wifi is always connected for internet use but I play videos directly from external drive through USB.
 
Do you experience this after scraping for movies and or series metadata? What type of video files do you have an issue with?
Apologies, what are you running ... Linux Xbmc or Android.

Also what firmware.

Android Xbmc does not have hardware rendering enabled by default.
 
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Ok now that I think of it, Im not sure I have selected the 2d hardware option again after factory reset..Will do tonight and report back.

I still have Android 4.0 which it came with, yet to try Xbmc. The problem is with h624 720p files playing in fullscreen, no problem with avi files that are not playing in full screen. I tried both the stock media player and Vlc.

The reset was due to the stock gallery app generating a thumbnail cache in DCIM folder that filled my internal memory completely and made the device unusable. When trying to delete it I messed things up, have been avoiding the gallery app since.
Am I correct that "scraping of metadata" is term for similar indexing/caching in Xbmc?

I must admit tha I'm an android newbie, this was my first android device 2 weeks ago and I got Huawei P6 last week so I have a bit of catching up to do.. But Im sure for the price of R500 this device have lots of potential and I will use it as my android guinea pig!
Just for interest sake, what is your TV setup like, USB ports used for, Wifi, what apps do you use, etc
 
Android in my opinion is not the way to go on these devices - but I like loading the applications and messing around.

There could be numerous issues - the older avi containers do have an issue on Android that I know off where the chipset
doesn't like the container. MP4, MKV files should not be a problem - I have no issues on my box, however the 24P issue is there and I can see it! HD content seems to perform better than SD content IMHO. On Android the software and not the GPU does most of the work. That's the problem.

Scraping media for meta at e.g caching is a way of obtaining the synopsis, genre, year as you said via a scraper application. It seems that what your gallery app did just that and filled up your devices internal memory. The device becomes sluggish and tends to lag more. I have no video nor audio lag (currently) but I'm using a hard wired LAN connection on XBMC for Linux.

Setup is as follows:

8 Gig MicroSD card - with user data for XBMC (not to full up internal device)
TV: LG55LA6210
Usb: 2 TB Seagate
Network: Wired, 100 mob full duplex

I don't do apps, as I believe a dedicated device is better for somethings however I want to look into the Rom Collection Browser to play a few old time fave's. :) You can also check your CPU and memory utilization via Xbmc. Try disabling add-ons, choose stero output if you can and changing the video output to 720p. See if it makes a difference.

I played a 25 Gig ISO over the network last night and the unit bombed out in 15 minutes.
Impressed :twisted:
 
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So had a few wifi issues. Repositioned the wifi antenna inside and got it okay. So decided I'll go a little further. So I added an external antenna. Unclipped the U.FL from the wifi card and added the U.FL to SMA adapter and getting alot more stable connection. See attached photo :)
uploadfromtaptalk1396636523430.jpg
 
Wow I like it. Cant wait for the new devices coming out this year!
 
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