INTRODUCTION

   Sigma Designs followed closely by Realtek are the two dominant powers in the media player market and with both of them releasing their latest HD decoding chipsets in the market it's not really surprising that most media player manufacturers have released their offerings based on those two solutions. A couple of weeks ago we tested the latest media player by RaidSonic the Icy Box IB-MP3011Plus which was based on the previous RTD1185 chipset by Realtek and performed very well for a cost-effective solution. Today however we are taking things a bit further with the latest high-end S-Series R300 Network HD Media Player from Egreat.

   EGREAT was established in August 2006 and is based in China. They have spent much on the R&D department in a continuous pursuit of perfection in arts and crafts and that ensures that they get high quality and innovative products. Their current product line includes multi-media hard-disk players, HD network HDD Players, Network storage servers, digital photo frames, advertising machines, USB video creator, USB DVR surveillance system and company accessories. Having already reviewed most Multimedia Network Tanks from EGREAT we have quite a good idea of what kind of performance to expect from their high quality and feature rich solutions.

   The Egreat R300 Network Media Player comes with the latest RTD1186 decoding chipset by Realtek which compared to the RTD1185 is quite faster (750MHz/500MHz), features an OpenGL ES.2 compliant GPU, supports decoding of AVC/VC-1 media and also carries the latest HDMI 1.4 with CEC and 3D support. Moving to the rest of the player the brushed aluminum R300 also features 512MB DDR3 SDRAM paired with 4GB of MLC NAND flash, hot-swap 3.5" HDD bay, USB 3.0 port, Gigabit LAN, dual Wi-Fi network antennas and an external powered SATA port. Well on paper all these look very promising indeed but we always like to make our conclusions based on the end result since that's what really counts and this review is not an exception.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The S-Series R300 arrived inside a medium sized white box with a product drawing at the front and back, the Egreat logo and the main product features placed at the lower end in the form of small icons.

The main features of the R300 are also listed on both sides.

As you can see Egreat packs the R300 inside two thick Styrofoam spacers and the rest of the bundle inside a secondary cardboard box.

Inside the secondary box you will find the remote control, two Wi-Fi Antennas, user's manual, HDMI cable, external SATA/power cable and the AC power adapter.

THE S-SERIES R300

Egreat has improved the remote control unit (compared to previous ones) by making it larger and using a better button placement, however we still see no button illumination for use in dark places. I really have no ideas as to how much that would cost Egreat but i have been pointing this out for almost three years now so i hope one day we will see that feature.

The R300 features a high quality brushed dark aluminum chassis measuring 197mm in width, 198mm in depth and 62mm in height while at the same time weighing a mere 1.05kg.

The front design of the R300 may be somewhat similar to many previous media players manufactured by Egreat but it's also a lot different.

First of all there are two USB 2.0 ports at the two front ends something we see for the first time with one of their players.

Then we see the power on/off and navigation controls in the form of touch buttons right beneath the VFW screen again something we've never seen before with a device from Egreat.

A long sticker at the top of the device also points to the main features of the R300.

The Egreat logo is also present at the top of the unit.

Moving at the left side we see a 40mm low-noise exhaust fan, SD/MS/MMC card reader, e-Bus interface compatible with DVB-T/DMB-TH/FW cards and two USB 2.0 ports.

The easy-swap HDD 3.5" bay is located at the right side of the unit.

The S-Series R300 may be somewhat small but it comes with every connectivity option you could ever wish for.

So from left to right we see one of the two Antenna connectors, DC plug, USB 3.0 host port, USB 3.0 port, on/off switch, reset button, optical audio out, coaxial audio out, HDMI 1.4, Gigabit Ethernet port, powered external SATA port, A/V output, component output and last but not least the second Antenna connector.

At the bottom of the R300 we see 18 exhaust holes and 4 round rubber feet.

Although an internal Wi-Fi Antenna would be better looking the external ones are much better at what they do. Unfortunately due to time restraints i was unable to slice open the chassis of the R300 (turned out to be harder than it looked).

GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE (GUI)

Unlike the RaidSonic MP3011Plus media player we reviewed a few weeks back the S-Series R300 uses a newly designed user-friendly GUI which for some reason was quite hard to take pictures of.

TESTING METHODOLOGY - RESULTS

     After thinking it over i have decided on performing the same exact tests for all the Media Players i review. This occurred right after some of you emailed me while on my previous position asking for a more reliable methodology when testing such players/recorders. To be honest this may complicate things but it should also save me quite a bit of time. So from now and on testing will be performed with the help of 4 specific MKV media files and several BDISO, MOV, RMVB and AVI ones, with bitrates of up to 35Mbps, something which as many of you know is not easy to come by. Of course the 4 specific MKV files are ones i ripped myself from 4 Blu-Ray titles i currently own in order to not only manage to hit the desired bitrate of up to 35Mbps but also use specific, high detailed scenes. My good old SONY 55A2000 (already 3+ years old but still my favorite) along with my latest Panasonic TX-P42S20 are the two screens i will be using for testing. In due time and when i finally see a 3D Screen that really makes me want to buy it i will also start using 3D material for testing but currently that is simply not possible and so i can't comment on 3D results. As for sound the audio/video amplifiers used with the two screens are the Yamaha RX-650 and the Yamaha RX-V463 coupled with 5.1 systems by TANNOY and Crystal Audio.

        As many of you know I’ve been a Sigma Designs supporter for the past years but Realtek has really started taking things seriously and so the RTD1186 is amongst the best HD chipsets i have ever seen not only because of its specifications but also because of the end result which is almost on par with the best Sigma chipsets currently available. Colors are vibrant, audio output is very good and crystal but i did say almost and so i did experience some freezing’s and some smoothness issues when playing BDISO files. Egreat has a beta firmware available which resolves most of those issues so if you do come across something like that feel free to contact us to give you the latest download link, however don't expect official support for a beta release so use it only if you have to (if it ain't broken don't try to fix it). Also as mentioned earlier audio playback was very good but as always i really think that media players have a long way to go before they actually playback audio at the same level as professional players. I did encounter a few connection/speed issues with the new Gigabit LAN which were also somewhat resolved with the latest beta firmware (speed is not the best), still i don't think people buy such devices to surf the web. On the bright side the external Wi-Fi Antennas proved to be quite useful since i was able to connect my system with the R300 at a range of no less than 18 meters with 3 concrete walls in between.

     Bellow you will find 4 different screenshots from the 4 specific MKV media files i mentioned above featuring a bit rate between 20 and 35Mbps. The resolution has remained unchanged (however the files are compressed to JPEG to save space on the server) at 1920x1080.

CONCLUSION

   Media Players featuring the latest HD chipsets usually carry quite a bit of issues with them (beta testing of such devices prior to getting released would be a nice thing to see) and the S-Series R300 was no exception to that rule since not only did we experience several freezing/movement issues when playing BDISO files (and in their menus) but also when using the latest Gigabit LAN. Egreat however did resolve most of these issues with the release of their beta firmware update so i guess it all ended well. Overall the new RTD1186 chipset by Realtek is by far their best one to date and although not perfect still it's going to be quite hard for Sigma Designs to create the same performance gap they enjoyed in the past (although we have yet to see their upcoming high-end HD chipsets).

   The single real drawback for some people may be the current price tag of the S-Series R300 Media Player by Egreat since it retails for around USD230 inside the USA and 190Euros inside the EU. Of course most of the times you truly get what you paid for so if you want the latest and most powerful HD chipset by Realtek to date coupled with all the features mentioned above then the R300 is not really expensive. However if you don't place much value to those features and you just want a basic media player to cover your needs then there are certainly many cheaper solutions in the market today. Personally since all the issues i came across where resolved i truly consider the S-Series R300 Media Player by Egreat as one of the best media players available currently and that's why it gets our Golden award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Brushed Aluminum Enclosure)
- Performance (Realtek RTD1186)
- 3D Support
- BDISO/VC1/AVC Support
- External Powered SATA Port
- Easy-Swap HDD Space
- Dual Wi-Fi Antenna
- USB 3.0 Ports
- Front Touch Buttons
- HDMI 1.4 

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Initial Issues (Most Of Them Resolved)
- Remote Control Lacks Button Illumination