TESTING METHODOLOGY - TEST 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 in the process. So from now and on testing will be performed with the help of 4 specific MKV media files and several BDISO (when possible), 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.

   Sigma Designs has yet to reveal their latest flagship HD decoding chipsets but the SMP8671 proved to be more than capable to surpass the latest RTD1186DD in terms of image quality something which can be easily seen if you compare the posted screenshots with the ones from the R300 (RTD1186DD) by Egreat we reviewed a while back. However this is pretty much the only place where the new Sigma Designs chipset beats the RTD1186DD since i failed to see or hear any other significant differences. The Gigabit Ethernet LAN did perform slightly better than what I’ve seen with the latest offerings based on the RTD1185/6 chipsets (although that function is separate from those chipsets) but unfortunately the TV-301 series lack support for BDISO files (unlike RTD1186DD based media players) and although not many users use those i am sure it would be a nice feature to have. Because the TV-301A doesn't come with the built-in Wi-Fi a/b/g adapter like the TV-301AW i didn't test any of its wireless functions (the 2 USB dongles i had here from RaidSonic and ACRyan didn't seem to work flawlessly) but i came across zero issues while using the wired Gigabit LAN connection (actually it even worked better than I’d hoped).

     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.