I bought a new geek toy:

Mediagate MG-35

It's a media streamer that I will be adding a 500Gb HDD to. I can use it as a NASD as well. I plan on using this for trips so I can rip my DVD's to it so the kids have something to watch in the car. It will see some use in the house as well.

My question is this typically I would rip my DVD's to a DIVX encoded AVI. Overall what is going to give me the best picture quality as viewed on portable LCDs, hotel TV's and occasionally on my plasma tv? ISO IFO DIVX XVID VOB?

Sometimes I'm too much of a geek...

Thanks,
Mike

Divx / Mpeg 4 works well for this. The MG-35 is pretty forgiving of formats.

Give us report or review later how this thing works out would ya?

Will do. It should be in on Wednesday. Hey aren't you supposed to be popping "vics" and taken it easy?!

Jaw pain woke me up after the last dose last night wore off. Couldn't go back to sleep.

Talk to your doc. I recently had rotator cuff surgery and they gave me scripts for Vicaodin and Oxycodone. I would take the Vics every 4 hours and the oxy every 4 as well but 2 hours after the vics like this:

8 - Vic
10 - oxy
12 - vic
2 - oxy.......

Helped keep things in check and I was able to rest fairly well. Not sure why they consider rotator cuff surgery day surgery it friggin hurt!!

My best,
Mike D.

Thanks man. Heading back to the rack in a bit...

Ok so after playing around with this for a few days I'm really digging it and wondering why I didn’t buy one sooner. Now before I get in to it there are 2 versions available the MG-35 and the MG-350HD. The 35 does upscale so the couple of HD DVD's that I've ripped played fine and I couldn't see any difference between the actual DVD and the rip on my plasma. The 350HD does offer wireless vs. wired ethernet but... the NDAS driver is not Vista compatible. No biggie the USB transfer rate is higher speed then the LAN would be anyways. I had a spare 320GB drive and instead of ordering an additional drive I used it.

The stock firmware really bites. It’s a LINUX based system. The color scheme looks like it was designed by a color blind individual with poor gui skills. Fortunately there is a group out there that has written a *custom* firmware that provides a much nicer looking and feeling gui.

The only true negatives I have found so far:
NDAS drivers not Vista compatible
No power adapter for the car
No internal fan for cooling (hey hard drives can run hot!)
No HDMI output (but really it’s gonna see more car use then home)
The remote is too small

Positives:
Small and really portable
Composite, Component and SPIDF outputs
Quiet
Not very pricey @130 for the MG-35 without a HDD
Large support group in various forums
Continued third party firmware development

I wish I had bought one sooner!


My best,
Mike D.