We Finally Got One!

And it was worth the wait!

We've been using the new AmiNET 130 (as well as the Wegener STB) for about a week now and they rock.

The Amino, still a bit clumsy to configure, is popular because of its small form-factor and cool design. The 130 is bigger than the 110 (almost twice the size but still smaller than most of the STBs out there) because it has now supports HDMI, compact AVC, USB, optical, S-Video, Ethernet and coax interfaces as well as a regular phone jack. Wow. It supports MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (as well as MPEG-2) HD at 720p and 1080i resolutions.

It also has a bunch more horsepower. To decode MPEG-4 you need a lot of processing power. The Amino 130 has a 300 MIPS hardware codec on board.

Despite all the press releases and tradeshow demos, we've had the hardest time finding an MPEG-4 set top box. We've desperately wanted one because it lets us show multiple (read 3) HD streams over  802.11a/g. That seems to be the bar that the domestic (U.S.) carriers have set for market entry.

We've been simultaneously running multiple HD MPEG-4 streams through the Amino 130 to different TVs. We used our HD free-to-air antenna on our roof to even capture the 2006 Victoria Secret Runway show. We transcoded it (using QuickTime Pro) to MPEG-4 and have been streaming it all week (the engineers won't let us turn it off).  And boy does it look fabulous. The data rate on the stream is only 6 Mbps. So we can simultaneously stream three HD channels easily over 802.11a/g.

While there's a bunch of interest in 802.11n (us included) to push top line Wi-Fi capacity up - it comes at a big cost. But with MPEG-4, operators get some serious relief and the ability to start offering HD IPTV...NOW!

Comments

[Hanse Suave]

Minor correction: In your picture of the ports of the Amino-130 the port you labeled s-video should be instead: "Component & composite"