Photo viewing speed

[Toccata]

I just bought a Pioneer TV with an Ethernet port and integrated "Home Media Gallery" (DLNA) client software. Great TV, lousy media player. I haven't tried viewing any videos, but the still photo player is sluggish to the point of being unusable. Jpeg files, depending on their size and compression level, take anywhere from 6 to 18 seconds to display, even in slide show mode. That's 6-18 seconds of blank screen between each image. A quick call to Pioneer technical support verified that this is indeed the expected behavior.

So I'm looking into the SageTV system as a way to get the basic capability I thought I was getting with the TV, and also as a way to expand into video recording in the future. I would probably start out with the HD Theater box in stand alone mode (Ethernet to HDMI) and then go from there. But I don't want to make the same mistake I made with the TV and buy something on faith. Does anyone on this forum use the HD Theater box to view still photos? How is the response time? Can I push a button on the remote control and see the next image more or less instantaneously, regardless of how it is encoded? Are there any other problems or limitations I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance.

[rswoods]

Does anyone on this forum use the HD Theater box to view still photos? How is the response time? Can I push a button on the remote control and see the next image more or less instantaneously, regardless of how it is encoded? Are there any other problems or limitations I should be aware of?

Assuming you have no issues accessing the shared drive(s) containing the images you want to view, then yes, the HD200 will load the images "more or less instantaneously" . There are a couple of threads addressing permissions issues while accessing shared drives.

[metapath]

I ran a slide show of over 700 pictures on Boxing Day for relatives using my HD-200 in standalone mode. It was fast and I experienced no slowness at all. There were mixes of formats and resolutions, most in my camera's native resolution (5 mp). The slideshow defaults to 4 seconds per picture and they all fade into each other quickly.

My 62" DLP Toshiba HDTV has a slideshow function from camera flash cards that like yours is completely useless (unless I resize all the photos to 1024x768...a royal pain).

I think you'd be happy with the HD Theater.