Used equipment question

[hondared]

I haven't used any Control4 equipment yet and was looking to buy an MC1 controller off of ebay to play around with, would I be wasting my time with this?

The main reason that I was thinking of trying this system is because of the scalability of it.

I have had a Sony CX777ES dvd changer for some time now and was looking at buying an Escient Fireball DVDM-100 as a front-end for this unit but would like to possibly do some automation at my home in the near future so I am curious if the Control4 AVM-MC1-B would take care of the DVD changer as well as the automation features.

I was looking at the composer software version 1.7.1 and it does not list this controller in the menu so I am assuming it is no longer supported?

Basically I am looking for some advice since I already have way too many hobbies and would like to make sure that this is something I will find useful before I purchase new equipment at retail. I know that having a C4 authorized installer is the correct way to go but it's not really in the budget right now so any productive advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

I almost forgot, will this unit work with the iPhone app?

[jberger]

I'm a dealer for both and have had both in my own system.

You would be better off buying an HC-300 for use with the 777.

It's current hardware, will work with the next software release, and is faster than the old gear. The setup is very easy and well integrated not to mention well supported.

Plus it gives you great control for the entire system where as the fireball remote control is awful. I can not imagine anyone using the fireball remote on a regular basis. When installing one, I use the fireball remote just long enough to enable RS-232 control and the web interface before adding it to a URC remote. It really is that bad.

I've had both the Fireball and the HC-300 with a 777. I actually sold my fireball system to order the new vision system and ended up using the Control4 setup as a temporary system. Canceled the vision during the long backorder period and kept the Control4/777 combo for movies.

As much as I liked the Fireball, the Control4 setup is cheaper and seems more stable than the fireball for movies. It's common for a copy protected movie to lockup the fireball, where it just shows as a bad disc on the HC-300.

I miss the fireball's music management because of the number of formats supported, but I'm certain that will be corrected in the future. I originally used the fireball as a music server for FLAC so movie management was a secondary concern at the time. My wife used the fireball mostly for movies and she is happier with the C4 solution, says it's easier to use for her and doesn't lockup.

The ability to edit information from the web gui on the fireball was a plus, and it's easier to get a print out of the movies loaded in the system with Escient. (This is VERY handy if you want to unload a few discs for a road trip with the kids). It's possible to do the same from the HC300, but it's not as quick or easy.

Looking forward to the new blu-ray changers being fully integrated so we can start specing the HC-300 and changer combo again.

[hondared]

I'm a dealer for both and have had both in my own system.

You would be better off buying an HC-300 for use with the 777.

It's current hardware, will work with the next software release, and is faster than the old gear. The setup is very easy and well integrated not to mention well supported.

Plus it gives you great control for the entire system where as the fireball remote control is awful. I can not imagine anyone using the fireball remote on a regular basis. When installing one, I use the fireball remote just long enough to enable RS-232 control and the web interface before adding it to a URC remote. It really is that bad.

I've had both the Fireball and the HC-300 with a 777. I actually sold my fireball system to order the new vision system and ended up using the Control4 setup as a temporary system. Canceled the vision during the long backorder period and kept the Control4/777 combo for movies.

As much as I liked the Fireball, the Control4 setup is cheaper and seems more stable than the fireball for movies. It's common for a copy protected movie to lockup the fireball, where it just shows as a bad disc on the HC-300.

I miss the fireball's music management because of the number of formats supported, but I'm certain that will be corrected in the future. I originally used the fireball as a music server for FLAC so movie management was a secondary concern at the time. My wife used the fireball mostly for movies and she is happier with the C4 solution, says it's easier to use for her and doesn't lockup.

The ability to edit information from the web gui on the fireball was a plus, and it's easier to get a print out of the movies loaded in the system with Escient. (This is VERY handy if you want to unload a few discs for a road trip with the kids). It's possible to do the same from the HC300, but it's not as quick or easy.

Looking forward to the new blu-ray changers being fully integrated so we can start specing the HC-300 and changer combo again.

Thank you for your well written response. Can you tell me if the HC300 will load all the disc info through the RS232 port like the Escient hardware advertised it will do? I have a lot of DVD's loaded and liked the idea of having the system pull up all the artwork and info automatically either from the web or off the disc itself. I am new to these pieces of equipment and how they operate so I hope that my question is stated clearly.

Thank you

[jberger]

Yes,

The HC-300 uses the serial port to communicate with the changer and pull the information needed to catalog the discs.

Once it's installed, you just put a disc in the changer and it performs the lookups, catalog and coverart indexing automatically.

The way the system works is the same on both the fireball and Control4 systems. The changer provides the TOC with chapters, times, etc of each disc. That information is sent via the serial port to the controller which caches the information and compares the data against the databases available online. Once it finds a match, it downloads all of the relevant information for that disc and places it in the index. The system does not pull title or similar data from the DVD, it looks it all up online based on the TOC.

It works well, but is not 100% foolproof. Sometimes it will get a title confused with another disc, or not be able to lookup an oddball DVD that's not in the databases. Some copy protected discs will not lookup at all and not be usable in the changer. (The last 2 james bond DVD's had this issue). All in all, it works well and it's much easier to let it lookup all the discs then manually fill in the blanks than try to enter all of the discs yourself.

If you are looking to index copies of DVD's that have been 'backed up' using dvd shrink or similar software which removes extra content, it doesn't work well at all. Since the TOC data of the burned disc will not match the full production original.