Digital Media Viewers

[GTom]

almost finished putting in 300m worth of Cat6 (builders tape and washers FTW!) through the house, Part of the reason for doing that is to get a stable connection to some sort of DMV to view files of the computers we have in the house on a TV stopping short of getting a media based box.

I'm currently looking at the WD Live TV which has Ethernet support which is a plus, the reviews I've come across seems to be pretty good. Does anyone have experience with these and / or suggest another solution?

[Treza360]

Not sure if it's exactly what you want, but I have a Beyonwiz DP-S1 PVR. Twin HD tuners and a 200GB HDD (upgradeable if you're game). EPG is via Ice-TV and you can set stuff up to record via their internet site. It also has inbuilt Ethernet connectivity and playback for DivX, XviD, WMV, MPG4, MkV etc.

Picture and music playback is not as good as I'd like but the thing is stable. I think they're still a little pricey though.

https://www.beyonwiz.com.au

Cheers,
Trent

[GTom]

Thanks trent,

Although I'm after a completely different thing.

The WD Live TV thing doesn't have an inbuilt harddrive. what it does is:

TV - WD Live - Network and/or External Hard Drive.

So you can view photos, play music or watch movie files from a shared folder on a PC or from an external hard drive....

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=735

[Treza360]

Yeah the Beyonwiz is more of a HD recorder with lots of media center capabilities as opposed to a "pure" DMV. However it does have the facilities that you're after, all the playback I specified from my previous post can all be streamed directly from shared folders on PCs or I can plug my portable HDD straight into its' USB port.

The WD you're looking at looks to have internet playback as well which would be awesome. Can't look to closely at the moment as I'm capped. Time to change ISPs I think.

Just another option for you though.

Cheers,
Trent

[Peter Jones]

I Like the DVICO suff.

http://www.tvix.co.kr/eng/productList.aspx

Pete

[GTom]

Yeah the Beyonwiz is more of a HD recorder with lots of media center capabilities as opposed to a "pure" DMV. However it does have the facilities that you're after, all the playback I specified from my previous post can all be streamed directly from shared folders on PCs or I can plug my portable HDD straight into its' USB port.

Ahh have to admit I didn't realize that... Probably something I don't want just yet, just want a standalone for the time being.

I Like the DVICO suff.

http://www.tvix.co.kr/eng/productList.aspx

Pete

Thanks pete that's what I'm after.

[dubbed]

We use a media centre at home. It's basically a slim PC that has the functionality of a computer but automatically loads up XBMC (XBox Media Centre) which is apparently the best in the biz. It links to all our computers - both wired and wirelessly - plays DVD/Blu Ray, music, video, everything. The best thing about it is the info you can capture. For example all our movies are linked to the IMDB database that gives you cover art, poster art, info/synopsis, user rating, etc, etc.

[Arctra]

I have tried several standalone players and have always been let down by their limited codec support.

Get yourself one of those EEEBox PC's and install Media Portal or XBMC. that way you won't struggle with different formats and can keep up with changes in the scene. Catch of the Day have them right now for a mere $300! BARGAIN.

HTPC is the best way to go IMO.

[tinto]

I've got a older mac laptop(lid closed) running nullriver media server sitting next to a ps3, both on cat6.
The mac is the media server and the download box... it also picks up the slack for when the ps3 can't play back a particular video. You can fully control the mac using an iPhone/ iPod touch.

That combo works for me( the mac was no longer being used at the office, so has a couple of big hdd attached to it and is very quiet), but I'm looking for something else for another room in he house, so I'm looking forward to hearing more suggestions.

Are the WD boxes capable of high def playback using mkv files?
My mac is struggling with those a bit.

[The_Hawk]

I've tried more than a few solutions over the years and am now using a couple of Apple TV's (one in the lounge and one in the bedroom).

It started with the main PC having a set of 10m composite cables running under the house to the TV and the use of a wireless mouse and keyboard. (essentially a non dedicated HTPC). This worked well in it's day, but wasn't what I would call user friendly since you have to switch display modes, leave the PC on and use a keyboard and mouse.

I upgraded this to an networked XBox 1 (if that's telling of how long ago it was) running XBMC, in fact that XBox never had a game bought for it, it was purely a media box. As has been said, XBMC is one FANTASTIC piece of kit, very pretty and very easy to use once set up (which doesn't take much). One of the other great things is that XBMC will play pretty much anything you throw at it without converting.

As time moved on the XBox and it's Pentium III 733Mhz CPU started to show it's age I started looking for a replacement that would deal with high def. Again I toyed with a dedicated HTPC, but wanted something more compact, quieter, less power hungry and above all, easy to use.

I bought a Popcorn Hour A110 (I think) which played HD content quite well, but the interface was very clunky and slow to use. From what I read it was a common complaint for people coming from XBMC since it was just so damn good. There are lots of plug ins that make it much prettier and a far better user experience, although to get these all working properly meant I would have needed to rename all my files since it depended on very specific naming conventions, if you didn't have those setup the interface was even worse than the stock one….
The real nail in the coffin was how it dealt with low(re) def content…. things like DVD rips just came out artifacted as all hell. Totally unwatchable and since that was a majority of my content, the box had to go…

Next on the list was an Apple TV. Let me start by saying there are a few conditions here. The Apple TV (ATV) is basically a glorified iPod hooked up to your TV… so it needs iTunes formats and iTunes running somewhere to work. You can sync content onto it (just like an iPod), or it can stream from a connected iTunes library…
For me that wasn't really an option since I have lots and lots of content in unsupported formats, I *could* convert it all, but that's not something I really want to do…. BUT!!! and it's a big BUT! Hacking it takes about 10 minutes and your up and running with XBMC!
For us it was the interface we know and love along with the ability to play pretty much all the content streamed off the network. I need to point out my 4 year old can just about use it
The downside to the ATV is that it's only a 1GHz Pentium M CPU, so 720P content is mostly fine (really high bit rates will be a slide show) but 1080 content is out. Lke I said most of my content is SD, even the HD content is only 720p so has all played fine. One of the other cool things is that it support full 5.1 Channel sound if the encoded file supplies it, so I have some very good files in my collection!

Next step for me (one day when I get some more money) will be an Apple Mac mini. At ~$850 it's a full computer running Frontrow (which is what the ATV runs) but more powerful. There is a little fiddling with connections, the ATV has HDMI where the mini has a display port so you need an adaptor for video AND an adaptor for audio (since it doesn't do audio over display port). Add in an Apple remote (or a Harmony remote like me ) and your all set for HTPC AND a full PC in the lounge if thats what you want.

The mini would be far more flexible since it really is a computer and is that much more powerful, but for me the ATV is simple and does everything I need for now. The HTPC I put in the same category as the Mac mini, a computer which can do everything, I'm just not convinced it would pass the Mum test. (i.e. can I give it to my mother and she be able to use it from the lounge without ringing me).


One last thing that I won't cover in much detail, but where are you going to store all your content? Since you have said ethernet connected I assume you will be streaming off a computer somewhere, but unless you leave that on 24/7 you might want to consider either an off the shelf NAS device or building your own little computer to be left on. Personally I run a little server.


Let me know if you have any more questions or if you want to come around for a beer and a look see I'm happy to show off my setup as well as how it all fits together.

[Peter Jones]

The approach I'm taking is to buy DLNA compliant kit http://www.dlna.org/home

I have NAS, a SmartStor NS4300N device which sets itself up as a media server and is automaically discovered by any other media devices on the network.

So far though I've got a couple of PCs running Win7 and a Sony Ericsson phone that all happily play together using DLNA.

The TVIX media player by the TV is not DLNA compliant but I can map the NAS drive manually easily enough. Ultimatley I'd buy a DLNA compliant TV.

Pete

[GTom]

I've tried more than a few solutions over the years and am now using a couple of Apple TV's (one in the lounge and one in the bedroom).

Thanks Aaron atm the Apple TV is a bit out of my budget. The WD box I mentioned before seems to be at the top of my list (apparently the firmware is Open Source(?) and can therefore be manipulated to playback different codecs.)

Although it might not be worth getting a buggy piece of equipment. How difficult is it to hack the apple box?

PC normally runs all day (almost) 5:00 in the morning til about 23:00 ... the other computer runs 24/7. I've 'designed' the network to allow NAS in different places (2 ports per room and a 16 port gigabit switch (from which the patch panel connects to) in the study)

I really don't want a multimedia pc, I'm kind of trying to avoid it...

Thanks for the answer!

[The_Hawk]

The approach I'm taking is to buy DLNA compliant kit http://www.dlna.org/home
Pete

My Samsung LCD TV is DLNA compliant, in fact I bought this model specifically because it had ethernet and the promise to playback video... but then I have never had it working 100%. Seems I could use the Samsung software (or TVersity) to encode on the fly, but pausing or rewinding would screw the stream.... So watching all the way through was fine, anything else would break it.

Thanks Aaron atm the Apple TV is a bit out of my budget. The WD box I mentioned before seems to be at the top of my list (apparently the firmware is Open Source(?) and can therefore be manipulated to playback different codecs.)

Although it might not be worth getting a buggy piece of equipment. How difficult is it to hack the apple box?

PC normally runs all day (almost) 5:00 in the morning til about 23:00 ... the other computer runs 24/7. I've 'designed' the network to allow NAS in different places (2 ports per room and a 16 port gigabit switch (from which the patch panel connects to) in the study)

I really don't want a multimedia pc, I'm kind of trying to avoid it...

Thanks for the answer!

Hacking the Apple TV means using some software to make a USB memory stick, then rebooting with it plugged in... or it was. Since they updated the creation software there is an extra step that needs to be done via SSH/Terminal, but it's only a few commands, there is a thread on MacTalk where I've put it up word for word, might need tweaking again (if the version is updated, but it's easy enough).

I looked at WD TV instead of another Apple TV (I bought the bedroom one a few weeks ago) and in the end it was easier to give the wife more of what she's used to .

[GTom]

didn't realise that this type of stuff was that well known! only found out about it last week, and it's got me hooked! lol

[Peter Jones]

Another media player of interest is the Sarotech range.

http://www.sarotech.com/english/product/dvp-570x.html

I've got a few of the older DVP-570 units, their interface is clunky but they're reasonably functional. I haven't taken a look at their latest versions.

They're a bit quirky but they do seem to issue firmware updates for them.

Most of the better players are based on the Sigma Designs chipsets it's just a matter of working out which has the newest chip and the best user interface.

The DVICO TVIX stuff works well and has a better UI although also slightly cryptic for some functions.

The 5130SH has issues with the AVC/H264 from my Xacti though.

I've got a TVIX HD 6500M to play with as well but I haven't had time to take it out of the box yet. Hopefully the newer chipset will handle the AVC better.

I'd like to get my hands on one of those WD boxes as well, the way they slot mount one of their own 2.5" HDDs is a neat concept.

The Apple TV interface is pretty slick, it's been a while since I played with that. Initially HD wasn't supported but I think it is now with some limitations.

Pete