Media Players

[indothai]

Hi All,

I'm looking for a stand-alone Media Player (ie: WD TV, Popcorn Hour, etc). I currently own a WD TV, but looking to replace it with something that has network connection... getting tired of plugging and unplugging the HD out to transfer files.

Anyone care to give a short review on your media player devices?

Criteria:

HDMI out

1080 ability

Network (wifi optional)

Can play a multitude of movies

Available locally (Bangkok)

Thanks.

[lemsip]

Check this website,I personally like the look of the ACRyan PLAYONHD and it meets your needs: http://www.digilifegadget.com/index.php?la...1&cid=24968

Also this website give you great info: http://www.iboum.com/sort/media-players-sort-rating.php

Edited February 3, 2010 by lemsip

[keeniau96]

The WD HD is excellent but it only plays 720p and is not network ready. However, I have heard that they recently introduced an updated version which does 1080p and wha WiFI connection. I am looking to move from my WD HD to the new one, in large part because of the great satisfaction with the one I have.up

[Spoonman]

Just purchased an Xtreamer from InvadeIT, Spose to do all you list and then some.

Reason for choosing it over a WD TV Live was they were able to supply the WiFi doofa as well, awesome service too, ordered 12.00pm on Monday, by 12.00pm yesterday it had arrived.

[angiud]

WD TV play also 1080p.

And the new WD TV LIVE has Ethernet, you tube and many more capabilities.

[thaimite]

I have a TVIX 5500 and a Popcorn Hour A100 and am now in the market for a 3rd device. (working away from home again)

I could not recommend the TVIX as their support is terrible, They have had a firmware update with a bug that makes FTP unusable in beta for a year.

The popcorn hour I have is an older model, and the GUI is slow, but otherwise it does all I could want, and Popcorn release a new firmware with new features at least every 6 months even for this old model.

. Amazingly it has been sitting in a non airconditioned room in Issan running 24/7 (including hard disk installed) for the past year with no heat issues.

I recommend reading some ofr the detailed reviews at http://www.mpcclub.com/ beofre making a decision.

For me the ability to have a juke box skin such as YAMJ (Yet Another Movie Jukebox) or MLMJ (My Lil Movie JukeBox) is a must as they add a lot to the viewing experience especially if you have a lot of movies.

Currently I am torn beween the Popcorn Hour A200 (Baby brother of the C200 without the blue Ray drives which I don't need, and the ACRyan Playon. The ACRyan Playon seems a better device, but as I already have my movie collection formatted for the Popcorn Hour devices, I will not make a decision until I see if the Playon can support the MLMJ.

There are a few annoying bugs with the Popcorn C200/A200 devices but I have confidence that their firmware updates will fix the issues. Equally members of the ACRyan development team are active on the foorums too answering questions and giving advice.

There is a demo of the many jukeboxes available single page on the web, but currently I have not the time to search for the link for you, and most of them have a you tube video showing what the interface is like after you have added your movies

[bkklouis71]

How about Apple TV? I just bought a second one (one upstairs, one downstairs). Key thing is to patch it and load "XDMC" and "Boxee" on it (otherwise you're stuck with just Apple iTunes etc.). It will play anything from your local (windows) network server @ 1080, connects via Wifi or Ethernet. THB 9500 for 160Gb model.

[d0ndela]

How about Apple TV? I just bought a second one (one upstairs, one downstairs). Key thing is to patch it and load "XDMC" and "Boxee" on it (otherwise you're stuck with just Apple iTunes etc.). It will play anything from your local (windows) network server @ 1080, connects via Wifi or Ethernet. THB 9500 for 160Gb model.

Therefore...

160GB is massively outdated. Almost not even possible to get that small disks anymore.

[joncl]

Therefore...

160GB is massively outdated. Almost not even possible to get that small disks anymore.

The EG-r2a and the EG-r1 multi media players blow most other devices out of the water. The R2a can have up to a 2tb sata drive internally, run on wifi as well and the R1 can be used as a remote client so a multi room AV system is a breeze.

Having used AppleTV, the Popcorn and the WD this unit is not only cheaper but has more options (as shown below) and will talk also to your DM box if you have one on your LAN.

The costs are $99.99 and $129.99 for the R1 and the R2 devices - see the web site here https://www.onmp.com . I do not sell them but I should

Specs for the R2 device;

Simple introduce:

◆ Gilded PCB technique,assured good quality.

◆ support USB device and ESATA device.

◆ Support 3.5” SATA HDD

◆ Besides double USB host, there is ESATA host outside.

◆ HDMI1.3 ports.

◆ Full HD. up to 1080p.

◆ Size: 160*160*55mm

Hardware parameter:

CPU: 400MHz MIPS

DDR2 SDRAM：128MB

NAND FLASH：256MB

Connector indication:

Video output:

Ø HDMI1.3 output,resolutions:480P、576P、720P@50Hz、720P@60Hz、1080I@50Hz、1080I@60Hz、1080P@50Hz，1080P@60Hz

Ø Y/Pb/Pr, resolution:480P、576P、720P@50Hz、720P@60Hz、1080I@50Hz、1080I@60Hz、1080P@50Hz，1080P@60Hz

Ø Composite,resolution;576I@PAL、480I@NTSC

Audio output:

Ø Stereo output

Ø Digital optical output

USB HOST:

USB host *2 ports, connect with various usb device directly.

ESATA ports

Ø ESATA host*1, connect with ESATA device easily. Up to 2TB.

USB2.0 SLAVE ports

Ø USB slave *1, connect with computer for data transfer, speed is 480Mb/s.

Network connector:

Ø Network 10/100M support playback via network.

Ø Support USB WIFI dongle,802.11n

Remote control

Ø 40 buttons remote control.

Power on/off control.

Ø Add one more MCU, support remote power on/off directly.

File management:

Ø Support file copy/mark functions.

Video format:

Ø RM/RMVB

Ø MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)

Ø MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG)

Ø MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)

Ø VOB

Ø AVI, ASF, WMV

Ø Matroska (MKV)

Ø MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4

Ø IFO

Ø BD-ISO.DVD-ISO

Ø MINI BD,BD-9,BD25，RBD，D5，D9，DVD，CD

Video codec:

Ø MPEG1,VCD1.0/2.0,SVCD(up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø HD MPEG2 MP/HL,ISO.IFO,VOB,TS(up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø HD MPEG4 SP/ASP, Xvid (up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø H.264 BP L3,MP L4.1,HP L4.1 (up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø WMV9,VC-1 AP L3(up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø DivX3/4/5(up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø XVID SD/HD(up to 1920*1080@30P/60I or 1280*720@60P)

Ø RM/RMVB 8/9/10(up to 1280*720@30P)

Audio format:

Ø AAC, M4A

Ø MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)

Ø WAV

Ø OGG

Ø WMA

Audio codec:

Ø MPEGⅠLayer 1/2/3(2-CH) and MPEGⅡ1/2(Multi-Channel)

Ø LPCM,ADPCM,FLAC,AAC,WAV，OGG

Ø Dolby Digital

Ø RA1/RA-cook/RA-Lossless

Picture format:

Ø JPEG

Ø BMP

Ø PNG

Ø GIF

Subtitle format:

Ø MicroDVD [.sub],

Ø SubRip [.srt],

Ø Sub Station Alpha [.ssa],

Ø Sami [.smi]

Ø idx+sub

Ø PGS subtitle

special function

Ø Support playback TS、M2TS without interval;

Ø Support movie preview/book mark/external subtitle can be adjusted;

Ø Support slide show/background music/screen saver

Ø Parental control

Ø BD simple navigation

Ø support time seek function

OSD language:

Ø Simplified Chinese/ Traditional Chinese

Ø English/Spanish/Russian/Czech/Dutch/Italian/French/German/Turkish/Hebrew

Subtitle language：

Ø Simplified Chinese/ Traditional Chinese

Ø Turkish/Greece/Hebrew/SE European, Central European,

Cyrillic, Western, Unicode (UTF8)

HDD partition:

Ø FAT32, NTFS

EDIT: available in Bangkok at fortune tower

also has the Thai OSD as well

in Thailand costs thb 4,400 for the R1 no R2 stock last time I checked (last saturday)

Edited February 3, 2010 by joncl

[indothai]

Thanks all for your inputs / suggestions.

[theseahorse]

I picked up a WD HD Live a couple of weeks ago in Singapore and I'm very happy with it (best 4,500 baht I've spent in along time!)

There's a discussion about them here on TV (do a search), some people are saying you can get them in certain places in Thailand now.

If you're already happy with your old WD HD, then I think you'd like the new one!

Edited February 3, 2010 by theseahorse

[jfchandler]

I'm pretty good with technology in general, but no background in these kind of standalone media players...

Can someone offer a simple explanation...

What's the advantage of these kinds of units.... vs... simply using the TV out capability on a good multimedia computer or laptop and sending or cloning the video to an external television via either HDMI or S-Video???

Or, using one of the new variety of BlueRay DVD players that are networkable (Wifi or Ethernet), have USB and/or firewire jacks, and are capable of directly accessing streaming providers such as Netflix???

Thanks much...

[d0ndela]

I'm pretty good with technology in general, but no background in these kind of standalone media players...

Can someone offer a simple explanation...

What's the advantage of these kinds of units.... vs... simply using the TV out capability on a good multimedia computer or laptop and sending or cloning the video to an external television via either HDMI or S-Video???

Or, using one of the new variety of BlueRay DVD players that are networkable (Wifi or Ethernet), have USB and/or firewire jacks, and are capable of directly accessing streaming providers such as Netflix???

Thanks much...

Not much difference from such a BlueRay DVD player that you mention, just cheaper I guess. Many new LED TV's have built in media players as well, so in time media players will probably not be needed anymore.

The advantage with these media players compared to a computer is that you get a relatively cheap box to put permanently by your TV, so no messy cables and temporary solutions with your laptop on the floor next to the TV or whatever. You get a remote control (I know some computers have this as well). All new media players have networking capabilities, so they can stream from the internet (youtube, radio stations etc.) or from computers/NAS servers within your network.

I guess the biggest difference is price really, these come quite cheap, but then again they can only be used for playing media. I don't think it will be long though before they will start to add email clients, browsers etc. in these boxes. The processor should be able to handle that.

[nikster]

Yeah.. "simply" using the TV out on the computer is anything but. Fiddling with cables etc, I'd rather watch on my laptop screen.

The EG devices sound great, and the AppleTV too - it's not hopelessly overpriced anymore (used to be 14,000).

I have a WD TV, it does 1080p and so far has played all content I threw on it - HD looks fantastic, huge difference.

Problems are all in the usability realm - clearly, WD has no experience with consumer devices.

- Remote lag. Turning it on or off on the remote, there's a 1 second or more lag until the lights turn on / off. I often think it's broken

- Doesn't really turn off - feeds power to the hard drives even when off, which is silly

- Only 1 USB. It recognized a USB hub, but not enough power for multiple HDs

- Power outages happen a lot here. WD TV turns on every time the power went out and came back - I don't know why. Due to this, it's pretty much on all the time.

- Menus are somewhat complicated. Every time I turn it on, I have to Navigate to, in order: Video Folders (not the default) -> USB2 (totally redundant - there's only 1 USB port?!) -> Then my folders and files.

Other than that, no issues. I just wish it was a little more professionally done. Maybe they've since fixed some of these.

[thaimite]

In addition to the above they are family friendly. the wife and kids can browse movies more easily than if they were on a PC, especially if they are not computer literate

If you have central storage unit (NAS) then the same collection of movies can be watched from any room in the house that has a player.

Many players also have torrent clients so you can download and watch without having to leave your PC running all day

[jfchandler]

Hmm... I'm not persuaded....

My friend just bought a WD TV Live unit, paired with a wireless N USB adapter, and asked me to set them up on my home network for him to see, before he tries installing them in his home... So I did that yesterday...

My initial experiences/impressions with the WD TV Live unit are posted here in a different thread specifically on that unit... I guess it's OK, and certainly an improvement over the prior WD TV (not live) unit... But overall, it seems very limited/limiting to me.... The other post explains why....

About the prior comment about such units being good for non-techie wives and children, yes, that I can appreciate.... Though running/playing media files on a PC or laptop these days is something even the youngins increasingly are savvy about...

About the "messy" cables of connecting a laptop directly to a PC, not sure what the poster is doing in that regard. At my home, I have a laptop-TV set-up, and there's only ONE cable connecting the two...purchased for about 250 baht at FortuneTown IT...

On the laptop end, it's a S-Video out for the picture and a stereo mini-plug to fit into the speakers jack of my soundcard. On the TV end, it's the usual stereo RCA plugs (white and red) along with my choice of either an RCA yellow video input or a S-Video input.

It could just as easily be an HDMI cable for the video, but neither the laptop nor the bedroom TV I'm using for this have HDMI, so I'm going with the traditional cabling for now. No mess or trouble at all...and certainly no more messy than the cables you'll need with any standalone media player unit...