Media Player advice

[nubreed000]

Christmas is coming up early and I wanna get something for my parents so that they can take advantage of their new HDTV. I purchased the Asus Air Play (or whatever they call that p.o.s) when the first got the TV and returned it the next day because it was a complete joke of a device. A shame too, because I expected quality from Asus products and this is one of the only devices that has built-in wifi support (even though it would never connect to my network).

Anywho, I'm ready to look around again for another media player. I checked out whats available and nothing much has changed in terms of whats out there.

I'm debating between one of the Western Digital devices, or suck it up and get a Samsung Blu Ray player which just so happens to have MKV support, and an optional wifi dongle. I've been searching the internets for about 2 weeks now and I haven't found a product that's a clear winner in this category (maybe not searching hard enough?)

Anyone have any other suggestions? The key thing is that it needs to be simple. Wifi is preferable but I can always rip+copy the stuff for them onto a hard drive.

 

[queequeg99]

I would be very careful about using a BD player as a more general media player. Many of them have very tight specifications for the types of files they play. Even if a player advertises that it supports MKV, there are often some caveats (i.e. the file needs to be encoded in a very specific manner). Streaming files from a PC is a secondary function for these devices so manufacturers do not necessary feel great pressure to accommodate requests for broader file support.

General purpose media players can also suffer from this problem to some extent. However, because their primary purpose is to stream media from a PC, manufacturers are often more on the ball as far as supported files are concerned. I use the SageTV HD300 both as an extender to a SageTV server running on a PC as well as a standalone media player. It has played pretty much everything I've thrown at it. You can plug an external hard drive with ripped movies directly into the hd300 or connect it to a network. It does have some limited BD functionality (i.e. you can play the main movie) but has no support for BD menus.

As you note, there are a lot of devices out there that have similar functionality. I have knowledge about the HD300 only (because I use it extensively as a SageTV extender).

 

[sxr7171]

How's that Boxee box doing? Sounds about perfect for parents.

 

[Modelworks]

For the price the WDTV Live PLUS is what to get. $100 and it plays all the formats and netflix too.
The only current issue I know of with the WDTV live boxes and MKV is compressed headers, they don't like it. You have to run a program from the MKV site to fix that, but it takes like 2 minutes.

 

[s44]

I would be very careful about using a BD player as a more general media player. Many of them have very tight specifications for the types of files they play. Even if a player advertises that it supports MKV, there are often some caveats (i.e. the file needs to be encoded in a very specific manner). Streaming files from a PC is a secondary function for these devices so manufacturers do not necessary feel great pressure to accommodate requests for broader file support.

Samsung will play most anything, but it doesn't matter: DLNA servers like PS3MediaServer will easily transcode everything on the fly anyway.

 

[Kaido]

I can't make a good recommendation. I have an Asus O'Play right now; it does fine playing movies, but the menu is built such that you have to go 5 levels deep to get what you want (Movies > Network > Shortcuts > Fileshare Name > Movie Folder Name > Movie); you can't setup a default path to drop right into.

I used to have a WDTV player, but it had issues with some higher-resolution stuff (like 1080p 10,000kbps stuff). I don't know if the new ones are any better or not (like the Network version). Also, in general, I would advise against wireless. I've had bad experiences streaming HD via Wireless, and even DVD ISO's. If you can go USB or Ethernet, that's far better, especially for non-techie parents.

My buddy got the Boxee Box and said it's terrible. They did NOT use the same software they use on the desktop version and there are a ton of bugs and quirks. I was prepared to buy half a dozen of them to wire up my home & my family's places, but it turned out to be a dud (at least for the time being...maybe they'll fix the software later).

I like the AppleTV a lot ($99 is a great price), but you have to buy everything in the iTunes Music Store, or else convert it to an iTunes-compatible format. I'm a huge Apple fanboy, but ain't no way I'm gonna do that

So far I'm still lacking a good general-purpose media streamer. Probably going to build a Mini-ITX player instead.

 

[Claudius-07]

For my very untechie dad, I simply set up XBMC on an old computer that was sitting collecting dust in his basement. I installed the Live version. I can't tell you how simple it is to operate... As long as you set it up for them correctly. He had an older comp -- and all I did was to buy an Nvidia gt 430 was like 60$ and I had to get one of those media centre remotes , was like 16$ .. Everything else you hardly need performance wise. Trust me when i say this when I've used and bought an HDX 1000, seagate theater+, western digital hd tv, Apple TV 2, and a PS3 and nothing compares to a low budget computer or older apple tv running XBMC, heck anything that can run XBMC.

 

[Destiny]

If you want internal hard drive support, my house has both the Nixeus Fusion HD and Popcorn Hour A-200 with both working great and playing anything I throw at it... The Nixeus is more "parent" friendly of the two... The Nixeus includes a wireless-N adapter... it normally goes for $200+ but I think I found a Cyber Monday deal for $165 here:

http://www.compuplus.com/Video/Nixeu...k=searchViewed