I'm thinking of switching from my DVD player to a media center extender device, so that I can clean up the DVD's in my livingroom and store them centrally on my Windows 7 workstation in the attic.
However, I'm unsure what the best/most cost efficient/flexible solution is. I currently have Yosh's old Xbox 360 which needs to be repaired. The 360 is a fully functional Media Center Extender, however it's noisy....the fan really makes too much noise imho. However, when I have it fixed I can put in new silent fans for € 30 or so, so that is no longer a problem.
I've also looked at the Asus O!Play HDP-R3, but that thing lacks a SCART and component connection, so that's not a good option.
Is there anything out there that: - is small - preferably fan-less - has a component (Y-Pb-Pr) or SCART output - has a optical digital audio out, supporting Dolby Digital/DTS. - is able to connect to a Windows Media Center, or - is able to open a fileshare and mount ISO's - preferably is able to play H264/MKV/DivX - preferably is able to connect to an iTunes catalog ?
CFULLHDMAi; ugly UI but works perfectly. I've one, and you can see it if you want. And it supportsl 1080i. Haven't tested it with Media Center/WMP12 on Win7 but it reads SMB shares perfectly. It's on sale right now: http://www.divxplayer.nl/produ../..ucts_id=1856
Supported character sets for subtitles: Unicode (UTF8), BIG5 (Traditional Chinese), Western, Turkish, Central European, Greek, Cyrillic, SE European, Hebrew
The PlayOn! HD Mini is not yet available in stores as I've understood, so I'll just wait a while, but I'm pretty sure that will be my device of choice! Small, relatively cheap, simple and very versatile!
When searching google with the terms "xtreamer component"; the first hit also gives a link to the xtreamer forum with the exact same question. However I cannot seam to find that post on that forum (link needs you to be registered). Maybe in a couple of days you can use google cache to see that post.
PS. My CFULLHDMAi has the same support. And I can also add live streames without the need of a computer. It's ugle; I agree. But it works like a charm. Especially in combination with my CH3SNAS which downloads series and movies for me.
I'll wait for the PlayOn! HD Mini ; it's cheap (€99) and it seems to be a very capable and small streamer without the need for a HDMI-Component converter.
I'll certainly drop by one of these days to check out the CFULLHDMAi in action. [:)]
-edit 10/01/10 @ 16:06 - I just ordered the PlayOn! HD Mini at Misco.nl. [8D] It's not on stock yet, but they expect it by the end of the month.
-edit 20/01/10 @ 14:47 - The PlayOn!HD Mini has arrived!!!! [good] Tonight I'll be fiddling around with it!
I've looked at that one too, but that one lacked both scart as well as the Y-Pb-Br output.
I have the PlayOn HD Mini for three days now and I must say I'm impressed by it's video and audio rendering capabilities. Effortlessly it renders 1920x1080 H264 at 24fps, including 6 channel digital output. It doesn't even get hot. Of course DVD's are no problem at all, but I didn't expect it to have such great playback on full HD content. (MKV, 720p DIVX etc).
However, it certainly does have several quircks, and those quircks are very similar to the ones the WD Live is having.
dumb UI....gettting to the shared videos on my attic workstation takes 5 menus or so...and I have to do this each and every time I start it up.
The UI is spartan ; it shows a list of filenames and folders such as 'Baraka.1992.720p.BluRay.x264-CiNEFiLE.mkv' instead of "Baraka" with a nice cover.
DVD's (non ISO ones) just show as a VIDEO_TS/AUDIO_TS folder, and you as a user have to know to start the VIDEO_TS.IFO file...
Digital audio (toslink) is unavailable 9 out of 10 times when you start a movie. Going back to Setup, selecting "SPDIF LPCM" as output, going back to the movie, there's sound, go back to Setup and select "SPDIF RAW", and it works again...Each and every time....[v]
Subtitles are loaded with the font being WAAAAY to big. And yes, you have to define the fontsize for each movie seperately....[v]
The interface to listen to music is just stupid....it's nothing but folders and the actual MP3 files, no covers, no playlists, no sorting on ID3-tag information, nothing.
The MP3 tags are loaded backwards. (So instead of "Artist: Lamb" it sais "bmaL :tsitrA"...[?]
No shuffle play....not even within 1 folder...
No way to play multiple folders at once...
etc...
I'm hoping the next release of the PlayOn firmware contains YAMJ support. I know that the guys at AC Ryan are working on that at the moment...they announced it a couple of months ago. From the AC Ryan forums:
quote :
Yup, as what I've told Chris a few days back that there have been some unexpected code changes in SDK3.0 which we have merged to our current platform that causes our YAMJ module to fail in some areas. I'll try to release a trial YAMJ firmware by this week but certain features like the subtitles or zoom function may not be available yet until we sort out these bugs with Realtek. [}:)]
With YAMJ it'll look something like this, and yes, that will certainly make me happy! [img]/uploaded/18/1/popboxyamj.jpg[/img]
just bought myself a logitech squeezebox boom to stream all my music to the living room, very nice it is too, dead easy to setup and the sound is pretty good considering its size
I've been considering a squeezebox as well, but decided not to do it because it only supports music. However, seeing how limited the PlayOn HD is with respect to music (no playlists, crappy interface, no album art, wrong ID3 info, no selection by genre, no shuffle play across folders etc), I think I'll get a second hand squeezebox as soon as I can spare the money.
I got the Boom, I did want an original squeezebox V3 (no speakers) but even on ebay they were going for > £120 so figured I might as well get the Boom, at least I can plug it in anywhere without the need for an amp. It has a pretty good web interface too, so as well as using the remote I can control it from my laptop or even my phone if I want.
I have a friend who has a few of them (V3 and Boom), he told me not to bother with the Duet as it has some pretty crap reviews, the Touch is supposed to be pretty cool, but a bit more than I wanted to pay ~260GBP, the Boom was ~170GBP
I went for the squeezebox because it plays every type of music file I have, MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, Apple lossless, WMA lossless, WAV, and AIFF
Jos, I already have the PlayOn HD Mini, and overall I'm very happy with it. Some things (mostly the interface) suck, but I hope those things will be solved in a future firmware.
Huw, the Boom is pretty cool, but do I see this correctly ? : is the Touch just as expensive as the Boom?!! The Touch supports album art and stuff....? I'd expect the Boom to be less expensive than the Touch.
BTW, did you also look at the Transporter? http://www.logitech.com/index.../..163&cl=us,en Me and some collegues were discussing that device this morning....how on earth do they explain the difference in price between this device and all the others...??! I have a hard time believing that there's such a big difference in quality....stereo isn't that hard to do, is it?
the Boom is nearly 100GBP less, the transporter has a whole raft of extra features that the boom does not have and is more of a hifi seperate than just a player, it has digital inputs as well as digital outputs, but yes 2000USD is a tad overpriced, my surround sound amp only cost half that much.
The web interface for the boom supports album art,but the player only has a small text based display, I wasn't really interested in looking at the album cover when listening to music.
this is the web interface for the player, left side shows lists(image shows album list letter A) right side shows the playlist (currently set to random mix)
Media center (extender) / streaming device thingy
