new media box!

[GTFO. kk20]

Whilst doing my shopping in asda last night I found one of these lurking in the bargain section for £50. After a quick google at reviews on my phone (sat on one of their garden seats) it seemed like it was worth a punt for £50

The verdict? My XBMC has been retired. It has no internal storage but will connect to a USB external drive. All my XBMC was stored on an external drive. It has wired network and wireless N built in and has iplayer. There is an optical audio out too (and HDMI).

Everything I threw at it worked. All the old stuff on my USB drive worked. The new stuff on my PC streamed across N wireless (even 1080p!). Iplayer was good.

In short, for £50 is borders on one of the best gadgets I have ever bought (I still rate my 20 year old leatherman tool a better buy). The remote is a bit naff and the unit itself has a slow GUI - all faults I can live with.

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

Will this stream high quality (high stream rate 1080p) MKV over the local network mate? I've been looking for an alternative to my PS3 since it was borked by cinavia.

[GTFO. Coxy]

I've got a WD media box, got it set up to the TV and I use it on the projector you kindly donated to me! I'll have to have a look at this LG one for my room then, for 50quid sounds like a bargain!

[r3loaded]

Will this stream high quality (high stream rate 1080p) MKV over the local network mate? I've been looking for an alternative to my PS3 since it was borked by cinavia.

That's the real acid test. I've been ripping a few Blu-rays to my server using a combination of AnyDVD, TsMuxer and MKVTools. I don't do any re-encoding, just extract the original video, TrueHD/DTS-HD soundtrack, English subtitles and chapters. Every network player I've come across either doesn't understand MKV, chokes on the high bitrate video or fails to decode the lossless audio.

The current solution in the house is a 5m HDMI cable and a Thinkpad X120e with XBMC. The laptop has the new AMD Fusion E-350 CPU with a Radeon 6310M, which plays flawlessly (even on battery, and it still lasts about 3 hours pumping out Blu-ray quality video non-stop). Since movie night isn't that often, grabbing the laptop and hooking it up isn't too much of an inconvenience.

Obviously, this route costs a lot more than £50, but an E-350 mini-ITX desktop system can be had for less than this laptop, and you get a quiet, efficient system that actually plays everything flawlessly.

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

And how many network media players have you actually tested with these files reloaded? And I mean personally tested, not read an article online about it......

[Troops]

Ive got a WDTV live that plays 1080p over wifi n , so i presume a network cable or homeplug would be even better.
It plays anything tbh and has good custom/original firmware support.

[GTFO. kk20]

Will this stream high quality (high stream rate 1080p) MKV over the local network mate? I've been looking for an alternative to my PS3 since it was borked by cinavia.

It most certainly does. 1080p but I cannot say what bitrate. The filesize was about 15gig for 2 hours. I did have an issue playing AAC inside an mkv buuuut I updated the firmware and it has support for PLEX now and alegedly using plex plays anything. I wanted to avoid installing or relying on a pc as the whole point is to play from shares but i'll try installing plex this weekend.

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

Ive got a WDTV live that plays 1080p over wifi n , so i presume a network cable or homeplug would be even better.
It plays anything tbh and has good custom/original firmware support.

I've got cat6 cabled into my living room for the PS3 and never had an issue, so I cant see it being any different with a media player, PSMS only decodes the video to run on the PS3, it doesn't reduce the bitrate for streaming. Thanks for that Troops

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

Will this stream high quality (high stream rate 1080p) MKV over the local network mate? I've been looking for an alternative to my PS3 since it was borked by cinavia.

It most certainly does. 1080p but I cannot say what bitrate. The filesize was about 15gig for 2 hours. I did have an issue playing AAC inside an mkv buuuut I updated the firmware and it has support for PLEX now and alegedly using plex plays anything. I wanted to avoid installing or relying on a pc as the whole point is to play from shares but i'll try installing plex this weekend.

Nice one mate! I dont have a NAS so I always stream from the PC, well I had to for the PS3, that may change if I get a media box!

[r3loaded]

I've tried a PS3, Xbox (completely useless btw), a Samsung TV and a Sony Bravia TV. They're all fine at playing TV episodes in MKV containers and DVD ripped movies, but always have some issue or other with the Blu-ray rips. This is with a USB drive plugged into them - streaming with DLNA just caused extra problems for me (and I've tested lots of different DLNA servers too).

The one I haven't tried yet though is the WDTV Live

[Troops]

I dont have any blu-ray rips from originals etc i could try, but ones from newsgroups i mainly get are .mkv and never had one not play wether over wifi n or usb.
I havnt tried it but apparently plays .iso aswell
One interesting feature tho if you use bittorent etc, theres custom firmware with built in torrent support among alot of other things.
Apparently down mixes dts aswell whatever that is

If you need me to try anything on it give me a shout Tommy.

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

I've tried a PS3, Xbox (completely useless btw), a Samsung TV and a Sony Bravia TV. They're all fine at playing TV episodes in MKV containers and DVD ripped movies, but always have some issue or other with the Blu-ray rips. This is with a USB drive plugged into them - streaming with DLNA just caused extra problems for me (and I've tested lots of different DLNA servers too).

The one I haven't tried yet though is the WDTV Live

So you haven't tried any dedicated media boxes then.....nuff said......

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

I dont have any blu-ray rips from originals etc i could try, but ones from newsgroups i mainly get are .mkv and never had one not play wether over wifi n or usb.
I havnt tried it but apparently plays .iso aswell
One interesting feature tho if you use bittorent etc, theres custom firmware with built in torrent support among alot of other things.
Apparently down mixes dts aswell whatever that is

If you need me to try anything on it give me a shout Tommy.

Will do, cheers bud. Been doing a bit of research and there's a new 2011 version of WDTV live out, but cant find any sites stocking it yet.

[GTFO. TommyBoy]

Just as an update to this thread and for anyone else looking for a decent Media box, I've just taken delivery of the http://www.acryan.com/product/playonhdmini2/ which I ordered as it seemed to have a couple more features than the WD TV Live! box, specifically the native playback of ISO files with DVD menu support, and I'd heard from a few sources that the new 2011 WD wouldn't play back MKV's with header compression.
The HD2 mini is basically the same as the HD2, without an internal HD caddy or fan. It's totally silent, half the size and less than half the price of the HD2, and with the price of HDD's atm the HD2 not a wise investment imho.
I've thrown every type of audio and video file I can find at it and it hasn't missed a beat, no audio sync issues, no stutter, no pixelation. The audio and video quality is also noticeably better compared to PS3 media server using the same files, plus no bloody cinavia!
I have mine wired with CAT6e from my main router to my lounge, where another router set up as a bridge takes over (I needed more than 1 ethernet port in my lounge for PS3 etc plus the router is wireless and gives the added bonus of a wireless bridge for those using laptops etc in the lounge).
All the wiring was done before homeplugs were at a reliable stage otherwise I'd have used those.
I've read a lot of negative things about the AC Ryan boxes, and it gets slated by user reviews on amazon. All I can say is that they must be using a different box because this thing is brilliant!
Bye bye PS3 media server!