Media Centre or Blu Ray for playing movies from HDD

Hi All,

I am looking at a simple setup to allow videos to be played through a TV from HDD. Previously, I have carted my laptop around with a combo of S Video cables and RCA plugs.

As much fun as that is, I'd be keen to work out some other way of doing this. I went to a store today to ask about some products I'd heard of that simply connect to your TV and have a way to connect via USB, so you can connect your HDD to this. I think one such product is Apple TV and there is some other thing from Western Digital that I'd heard about also.

The bloke in the store told me that a cheaper and better option these days is to simply buy a Blu Ray player as they also have this capability. Is this true? If so, can anyone recommend a player that is cost affordable with reasonable codec support (AVI, MP4, DivX etc)?

If anyone has any alternative ideas, that that would also be great. My main aim is to keep it simple. It is going to be for my Mum, who at 73 is not all that adept with tech things.

Thanks,
Chris

P.S. -> Stupid question, but do Blu ray players play DVD's?

BR Players can play DVD.
A lot of them can also play movies from USB, what format movies it can play depends on the player. Have not looked so will let others comment on good ones in this space.

There are lots of options - take a look at

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/homeente ... iaplayers/

as an example - these are not all that costly either and plug directly into a HDMI port so not hard to cable up - but can also connect into a network if you have one. They have a very simple remote and on screen display.

Remember there are lots of options - hope this helps.

My 2c worth...

Yep, sinkorswim has it right.

You can definitely do it through some Bluray players but I've also put this together for my older mum and I did it that way first. She just found it difficult to figure why she had to go to the DVD player to watch the movies when she didn't have a DVD in it.... anyway, I just got one of these boxes and now she just knows that AV2 from the Source menu is where all her movies are. It's just simple. Here's another write up on it to let you know what files it handles. I haven't had any issues of phone calls from mum for tech support!

http://digitalcamera.blog.co.uk/2011/06/02/western-digital-hd-tv-media-player-11253478/

My TV (Samsung) now has a USB connection so I can connect the HDD directly. Love the Sammy - very simple.

SK

I've got WDTV Live boxes, can't recommend them enough, huge amount of file format support, the firmware still gets updated by Western Digital and there's also custom firmware and stuff for it if you want to expand functionality or get all nerdy on it!

BluRay players will undoubtedly have less support for file formats...maybe only divX etc. So I'd suggest a Media Player of some sort.

HTPC with a blue ray player... best of both worlds...


A low to mid level i3 system with on board HDMI and 4GiG of ram with a blue ray player will be enough for most peoples needs. add to that a tuner card and hey presto you can record fta TV shows.

MB: GA-945GCM-S2L
CPU: E6300
Ram: 4GiG Kit DDR2 (2 x 2G) 800 MHz A-Data
GPU: Asus 4670 512MB
OS: Windows XP Pro
HD 1: WD 80GB
HD 2: WD SATA II 640GB
Optical: Pioneer SATA
Case/ PSU: Antec Fusion Black/ 450W earth watts

This is what I use atm does the job I'm goign to replace the guts when i get my pay out with an i3 system with BR, and a tuner card.

Thanks for all the great replies.

Looks like I've got some research work to do over the weekend.

If anyone else has other opinions, then feel free to let me know.

Thanks,
Chris

Try these. I have one. HDMI into the TV and a USB port at the front of the device. Can connect to the net and updates all the codecs and firmware. It will sniff out any media files on a network if connected to a network. Has a nice little remote control. Very easy to use and only $237 from the US to your door.

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/ ... nItemId=24

^^ I have one of those - or actually it's the HDX which is the same thing in a different box. The only drawbacks I've found with it is that it doesn't play certain codecs such as WMV2. It also has a tendedncy to crash now and then however it's still pretty reliale.
Nothing is going to be as versatile as a media PC however I found using my PC for that purpose that it used to freeze up or crash quite regularly using the media software and having to wait for it to start up etc was painfull. If it were me and I didn't already have a blu-ray player then I'd buy a PS3 and any format that it doesn't recognise I'd just convert using something like 'Any video converter'. After all most things you download are going to be in common formats such as divX or MP4 and when you start to add up how much money you can throw at this sort of thing one wonders if you shouldn't just buy the genuine DVDs or Blu-rays and get better quality for a lot less trouble. It never ceases to amaze me how many thousands people are willing to spend on home networks and extenders because they're to stingy to pay $20 for a DVD and want to play their downloaded content instead.

Hi All,

Just bought a WD TV Live unit and watched a couple of things.

It is AWESOME. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll be getting another one this week for my Mum!

Thanks again,
Chris

Nice! Glad you're happy! I've already got two, will probably have a third pretty soon if the price stays as good as it has been!

do they have a built in hard drive for storage?
and obviously they have a usb port to hook up more storage?

been looking at the Boxee Box but have heard about WDTV live. (and hub????)

Well, after about 4 years as a MCPC user it failed again a couple of weeks ago, so I finally decided to change direction (I've tossed the idea up for a couple of years) and went and got myself a Dvico TViX Slim S1 Duo to replace it last week.

So far I'm really liking it and haven't found any big negs yet. Twin tuners (HD), PVR with time-shift, background recording (so you can watch something while recording something else), Freeview EPG (although I haven't seen it give 7 days worth of info yet...), media player that reportedly has the widest compatibility of video formats, internal HDD (SATA I or II), USB external HDD playback (cannot record to external HDD - no bother to me though), streams audio and video files from Windows shares (no need to run a 'media server' transcoding app on your server).

Loving it!

The WDTV Live doesn't have an in-built HDD, but it has two USB ports, and can read off network shares etc.
The WDTV Live Hub has a 1TB internal drive, and at least one USB port (Not sure whether it has two...I don't own one)

Wow. That sounds nice. A quick search shows they are around the $370.00 mark. That is pretty cool. Keep us informed of your opinion of this as you use it more.

Excuse my ignorance, but why would someone buy a HDD recorder when things like this are available? Are the HDD recorders you see in the stores similar in capability to this?

Evening all,

I used to have a business dealing with home theatre PC's but with the availability of so many different devices these days, its became too hard to push the higher range products.

One user mentioned a HTPC or Media Centre PC, and when many people think of this they one see a big bulky box. However this is not the case, there are some great solutions which are very small and unobtrusive.

I recommend you ask the following questions:
1 - What size screen do you have and what is it capable of?
If you only have a TV and its not full high definition then this limits the quality of video you can watch and therefore reduces your needs in hardware. If you are wanting a massive projected screen, then you will need full 1080p HD abilities.

2- Whats your budget?
Even if you have a 1080p TV, you can save considerable dollars by only choosing to play only 720p video.

3 - How tech savvy are you?
Obviously you have asked the question, so usually that would mean you arent *too* savvy, but the reason I ask is this: Do you know the difference between 720p and 1080p. Do you know what a 'codec' is? If you dont know these things, then you wont be disappointed by the lower quality things (if that makes sense). How is this relative? Well if you are wanting to backup your BluRay movies to PC you will need to know how and what format your chosen hardware will play. If you are getting your movies in any other way, you will still need to know which format to get and also the quality you want.

So now the options:

1 - Get a device such as a WDTV or some of the other aforementioned devices.
Pros - Very easy to use. Not overly expensive.
Cons - Wont play every format available. Limited storage space. May not be fully 1080P capable.

2 - Get a full media centre PC built, which operates much like a normal PC.
Pros - Will play any codec. Expandable storage - you can build a library. Upgradable in future. Fully 1080P capable.
Cons - More costly (your buying a PC), more technical knowledge required.

3 - Get a smaller PC (prebuilt), operates like a normal PC
Pros - Cheaper than option 3. Will play any codec. Fully 1080P capable.
Cons - Limited storage. Not as upgradable. More technical knowledge required.

4 - Option 3, but with another PC (even a home PC)
Pros/Cons the same but this allows you to have external forms of storage for your library (HDD's or network storage)

This is a lot of info, but there are so many approaches.

In any case, if you chose a PC option, I recommend installing XBMC - it is a Media Library program that allows you to organise and view all media (video, music, pictures) via your TV. This software is EXTREMELY easy to use, but has many advanced functions available. http://www.xbmc.org

My current setup is as follows:

In my lounge - An "AsRock ION 330 BD" mini PC with bluray.
In my office - A PC which works as dedicated storage for all my media.

The hardware in my lounge can access the media via my home network and streams it directly to my TV.

The mini PC I have is worth around $900 and fully supports 1080P.

The next best available option to this is actually an Apple TV2 - made by Apple. These can be modified to run XBMC which allows you to view your own media (Apple restricts you to iTunes music/video). These units are TINY (3" squared) but only output 720p (last time I checked). They retail for around $200 - everything else is free...


I know thats a lot, but theres a lot to consider. If you have any questions im happy to help out. In the meantime im going to watch a movie...

Hey W0lv3n,

Thanks heaps for the reply. That all sounds like great info. I must admit, I have watched more TV than I'd like over the last few weeks, but it is quite nice to do it in front of my "big" TV rather than my computer.

I mostly wanted something that would allow me to keep the kids movies on a HDD that I could pull out rather than hunt through empty DVD covers only to eventually find a scratched disc that stops 10 minutes in and causes mass meltdowns

I am keen to get some kind of device for recording the occasional show (footy) as I don't always get an opportunity to watch when I'd like.

Other than that, the WD Live box is working out a treat in terms of doing the basic work I got it for. It has ethernet ports on the back also and the box had YouTube logos etc, but at this stage, I don't think I'll be going that far.

Thanks again for your post,
Chris

Something to keep in mind to is that a lot of today's TV's have a media player built in.

For example my Samsung TV streams movies wirelessly from my computer as well as having the ability to record tv (PVR functionalilty) and to play movies etc from a USB key!

Thanks Matt. I still have a lot to learn about this new fancy technology. We got a 42inch LG plasma a couple of years ago. I am very happy with it. Although it does have a USB port, it is simply for image and music files. I will probably hold onto this telly until it goes belly up, and then I'll probably have to come back to the forum for further advice on what features I should be looking for.