Media streamers

[ghostman]

I'd be interested to hear what others are using for playback these days - I realise the market is saturated with small Android powered dongles and other devices, as well as the more hardcore stuff like homebuilt media centre PC's.

The backbone of my setup is a Synology NAS with 1TB of RAIDed storage. Synology is a good choice in that you can install packages on it such as SABNZBD and let it take control of downloads for you - it even emails you when it's done. It's a better choice IMHO than leaving a PC on all the time as it's a) already always on as it provides NAS capabilities to your home network and b) uses less power than most desktops.

For me, I have previously used a Popcorn Hour to stream media from the Synology to my TV across my wired network. Nowadays I am using a combination of a Boxee Box (when I want to use my projector) and a Raspberry Pi (when I just want to watch something on TV).

I think it works pretty well, but would be interested to hear what others are doing, especially those of you who have gone down the totally silent route for a media streamer (whatever it may be).

[miltonh]

I still use my old Netgear NTV550, it palys my blurays and almost everything else (except flv). I hear newer media streamers are restricted in some way for blu ray iso's.

[wgrt]

I just use twonky free + my TV through cat5, luckily it came with a decent amount of support for different filetype and will play subs if i use mkv files with no spaces in them

[Sirry]

I use a WD Live. Works pretty well with all media formats and streams both wirelessly & over ethernet.

[arkoos]

i use the WD live plus, which is wifi enables, it a great little device, plus almost all formats, hdmi, supposes hd sound

[chuckychucks]

Apple TV 2 Jailbroken with XBMC for me :-)

[pythoncancer]

PlayStation and Patriot

[Beck38]

As you pointed out, there are so many small (down to the size of a usb dongle) and miniature (maybe the size of a couple VHS tapes or so, barely big enough to have a HDMI port and an on/off switch if you're lucky), but limiting yourself to network streaming only isn't, IMHO, not looking at the 'big picture' so to speak.

So, exactly how many movies are you planning on having in your collection, eh? Rule of thumb: 1 movie = approx 25GB (crunched or non-crunched), so that means for a 1TB drive, 40 movies. If you collect tv shows, figure that a 30min is 1/4 the size of a 2hour film, again figure out the available storage use. Other things (sport, science shows , you name it) all takes x space you can easily figure out.

Bottom line, is no matter HOW much on-line storage you have (and I currently have over 100TB to give it some perspective) it is, essentially, limited. I just got through doing a 28TB upgrade, with new 4TB discs, and I'm kinda hoping that will be my last for a long long time. Total space added = 1100 or so movies.

Decide beforehand what you're willing to 'invest' in your system for how much you want to have 'in hand', and go from there. Really, as I've told folks time and again, the cheapest (with prices falling) and most expandable (basically until you're forced out of the house) are burnable BD25 discs.

Burners are very cheap now (well under $100), blank discs themselves (inkjset printable or not) fell past $1/ea about a year and a half ago, and are now around 75cents in packs of 50.

Playback devices you may already have, if your bluray player does the usual MKV/m2ts/mp4 and such, and your already set up on that. You may be able to also (if you bought okay) either a player or a streaming box with disc capability.

Which is what I did several years ago, PCH C200 at around $100 each. One may find a 'name brand' bluray player with the same kind of features today, just that there wasn't back 4 years ago or so.

So there it is, a system costing less than $1 per movie to store, maybe a fraction of that depending on what bitrate/size you can tolerate, and how many movies/tv programs you can put on a disc. I went 'high end' (my NAS cost about the same as a small Subaru) but I have everything also backed up on BR Disc as well.

[dragus]

WD Live

[Beck38]

WD Live

Tons of firmware probs. Go on the review sites.