OT: Which Digital Video Player Roku or what?

will-3 wrote on 7/26/2010, 5:12 PM
What is the hot Digital Video Player now?

1 - How does the Roku compair to the others?

2 - What others are there?
- Roku Player
- Amazon PopBox
- Dlink Boxee Box
- Western Digital WD TV
What else?

3 - Who is winning the war for homes?

4 - Which allows you to view the most content on the web... or simply surf the web?

5 - Do any play flash media?

Thanks for any comments.

Comments

ritsmer wrote on 7/27/2010, 12:57 AM
2-What else?

- A mini PC with a HDMI graphics card and Windows shows you the best thumbnails of the videos - and it is probably the most versatile browser and net content player too. Use it with a wireless mouse+keyboard from your coffee table :-)

-Many modern TVsets have built-in network players (just got a 58 inch Samsung Plasma. It plays many formats and the quality seems better that any external player/PC I have tried.

-A PS3...
will-3 wrote on 7/27/2010, 7:44 AM
Yes, I have a PC hooked up to our system
... but I'm trying to research all of the stand alone dedicated boxes out there.

Do you know if the built in network players will allow you to stream video from any site on the web...
... for instance a live video stream from a special event ?

Thanks for any help and comments.
Laurence wrote on 7/27/2010, 9:00 AM
I have both a Roku and a Western Digital media player. Love them both, but it would be nice to have one device instead of several. Roku has been improved much lately. I like that it works with wifi as that saves running cables.
gpsmikey wrote on 7/27/2010, 12:27 PM
Are any of them (Roku etc) set up to handle an ISO of a DVD ? Looking at the Roku specs, it indicates it does a lot of stuff, but no mention of playing an ISO. It is really nice to be able to simply have an ISO of your show and share that across the network. The WD TV Live can handle the mkv format stuff, but not an ISO of a DVD as far as I know.

mikey
Laurence wrote on 7/27/2010, 3:40 PM
The Roku only plays back internet television. It doesn't play local media files at all. Very cool for what it is, but if you want to play local files you need to go a different route.

The Western Digital plays back a wide variety of local media types. My favorite is .mkv, but I also use it for playing back raw clips from my cameras.
FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 7/28/2010, 12:19 AM
I am using the Mede8er HD media player. It plays everything including ISO and MKV. It can connect to a network via LAN connection or WiFi. You can use it as an external harddrive and you can connect 2 other hard drives to it via it's USB ports.
Laurence wrote on 7/28/2010, 6:03 PM
but can you watch Netflix or Amazon movie rentals on it?
FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 7/29/2010, 3:46 AM
Netflix?

I'm not sure what that is but apparently you can. Here is a forum comment about Netflix.

http://www.mede8erforum.com/index.php?action=search2
TeetimeNC wrote on 7/29/2010, 4:01 AM
I have a LG BD390 Blu Ray player which is connected to my home network. The 390 can play video off a USB stick, attached HD, or a DLNA server. It has built in wireless N but I found it to be marginal and instead I am hardwired to my network. I can receive Netflix streams as well as several other paid services and YouTube.

On the network I have a Windows Home Server running TVersity which is a DLNA server. From the server I stream my own videos and Hula. TVersity can transcode on the fly almost any format to a format understood by the BD390, but I am running WHS on an old Pentium 4 so I probably don't have enough horsepower to do this.

WHS also performs daily backups of my network PCs, and provides network share drives. If I had a TV card in the server I could use WHS like a DVR.

I've been pretty happy with this setup.

/jerry
psg wrote on 7/29/2010, 8:25 PM
I have a couple of media players, but the one I really like recently is the Patriot Box Office.

Wired Ethernet, USB (can use use USB wifi), room for a 2.5" drive inside, HDMI output

$100, but if you order by 7/31 from Amazon they have a $35 rebate making it $65 - a fantastic deal.

Not the greatest UI but works fine and plays everything I've thrown at it.