Best off the shelf media player

R4z0r

R4z0r

R4z0r

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Joined
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Surrey
Hi Guys,

I'm looking for an off the shelf media player that will handle DVD and BlueRay rips. These are stored in MKV's without any kind of encoding. All rips are done with MakeMKV.

Only thing I really want is automatic thumbnails (based on file name/folder name) and for it to look pretty.

So far I've looked at WD and Boxee, anything else I should consider?

I'm not interested in XBMC or the like as this is for a friend who is non technical.

Thanks!
 
Well I have a WDTV Live Air and its superb.

The codec support is plentiful and it happily plays just about everything but I bought it for the Netflix and iPlayer support which is frankly brilliant.
 
I have WDTV Live as well. It plays everything I have thrown at it. However my iPlayer is annoying. When I pause it, it doesn't then unpause and goes back to the start.
 
If you are planning on storing the files on the player, or on a drive attached to the player the WDTV is you best bet.

If the movies will be stored on a networked PC then the ROKU boxes with the Plex channel are fantastic. I bought one for my dad and set it up for him. So simple to use and works well.
 
Mede8er 600 if your just streaming or the 1000 if you want to add an internal hard drive.

I've had a WDTV and now have the Mede8er 600 and its rock solid and plays all my BD rips, some 40GB etc. it also had HD audio pass through (DTS-MA and Tru-HD) and can play 3d if you kit supports it.

Really can fault it.
 
Hmm, so WD seems like a safe bet. Interesting no one recommends Boxee, thought it looked pretty good.

Cheers!
 
pdw8 said:
Mede8er 600 if your just streaming or the 1000 if you want to add an internal hard drive.

I've had a WDTV and now have the Mede8er 600 and its rock solid and plays all my BD rips, some 40GB etc. it also had HD audio pass through (DTS-MA and Tru-HD) and can play 3d if you kit supports it.

Really can fault it.
Click to expand...

I've heard about these. Can it do fan art and all that jazz where you get a wall of films come up to select your movie?

It's a bit of a minefield out there when it comes to media players right now. The market has become flooded with them. Some of them just frustrate me when I read threads about them only to see that users have had issues with bugs/support and it massively puts me off them. It feels like a lot of them are work in progress type products, where they have been rushed to market to capitalize on demand for them using the public as beta testers with live products.

I know of Boxee box, but it looks hideous. lol
The popcorn hour stuff looks good and the Dune stuff, but they are quite pricey.
There are also some new Android based media players coming to market, but again these seem to be so new that they have bugs and issues and compromises right now.

Every time I look at getting one, I always find something that makes me thing it's probably just worth getting an Acer Revo and whacking XBMC on it. I've got a Raspberry Pi with OpenElect on it, but it's really just not fit for purpose and is at its limits running the bare OS, let alone running high bitrate 1080p rips. It's also buggy in my experience.

I am definitely going to look at the mede8er, though I can't wait for something as cheap at the Raspberry Pi to become abailable that is a proper dedicated media player that is cheap enough to buy in numbers for all the rooms in my house. It would be nice to keep to the same product throughout so that members of the household can learn the interface. That is again why I like the idea of XBMC, since hardware is unimporant.

Anyway, I'm waffling.
 
XBMC once installed is childs play to use and very intuitive, my 6 year old nephew can operate it with ease!
Personally I'd recommend a raspberry pie, cheap as chips and works great with raspbmc (You do need to overclock it though to get it running high bitrate 1080p rips silky smooth)
 
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