5.1 surround media player for Denon AVR- x520bt AV setup

Jessmardon

Jessmardon

Jessmardon

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Uk
Hi there,

I’m installing an AV setup with surround sound for an exhibition and need to find a high quality surround sound capable media player.

My setup uses a Denon AVR-x520bt with bowers wilkins 5.1 surround speaker setup. I will be playing an AV work through the setup as follows.. media player connected to Denon, sound though the speakers connected to the Denon and video to a projector via the hdmi out on the Denon.

So I need a media player that is capable of playing high quality video (HD h.264) and audio (5.1 AAC) from a usb with the preloaded AV file.

I’ve been looking around online, but struggling to find anything that says it can support both high quality audio and video within the reviews. Would anyone have any suggestions on what I could buy?

thanks
Jessica
 
thanks, had a quick look, but what I need is an external media player (there is no computer in this setup) that can play both HD video and 5.1 surround sound at high quality.
 
I think @kitfit1's reply was probably teasing you a little.

The quality of playback from the media player is more to do with the quality of the original source file. Quite a few of us here have been ripping DVDs and Blu-ray discs with 5.1 audio or better and playing them back via a variety of media players in the past. The ripping process can leave the file 'as is' so it's the same as playing from disc or it could involve some compression. That's a software choices thing.

H.264 file format has been around for quite a while. It's the file format most closely associated with Blu-ray. There are small domestic media players that will accept a USB pen drive and work with a simple IR remote. Here's an example. If your file is Blu-ray quality then this and similar players will show it at Blu-ray quality, and with the attendant multichannel audio. The Denon will decode the audio and pass the video signal on to the display.

Something you might want to give some thought to though is how the files will be triggered to play. i.e. are you going to stand there presenting, or will the attendees be expected to make selections and drive the system themselves?

I'm short of time at the moment, but a firm called Blackbox used to make a standalone media player for gallery use. Several videos could be loaded on an SD memory card. It had contact closure relay points for up to 4 buttons. These could be used for attendees to start a video with nothing other than an simple single press. The players cost around £200. The last ones I used played out at 720p and 1080p via HDMI. I'm not sure about AAC audio though.
 
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With aac whether it's stereo or multi channel the box sends stereo. No avr decodes native aac
I just apply dsu/DTS X it's matrixed surround but that's all you can do.

Aac needs to die off
 
great thanks for all your replies (teasing or otherwise ;) ) ...

In my case, it's an original video work.. the audio and video are created in various software, but ultimately, I will export the 5.1 audio and video from adobe premier pro... premier supports H.264 and H.265 with 5.1 surround sound output but only in AAC format, so that's where that comes from.. but that should give a nice balance of compression and quality with my video.. the footage is actually 4K, but I won't have a 4K projector, so HD will be the best that I can get visually.

In terms of playback, what I need to do is simply play the video on repeat (no-one will need to interact with it other than myself), so finding something that doesn't buffer on repeat would also be ideal.. so that it just plays as a continuous loop.

Sounds like either the Amlogic or the android TV box would do the job, if I have that right?
 
You can download Kodi to a Windows PC, Android phone or iOS device for free to try out the interface and see if it will do what you want.

I would advise checking out the options for auto-repeat to make sure that it does what you want.
 
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