A Device to play movies on TV

I'm looking into getting the new Apple Tv when its out next week...

And with a jailbreak that would be able to do everything you want to do with the exception of storing the media.

But easy option would be just to then get a NAS drive (or just a caddy and put your HDD's in) and point the XBMC on the ATV to it.

Job done and you've then got what's probably the best htpc there is for £100 mark.
 
You either get a media player than wont play discs themselves:

WDTV Live Streaming + USB hard drive or a WDTV Live Hub that comes with a built in 1Tb HD. Plays every format ever made either from a locally attached hard drive, over a gigbit LAN connection or a wireless connection. Plus it has internet streaming with iPlayer, Netflix etc if you ever need it. It has a remote control (you can even use your iPhone as the remote if you want) and a great interface with content scraping to get movie info for all your files.

It won't play actual discs, not sure if you meant you wanted it to play 1080p discs or rips (it will play 1080p rips no problems). These options would be about £130 inc a 1Tb drive.

Or

2) If you want it to play discs as well then look at something like a Sony BDP series bluray player which will accept an external drive to play files. £100+

Or

3) Buy a small PC. As much as you want. £200+ i guess starting with a small prebuilt Atom type system.

4) Comedy Apple TV option if for some bizarre reason all your media is in DRM apple format and thats the only file format you'll ever want to play unless you fancy hacking it when you could have bought a WDTV in the 1st place..
 
RichMawdsley said:
I'm looking into getting the new Apple Tv when its out next week...

And with a jailbreak that would be able to do everything you want to do with the exception of storing the media.

But easy option would be just to then get a NAS drive (or just a caddy and put your HDD's in) and point the XBMC on the ATV to it.

Job done and you've then got what's probably the best htpc there is for £100 mark.
Click to expand...

Slightly confused with the NAS drive thing...

NAS drive>>>> ATV (via ethernet?)>>>> TV?

£??? >>>>>>> £??? >>>>>>>>>>>> ?

Does ATV offer internet playback options?
 
Banjo Sandwich said:
Hmmm... can see the price going up and up here.... trying to keep costs down...

perhaps the ASUS option would be better, but looking at reviews people complain of poor GUI and many bugs, etc...
Click to expand...

HI,

I use the latest WD live TV box and it works great, plays all my movies, music and pictures as well as having BBC iplayer and a few other nice features.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-004-WD

The cost is £85 and has built in wireless N but it does also work with older routers as well.
 
You either get a media player than wont play discs themselves:

WDTV Live Streaming + USB hard drive or a WDTV Live Hub that comes with a built in 1Tb HD. Plays every format ever made either from a locally attached hard drive, over a gigbit LAN connection or a wireless connection. Plus it has internet streaming with iPlayer, Netflix etc if you ever need it. It has a remote control (you can even use your iPhone as the remote if you want) and a great interface with content scraping to get movie info for all your files.

It won't play actual discs, not sure if you meant you wanted it to play 1080p discs or rips (it will play 1080p rips no problems). These options would be about £130 inc a 1Tb drive.

Or

2) If you want it to play discs as well then look at something like a Sony BDP series bluray player which will accept an external drive to play files. £100+

Or

3) Buy a small PC. As much as you want. £200+ i guess starting with a small prebuilt Atom type system.

4) Comedy Apple TV option if for some bizarre reason all your media is in DRM apple format and thats the only file format you'll ever want to play unless you fancy hacking it when you could have bought a WDTV in the 1st place..
Click to expand...


So in your opinion the WDTV Live Hub would be my best option, for £130.00 i could get everything i want plus the capability to connect to the internet and stream iplayer etc...

Does the WDTV Live Hub have 3.0usb for hi-speed trasnfers to the in-built hard-drive?
 
themul said:
HI,

I use the latest WD live TV box and it works great, plays all my movies, music and pictures as well as having BBC iplayer and a few other nice features.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-004-WD

The cost is £85 and has built in wireless N but it does also work with older routers as well.
Click to expand...

Does this one have the inbuilt hard-drive though?

Does it have 3.0 usb for file transfer to device?

Can you transfer files via LAN connection?
 
Banjo Sandwich said:
Slightly confused with the NAS drive thing...

NAS drive>>>> ATV (via ethernet?)>>>> TV?

£??? >>>>>>> £??? >>>>>>>>>>>> ?

Does ATV offer internet playback options?
Click to expand...


The ATV plugs into router via ethernet.

The NAS plugs into router via ethernet.

With ATV jailbroken and running XBMC, it will allow you to look over the network and stream media from your laptop, pc, or in this case, NAS.
 
Designer habitat nano 3.0. Its a tiny box about the size of a credit card, connects by HDMI, plays nearly every format. It reads usb stcks and usb connected hard drives, has no internal storage of its own. Remote control is crappy build quality but when the whole thing can be had for £25 or less thats not a major complaint.

I've been using one for a month or so, and for the size and price I'm very impressed with it.

EDIT: It looks like a cheaper version of that WDTV actually, much less features though, it pretty much just plays media.
 
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Designer habitat nano 3.0. Its a tiny box about the size of a credit card, connects by HDMI, plays nearly every format. It reads usb stcks and usb connected hard drives, has no internal storage of its own. Remote control is crappy build quality but when the whole thing can be had for £25 or less thats not a major complaint.

I've been using one for a month or so, and for the size and price I'm very impressed with it.

EDIT: It looks like a cheaper version of that WDTV actually, much less features though, it pretty much just plays media.
Click to expand...

So i could perhaps get a usb 3.0 external HDD that means i can transfer files fast then use the nano 3.0 to watch them?

What is the GUI like on the Nano 3.0?
 
Silly question...

But lets say i persue this cheaper Nano 3.0 or equivalent option...

Can i obtain an external HDD with usb 3.0 capabilities then utilise the fast transfers for trasnfering from laptop to HDD. Then connect the HDD to the nano 3.0 and not lose any video quality?
 
I currently connect an iPad to my TV and have Plex Media Server set up on my PUBLIC . But you could connect any Android device such as a cheap tablet like the Advent Vega. Then you would have a media centre and a tablet.
 
I currently connect an iPad to my TV and have Plex Media Server set up on my PUBLIC . But you could connect any Android device such as a cheap tablet like the Advent Vega. Then you would have a media centre and a tablet.
Click to expand...

Eh?!?

confused.com...

does this mean the plex media server is the storage device then all your are using is the ipad as the controller?

I am more looking for the storage device to be local to the TV and then have internet streaming as a side posibility :)
 
frank_grimes said:
Tiny PC!

http://www.raspberrypi.org/
Click to expand...

Can you give a more detail discription as to what this is and how it can be implemented to help me?

So effectively this is a tiny computer that can handle processing a storage device and playing files from it?

Thus can the Raspberrypi say have VLC media player installed on it then connected to an external HDD play HD quality movies?

What sound does it support?
 
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Banjo Sandwich said:
Can you give a more detail discription as to what this is and how it can be implemented to help me?

So effectively this is a tiny computer that can handle processing a storage device and playing files from it?

Thus can the Raspberrypi say have VLC media player installed on it then connected to an external HDD play HD quality movies?

What sound does it support?
Click to expand...

So yeah - that is it. Amazing box of tricks. Personally planning to use VLC but it is basically just a PC so can use whatever!
 
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