Best Network Media Player?

mothermachine

mothermachine

mothermachine

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8 Oct 2004
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Hi folks,

Running a WDTV Live currently and when it works it's superb, but it's massively unreliable and crashes or freezes a lot, so I'm looking for an alternative.

Not interested in the Apple TV due to codec limitations etc.

Anyone familiar with the others? I've been hearing a lot about the Fire TV and Kodi.

My only requirements are:

- ethernet
- solid NAS support for playback of videos and photos
- solid codec support for OLD video codecs like old divx/xvid/mov etc.
- solid codec support for NEW videos like mkv/mp4 etc.
- smooth playback

Been looking into the Fire TV and mede8er, they seem like good options.

Cheers!
 
What are your audio requirements? the Fire tv and stick are suppose to be excellent but if your wanting smooth playback with MKV the fire tv does not do 24p if thats something you want if not then the fire tv maybe what you want
 
No audio requirements at all. HDMI > TV > Optical into my Receiver with stereo.

I'm also not bothered about 24p. Don't think I've come across any videos in that so far.

How solid is the Fire TV? I just want something that doesn't freeze or need rebooting regularly, since I use it daily multiple times sometimes.

Cheers :)
 
Im sorry i don't use the fire tv but the reviews are very good there is a thread on the fire tv on this forum so it will give you a good idea what you want from it
 
Don't overlook the RPI2 as well, I have one and can definitely recommend it.

Has a lot of community support, can run KODI on various Linux O/S, or Plex (Rasplex).

The quad core CPU makes it pretty powerful for a small unit. The cost is low. It is silent as it has no fans. It has built in HDMI-CEC support so you can control it with your TV remote, lastly it uses only a few watts of power so you can just leave it on.
 
I have a Dune HD something player. Plays everything under the Sun up to 1080p high bitrate movies from SMB share. It also supports NFS, but i've not tried. No crashes or frame drops. Output is HDMI.

My particular player is quite old, i'm sure newer Dune players do the same. Really worth checking them out.
 
Fire TV with Kodi is excellent. Had no issues at all with mine and its played everything I've thrown at it. Its also tiny and the remote is Bluetooth so it's hidden away in a cupboard too.

Its a shame they pulled Kodi from the Amazon store so you have to side load it again now, as before it really was a proper 'just works' device.
 
Eulogy said:
Don't overlook the RPI2 as well, I have one and can definitely recommend it.

Has a lot of community support, can run KODI on various Linux O/S, or Plex (Rasplex).

The quad core CPU makes it pretty powerful for a small unit. The cost is low. It is silent as it has no fans. It has built in HDMI-CEC support so you can control it with your TV remote, lastly it uses only a few watts of power so you can just leave it on.
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RP12?
 
Eulogy said:
I like the RPI2 because it's cheap and efficient, there is a good deal of community support for it too.

You can install KODI via the NOOBS installers (https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/noobs-setup/) - I was using Openelec before I went to Plex.

Plex via Raspex (http://www.rasplex.com/).

I'm sure it can do a lot more besides, my main uses so far have been either KODI or Plex though.
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I've already got Kodi installed on my tablet, haven't set it up yet.

Might just stick with that.
 
+1 for the FireTV. Tried to put up with the cheaper FireTV Stick but it was too sluggish compared to its big brother.

Kodi runs like a dream - just as quick as my dedicated HTPC did.

FireTV quite often gets reduced to £59 - picked up another last Friday
 
Fire Tv box great but i found it still sluggish on various tasks and stuttering (maybe just the 24 fps stuff) i couldnt put up with. Running Kodi, BS player on my Note 4 even my Tab S was considerably superior using hdmi out to 1080p tv. Depends on how fussy you are but im all for Fire TV version 2.
 
Well I just purchased the G-Box Q android box it is brilliant a little more in price than other android boxes but for £80 you are getting a quad core processor and 2gb ram compared to the 1gb with other boxes and 16gb internal drive space and for your channels that is all done through kodi addons which is built in most of the android boxes the extra ram allows a much smoother menu navigation and I have been customising the aeon box theme with no lag what so ever looks sexy lol.
 
wellibob said:
Fire Tv box great but i found it still sluggish on various tasks and stuttering (maybe just the 24 fps stuff) i couldnt put up with. Running Kodi, BS player on my Note 4 even my Tab S was considerably superior using hdmi out to 1080p tv. Depends on how fussy you are but im all for Fire TV version 2.
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Thats strange as both of mine run like a dream. One is hard wired and the other Wifi - even with 1080 streams from my file server they are spot on.

All GB networking and Ubiquity wifi
 
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