Media Streamer

poosemon

poosemon

poosemon

Associate
Joined
16 May 2004
Posts
1,905
Location
Near Chester
Good evening,

I have my media stored on a server (old windows laptop) and currently use a wdtv live to play media from it.

Works ok some of the time but I am fed up the the box being buggy and spend half the time restarting the dam thing to play anything.....thus;

Can anyone suggest a reliable solution, budget around £75.

Happy to consider android box/raspberry pi 2/etc
 
I came here looking for EXACTLY the same thing since I just had to restart my WDTV Live THREE TIMES to get through 40 minutes of shows.

Doing my nut.

So... I'm in the same boat, you kind folks, here.

Looking for something that'll work via SMB share access or PLEX, must have an optical audio out and support Netflix with fully configurable network options (for changing DNS manually).

Sorry to hijack... but keep both of us in mind! :D
 
I chucked my WDTV onto eBay and went with a Raspberry Pi 2 with OSMC for all my media playing needs, connecting to a Synology NAS running all the usual suspects. Can't really fault it, and it's dirt cheap.

It won't tick your Netflix or optical audio requirements though. Maybe an Amazon Fire TV box thing is for you? There's a thread on here about side loading apps etc onto it.
 
I use a Beelink i68 Android box. Has optical out and kodi works well. Netflix is installed but I took it off as I dont use it.

Played a few files via network, worked well but again not something I do much as I have a few different boxes for playback.

Can be had for around £50.
 
Pestilence said:
I came here looking for EXACTLY the same thing since I just had to restart my WDTV Live THREE TIMES to get through 40 minutes of shows.

Doing my nut.

So... I'm in the same boat, you kind folks, here.

Looking for something that'll work via SMB share access or PLEX, must have an optical audio out and support Netflix with fully configurable network options (for changing DNS manually).

Sorry to hijack... but keep both of us in mind! :D
Click to expand...

Our WDTV has started playing up more and more often over the last few months. The children use it a lot and it needs to be hard rebooted several times a day.
 
Pestilence said:
I came here looking for EXACTLY the same thing since I just had to restart my WDTV Live THREE TIMES to get through 40 minutes of shows.

Doing my nut.

So... I'm in the same boat, you kind folks, here.

Looking for something that'll work via SMB share access or PLEX, must have an optical audio out and support Netflix with fully configurable network options (for changing DNS manually).

Sorry to hijack... but keep both of us in mind! :D
Click to expand...

No worries! The nore the merrier ;)

Was looking more strongly down the pi 2 route myself at the moment, have got an xbox 360 which can deal with skygo, netflix (if i wanred it...)

Just want to know it is robust and easy for my wife to use (technophobe) or if it needs continual tweaking
 
I've been using a RPi2 for what seems like forever, I had the Rpi before that.
It runs OSMC which I find to be much more streamlined than OpenELEC etc etc

All my media is stored on a 12TB N54L Microserver and the RPi2 grabs it over NFS.

It's rock solid, the missus knows how to use it, costs pennies to run.
 
Amazon fire TV will get some votes.
I currently use a pipo x7 which is great. Also owned a droidbox imx8 which was fine but now surpassed with newer versions
Had a Rpi and found it sluggish but no doubt the rpi2 is better
The new intel compute stick things look interesting but I've not looked into it yet. No wired LAN may be a concern.
Also look at the intel NUC's for something a little more powerful

All will be fine with Kodi/Plex. Not sure if 24p on android has been resolved yet?
 
Just a quick bump here for George and poosemon...

After making this post, I actually downgraded the firmware on my WDTV Live back to the previous version, and I haven't had a single freeze since.

Have either of you tried that? I'll continue to give it a hammering (I'm generally streaming on it while I'm working from home) and see if the issue is completely solved.

Seems the latest firmware has a memory leak or something (and WD have since abandoned it). I got suspicious when I received the "system memory is low" message after having JUST rebooted the bloody thing due to a freeze, and found the older firmware online.
 
ArchAnGeL said:
Amazon fire TV will get some votes.
I currently use a pipo x7 which is great. Also owned a droidbox imx8 which was fine but now surpassed with newer versions
Had a Rpi and found it sluggish but no doubt the rpi2 is better
The new intel compute stick things look interesting but I've not looked into it yet. No wired LAN may be a concern.
Also look at the intel NUC's for something a little more powerful

All will be fine with Kodi/Plex. Not sure if 24p on android has been resolved yet?
Click to expand...


I've been looking at the pipo x7 and 8, they seems awesome for the money, i'm looking for a couple for video media playback, I use my hp microserver for playback in livingroom, I just find it very sluggish when browsing through Emby media browser, not sure how well the pipo's would do there.
 
At the moment I used Plex on my main computer and the TVs in the House are smart TV with the Plex app, And all use a Amazon Fire stick down stairs for the non smart TV
 
I'm using wdtv live myself and it does a good job for a good price. OK, it needs the odd reboot but I can't really see anything better without paying silly money.
 
I've just changed from a wdtv live smp to a pi2 running openelec and the speed difference Is night and day. Really easy to set up, pointed it to my nas and done. Controlling it with tv remote.
 
evulboo said:
I've just changed from a wdtv live smp to a pi2 running openelec and the speed difference Is night and day. Really easy to set up, pointed it to my nas and done. Controlling it with tv remote.
Click to expand...

Decided to go down the pi2 route myself, downloading OSMC as i write!
 
I used to use PHT on proper HTPCs. I have since swapped to one of the new Roku 2 units (cost me £43) running Plex and am mightily impressed with it. In the spare room I use the Plex on my Samsung TV.
 
PI2 with OSMC is a great bit of kit! Very slick and robust so far :) nice and easy for the wife to use too ;) hdmi cec for example makes it nice and simple!

Added youtube, iplayer, itv player addons pretty simply after a bit of reading up all work very well too
 
Well, my wdtv live crashing and freezing has become so frequent that it's pretty much unusable now, so I'm on the lookout for something to replace it with.

What's the best dlna capable box for playing local files from my PC?

Been looking at the Roku but it seems that it doesn't support a great range of file types.

Edit: it seems the Roku with plex media server will play most things. So will probably go for that.
 
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Bought a Roku 2 (2015 model) for £49 last night. Took a bit of faff setting it up working with plex but now it's all sorted it works great :) plays everything I have tried so far with a nice speedy interface. Hopefully it won't need a reboot every half hour like the wdtv live....
 
IvanDobskey said:
Bought a Roku 2 (2015 model) for £49 last night. Took a bit of faff setting it up working with plex but now it's all sorted it works great :) plays everything I have tried so far with a nice speedy interface. Hopefully it won't need a reboot every half hour like the wdtv live....
Click to expand...

I replaced my full blown HTPCs with Roku 2's (the new one) and am very impressed. Plex works well with a nice interface and I have so far only had to do one restart to fix an AV sync issue.
 
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