1 box to rule them all? (for bedroom)

[evident]

eat the cost, get an htpc, dont ever look back

 

[lopri]

can anyone suggest a box that can play all the video formats in the world + Amazon streaming, and wireless? no transcoding, please!

i had the ps3. but it cant play some formats like MKV. transcoding sucks cause it requires the other PC to be on at all time.

Google mkv2vob.

 

[Eug]

I have a nettop HTPC - dual-core Atom with SSD (see sig), in a tiny form factor not much bigger than my WD TV Live SMP. Because of the GPU, it plays everything without stuttering. I never use it. I much prefer using my WD TV Live.

That nettop is just used in the guest room.

I got a blu-ray player with streaming. It seems to play H.264 MKVs from MediaTomb, which I earlier encoded with Handbrake.

It has several downsides, though. It can't fast forward, rewind, or pause streaming video. It doesn't play Cinavia protected content. And it's $30 more now than when I got it.

I have a BDP-S380. It sucks as a streaming machine. I sneakernet video files to it. Plus as you said it doesn't play Cinavia content. All of my main home theatre systems have BOTH a standalone Blu-ray player and a separate streaming box (WD TV Live SMP or jailbroken ATV 2).

 

[rcpratt]

Just ordered a WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Will report back.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

can anyone suggest a box that can play all the video formats in the world + Amazon streaming, and wireless? no transcoding, please!

i had the ps3. but it cant play some formats like MKV. transcoding sucks cause it requires the other PC to be on at all time.
i had the FAVI, android on a stick. that was slow compared to a laptop. and also had issues with MKV files.
my brother has a Boxee, but that took forever to boot up.

for now, i have a laptop hooked to the TV via HDMI. it takes 20 seconds to boot up. but at least it can play anything i want.
what do you use that boots up almost instantaneously and plays everything?

yeah its called a windows 8 computer

 

[smitbret]

can anyone suggest a box that can play all the video formats in the world + Amazon streaming, and wireless? no transcoding, please!

i had the ps3. but it cant play some formats like MKV. transcoding sucks cause it requires the other PC to be on at all time.
i had the FAVI, android on a stick. that was slow compared to a laptop. and also had issues with MKV files.
my brother has a Boxee, but that took forever to boot up.

for now, i have a laptop hooked to the TV via HDMI. it takes 20 seconds to boot up. but at least it can play anything i want.
what do you use that boots up almost instantaneously and plays everything?

There is no box that I am aware of that will have the local playback ability of the WD Live but also supports Amazon streaming.

 

[rcpratt]

Does anyone have any useful resources to set up a WD TV LSMP with Network Share on Windows 7? It took me a half hour to find a registry change to allow the device to even log in. Just looking for other things to know (e.g., it seems subdirectories may not be allowable).

 

[rcpratt]

Does anyone have any useful resources to set up a WD TV LSMP with Network Share on Windows 7? It took me a half hour to find a registry change to allow the device to even log in. Just looking for other things to know (e.g., it seems subdirectories may not be allowable).

Hey guys, sorry to bump this thread again (not really sure why it's in this forum anyways), but there seemed to be a few people knowledgeable on this subject in here.

I'm still working on getting my WD TV LSMP set up...just been really busy the past few weeks. I have gotten it to recognize/access my PC via network share. I have been able to "share" a new folder (in Windows 7) so that the WDTV can see the folder - but it thinks those folders are empty (doesn't recognize any media files within). I have been able to copy/paste media files to some of the folders (/Public) that came configured with the WDTV, and then they play fine.

What I'd like is to simply add my three different hard drives that are full of media and then be able to access the entire file structures within at any point. Is that not possible? Or what do I need to do that?

There seems to be a lot of people confused by this out there, but not a lot of resources to figure it out.

 

[MrX8503]

What's LSMP?

The way I've done it is to connect to the network share directly and enter in that network PC's credentials. You'll be able to access its folders then.

 

[luiswhite]

A video player + A video converter = play any formats.

You said you can play anything you want through a laptop hooked to the TV, but you must clear that you cant play anything without a TV. This could mean one of two things.