Best Home Media Center Option

[FrontlineWarrior]

I'm having some difficulty putting together a features list for watching pre-recorded videos on my TV.

The features I want are:
Ability to play at least 720p in various formats (divx, xvid, mkv) smoothly
Ability to play Hulu
Least amount of money possible

There seem to be several options. For example there are some LG TVs that will play youtube. It has some sort of video player built-in. Can this also play files from a USB connected portable hard drive? And can it play Hulu?

I know the xbox 360 can play 720p with only some occasional stutter. The problem is that I can't play Hulu on it. I've tried tversity and playOn through my laptop but my machine is just a touch too slow for smooth playback.

I know the PS3 used to be able to play Hulu, but it was blocked. There is some sort of way to change the proxy, I've heard. There is also the playOn option, but again, my laptop is too slow.

I can build an htpc from scratch, but that would cost me about 200 dollars at least.

The zune HD can play 720p and would be very portable with the docking station, but cannot play Hulu, and is still quite expensive.

I don't know much about roku other than it can play mlb.tv and netflix.

So...

Is there a sub-$200 option for both smooth HD playback and Hulu on my TV? Are there any other machines or methods that I haven't mentioned?

 

[sivart]

I gave up on a similar quest and just ended up going with an HTPC. Built one for about $240 (less hard drive which I already had an old 80GB lying around). I actually bought a bare bones Dell Vostro 220s and built it up. Nice and quiet and using Vista Media Center and Hulu desktop with a Harmony remote.

With my NAS box always on, there is no need for another PC to be running to feed data and / or transcode.

 

[kalrith]

I was originally planning to install linux and mythtv on my PS3 and run linux virtually on my gaming PC as the media server, but it seemed like it was going to be too involved, and my gaming PC uses a lot of power at idle. I wound up building an HTPC for $310, and that includes $85 for a dual-tuner ATSC tuner, which it sounds like you won't need. I already had a case and power supply, so I probably saved about $70 because of that. It also uses about 45W at idle compared to 200W for my gaming PC. I leave it on 24/7 to record shows and to use with MagicJack as my VOIP. It's just a low-wattage dual-core AM2 processor with 4 GB of RAM, a 9500GT video card, and a 1 TB hard drive. I overclocked the processor to 2.9 GHz, and it runs everything I throw at it. I might eventually upgrade the video card, because the 4670 is supposed to display a bit better graphics, but the cheapest single-slot 4670 was $55 more than what I paid for the 9500GT, and I can't fit a dual-slot card into my HTPC.

Edit: Oh yeah, I had a spare copy of Windows XP already and use MediaPortal (which is free) as my media center. I bought Windows 7 for $50 and will be switching to that next month.

 

[mc866]

How about something like the Aspire Revo? It has the Intel Atom processor and the Nvidia ION GPU which is supposed to handle 1080p, you get a small net top with OS for $199.99 at Newegg right now, link here

I did a full HTPC build recently on the AMD 780G chipset for around $350 or less but I had an OS and a hard drive I recycled. The ION platform looks to be a good low cost option for you.

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

The nettop is a good alternative, and I might go with that in the future. I really mostly wanted Hulu but after doing further reading, it seems that Hulu uses Flash which is very CPU intensive at the moment. There was mention of a new version of Flash that can utilize the Ion chip and play HD on something like an Atom chip, but that's about a half year away.

I'm beginning to think the inefficiency of Flash is the main problem, rather than the hardware. I read that even some mid-range computers with multicore CPUs can sometimes have problems with Hulu. I think I'll wait a while and see if Flash improves or if Silverlight 3 or HTML5 gets used in Hulu in the future. If that happens I might be able to use my current laptop as a dedicated Hulu player +/- xbox 360 for the 720p or 1080p video.

Thanks for all the insight!

 

[BigDH01]

Popcorn hour?

 

[Modelworks]

If you want something that you will not have to replace when a new service starts or you want the most flexibility go with building an HTPC. If there is just one service you use like netflix then go with a dedicated player. The problem with by any set top box is you are stuck with them providing support for new services and features. If they don't update then you are stuck with a useless box.

I personally use XBMC + Media Player home cinema + event ghost. All are free and when set up correctly can play anything that exist with near perfect quality. XBMC is my interface to things like hulu and local files. It will go online find episode details for tv shows and movies and store them for browsing.

The player is MPHC . XBMC has the option to use any external program you like to play the video or you can use XBMC itself. I browse in XBMC , find the file I like, click play and MPHC launches and plays the file full screen. When I stop it, it closes and returns to XBMC. I use MPHC because it allows me to choose what codecs play what files and to filter for things like sharpen, color, or post processing.

Event ghost I use to control remote functions. I bought a MCE remote and in windows 7 it is installed by default. This is good and bad. Windows wants it to control MCE instead of XBMC. So if you go into device manager under keyboard you can remove all the ir keyboard stuff then disable the driver under human interface devices. Now the remote works for only event ghost, including using the large green button to launch the program.
You can do just about anything with a remote and event ghost including control lights in the home. Great for when you sit down and left that lamp across the room turned on.

http://xbmc.org/
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/
http://www.eventghost.org/

 

[tw1164]

Originally posted by: FrontlineWarrior
The nettop is a good alternative, and I might go with that in the future. I really mostly wanted Hulu but after doing further reading, it seems that Hulu uses Flash which is very CPU intensive at the moment. There was mention of a new version of Flash that can utilize the Ion chip and play HD on something like an Atom chip, but that's about a half year away.

I'm beginning to think the inefficiency of Flash is the main problem, rather than the hardware. I read that even some mid-range computers with multicore CPUs can sometimes have problems with Hulu. I think I'll wait a while and see if Flash improves or if Silverlight 3 or HTML5 gets used in Hulu in the future. If that happens I might be able to use my current laptop as a dedicated Hulu player +/- xbox 360 for the 720p or 1080p video.

Thanks for all the insight!

I think Adobe just released their GPU accelerated Flash software.