So, done tons of research and am more confused than ever.
My setup now: 3 NAS with 30TB each hold all movies, tv shows, docus and music. They stream to multiple WD TV Live which send the stuff to the attached TVs via gigabit ethernet (dont believe in wifi for that). No Kodi, no Plex (yet).
The WD TVs are getting way to slow for me - although they play everything and anything I throw at them without so much as a hiccup. Still, want to replace them with a more powerful and future-proof (let's say 2-4 years) device.
I dont care much about streaming, I download all content, store it and keep it to rewatch (and it is legal in my country, so no debates please). I dont care about gaming on the device at all, the PS3/4s cover this.
I've made an extensive Excel sheet benchmarking the following devices against the WD TV Live Gen3:
- New Apple TV
- Amazon Fire TV
- Nvidia Shield
- New Nexus
- Roku 4
Somehow they all fall short when it comes to codec support. I want the device to have as much native hardware support for Audio and Video decoding as possible (the WD is superb there). Dont care much for transcoding.
The closest I've come to a match would be the Nvidia Shield (only if they release a codec pack as mentioned by their support staff, so the hardware would natively decode) but it's geared towards gaming and online streaming and I'm unsure if that will hinder development and support for local network streaming in future updates.
Roku 4 looks not uncool in that regard but I dont really like the specs too much (lots still unclear).
New Apple TV would probably be a good choice for UI and future support and development but I cant stand iTunes and their native codec support is ridiculously bad. I could run Plex on it but Plex would still have to transcode lots of the files on the fly and I dont want that.
I was looking into building a HTPC but the components for what I want arent ready yet.
I guess what I want is a more powerful WD TV Live with a new UI, proper search, HEVC and HDMI 2.0. But I wont hold my breath since WD sucks when it comes to a proper media streamer roadmap.
Any idea what I should do/get?
List of what I want/need in that device
MAIN
- CPU Anything 64bit, 2+ Cores @ 1.5GHz+
- GPU No preference
- Memory DDR2/3 @ 1GHz+
- Storage No preference
- OS No preference
INTERFACES
- Gigabit Ethernet
- USB 3.0
- HDMI 2.0
- WiFi ac
- Bluetooth 4.0/4.1
- Optical Out
VIDEO FORMAT
- NTSC/PAL
VIDEO RESOLUTION
- 480i/p
- 576i/p
- 720p
- 1080i/p
- 4k/30
- 4k/60
FILE FORMATS VIDEO
extension / container
.mkv / MATROSKA
- AVC (x/h264)
- VC1
- HEVC (x/h265)
- HEVC (x/h265) Main 10/12
- VP9
- Divx 3/4/5/6
- MPEG 1/2/4
- XviD
- AAC
- AC3
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby TrueHD
- DTSHD
- MPEG Audio
- ADPCM
- PCM
- DTS
- FLAC
.avi, .divx / AVI
- AVC (x/h264)
- VC1
- Divx 3/4/5/6
- MPEG4
- XviD
- M-JPEG
- WMV3
- AAC
- AC3
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby TrueHD
- DTSHD
- MPEG Audio
- ADPCM
- PCM
- DTS
- FLAC
.mov, .mp4 / QuickTime
- AVC (x/h264)
- VC1
- HEVC (x/h265)
- HEVC (x/h265) Main 10/12
- Divx 3/4/5/6
- MPEG4
- XviD
- M-JPEG
- WMV3
- AAC
- AC3
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby TrueHD
- DTSHD
- MPEG Audio
- ADPCM
- PCM
- DTS
- FLAC
FILE FORMATS AUDIO
- MP1/2/3/a
- AAC
- M4A/MP4A
- FLAC
- WAV
- OGG
- WNA
- AIF/AIFF
- AC3/EC3
- APE
- DTS
- FLAC
- MPEG 2/4
- MPEG Audio
- PCM
FILE FORMATS IMAGES
- BMP
- TIFF
- PNG
- GIF
- JPG
PLAYLISTS
- PLS
- M3U
- WPL
SUBTITLES
- SRT
- ASS
- SSA
- SUB
- SMI
- PGS
- VobSub
FILE SYSTEMS
- FAT32
- NTFS
- HFS+
- NFS
My setup now: 3 NAS with 30TB each hold all movies, tv shows, docus and music. They stream to multiple WD TV Live which send the stuff to the attached TVs via gigabit ethernet (dont believe in wifi for that). No Kodi, no Plex (yet).
The WD TVs are getting way to slow for me - although they play everything and anything I throw at them without so much as a hiccup. Still, want to replace them with a more powerful and future-proof (let's say 2-4 years) device.
I dont care much about streaming, I download all content, store it and keep it to rewatch (and it is legal in my country, so no debates please). I dont care about gaming on the device at all, the PS3/4s cover this.
I've made an extensive Excel sheet benchmarking the following devices against the WD TV Live Gen3:
- New Apple TV
- Amazon Fire TV
- Nvidia Shield
- New Nexus
- Roku 4
Somehow they all fall short when it comes to codec support. I want the device to have as much native hardware support for Audio and Video decoding as possible (the WD is superb there). Dont care much for transcoding.
The closest I've come to a match would be the Nvidia Shield (only if they release a codec pack as mentioned by their support staff, so the hardware would natively decode) but it's geared towards gaming and online streaming and I'm unsure if that will hinder development and support for local network streaming in future updates.
Roku 4 looks not uncool in that regard but I dont really like the specs too much (lots still unclear).
New Apple TV would probably be a good choice for UI and future support and development but I cant stand iTunes and their native codec support is ridiculously bad. I could run Plex on it but Plex would still have to transcode lots of the files on the fly and I dont want that.
I was looking into building a HTPC but the components for what I want arent ready yet.
I guess what I want is a more powerful WD TV Live with a new UI, proper search, HEVC and HDMI 2.0. But I wont hold my breath since WD sucks when it comes to a proper media streamer roadmap.
Any idea what I should do/get?
List of what I want/need in that device
MAIN
- CPU Anything 64bit, 2+ Cores @ 1.5GHz+
- GPU No preference
- Memory DDR2/3 @ 1GHz+
- Storage No preference
- OS No preference
INTERFACES
- Gigabit Ethernet
- USB 3.0
- HDMI 2.0
- WiFi ac
- Bluetooth 4.0/4.1
- Optical Out
VIDEO FORMAT
- NTSC/PAL
VIDEO RESOLUTION
- 480i/p
- 576i/p
- 720p
- 1080i/p
- 4k/30
- 4k/60
FILE FORMATS VIDEO
extension / container
.mkv / MATROSKA
- AVC (x/h264)
- VC1
- HEVC (x/h265)
- HEVC (x/h265) Main 10/12
- VP9
- Divx 3/4/5/6
- MPEG 1/2/4
- XviD
- AAC
- AC3
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby TrueHD
- DTSHD
- MPEG Audio
- ADPCM
- PCM
- DTS
- FLAC
.avi, .divx / AVI
- AVC (x/h264)
- VC1
- Divx 3/4/5/6
- MPEG4
- XviD
- M-JPEG
- WMV3
- AAC
- AC3
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby TrueHD
- DTSHD
- MPEG Audio
- ADPCM
- PCM
- DTS
- FLAC
.mov, .mp4 / QuickTime
- AVC (x/h264)
- VC1
- HEVC (x/h265)
- HEVC (x/h265) Main 10/12
- Divx 3/4/5/6
- MPEG4
- XviD
- M-JPEG
- WMV3
- AAC
- AC3
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby TrueHD
- DTSHD
- MPEG Audio
- ADPCM
- PCM
- DTS
- FLAC
FILE FORMATS AUDIO
- MP1/2/3/a
- AAC
- M4A/MP4A
- FLAC
- WAV
- OGG
- WNA
- AIF/AIFF
- AC3/EC3
- APE
- DTS
- FLAC
- MPEG 2/4
- MPEG Audio
- PCM
FILE FORMATS IMAGES
- BMP
- TIFF
- PNG
- GIF
- JPG
PLAYLISTS
- PLS
- M3U
- WPL
SUBTITLES
- SRT
- ASS
- SSA
- SUB
- SMI
- PGS
- VobSub
FILE SYSTEMS
- FAT32
- NTFS
- HFS+
- NFS