I’ve got an old DLink. The product support has been discontinued for a long time, it doesn’t handle HD and it’s getting balky with some newer formats (MKV for instance, plays in a tiny letter-box shape, if it plays at all)
It’s time for an upgrade. Here’s what I need
Wireless. It’ll be impossible to do a wired version of this for me.
I need one that allows me to stream local media (cds/movies I’ve ripped, etc). Internet media is nice, but really not critical for me. (Amazon insta-stream or whatever it’s called would be nice though)
Ideally the ability to either capture my directory structures or to create my own menus. I don’t want a “Music” directory, I want a series of directories that I create.
Handles AVI files.
HD. My current player doesn’t handle that as far as I’ve found.
I’d love something that can handle a “Monkey’s Audio/APE” format audio. I’m not holding my breath on that one.
I’ve used TVersity as my computer-side media transcoder/server but it looks like TVersity doesn’t work with new/current devices. So, while we’re at it–I need a decent media-server program too. (PLEX?)
So far, I’m looking at the Boxee Box (which, let’s be honest, looks cooler than hell) and seems to do almost everything. and Vizio-co-star which isn’t nearly as cool looking but is $100 less.
Anyone have any experience with either player? Or another one? (Roku apparently is killer for online media but terrible with local media)
(Also–apparently Boxee is no longer being supported by the mfg? I can’t tell, but there’ve been a couple of threads I’ve found that suggest that. If so, deal breaker)
As far as Roku, you need to check out Plex and decide if that will meet your needs. If it does, Roku has a Plex channel and works totally fine with media streamed from your PC via plex.
What it doesn’t have is it’s own way to get media from your PC, or a very wide codec support, so channels that go PC->Roku have to transcode on the fly.
You probably could build something like you want with a rasberry pi. Or any general purpose computer. I don’t have any experience outside of Xbox 360, PS3, Roku, and home built computer streaming. PS3/Xbox 360 work just fine but have even worse interfaces than the Roku and also need Plex, Playon, PS3Mediaserver for linux, etc
OOOooh! If Roku has a Plex channel, that would solve a lot.
I’ve used TVersity in the past but as far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty much dead right now–if you look at it’s supported devices, they’re all a couple of years old.
Plex looks like a really good server, but does it transcode? What’s the UI like?
Plex does transcode into whatever your host device needs - it works on Xbox 360, Roku, etc. The interface is a lot like netflix - lots of rectangular picture boxes with little text. Most media center apps seem to have done the same thing - Amazon Instant Video, Playon, the Xbox store, etc.
You might want to take a look at my post (#6) in this thread in Cafe Society.
XBMC does .APE. It runs on a wide variety of platforms and devices; an inexpensive Raspberry Pi does 1080p just fine. It handles local files in your own drives and directories. It is open source, completely free, and with the XBMC Hub add-on, has a huge amount of good content available.
I set up a Plex server last month and immediately went out to buy a Roku box so I could serve Plex up to our HDTV.
It works perfect!
Note that you need to create a Roku account in order to add the channel, and they make it hard to see how to create that account without a CC#.
Persist.
Create the Roku account from a desktop machine (not your phone, like I tried), and look for the teensy “skip” link in the lower right corner of the CC info page.
As an added bonus, there is a Plex client for iPad and iPhone for five bucks. Everyone in my house can hook up to the Plex server and watch shows on their tablets.
Tried Plex/Roku. I don’t know why but I could not get it to play without bad stuttering. I also didn’t like the fact that the Roku seems so locked down–there was no easy way (that I could tell) to get around the front-end–what if I don’t want to use their channels and just want to use a shared folder or something? Also, only about 1/3d of my media is showing up. I can see the media on the old DLink (which shows Plex). So, for me, that didn’t seem like a good fit.
WD Live TV–For me, a much better box. I like the Optical Audio output, it instantly discovered both TVersity and Plex and it played movies without any stutter at all. However, it wouldn’t/won’t play ape or Flac files from either program (they’ll both play on my DLink from Plex or TVersity). I’m not sure why yet. What’s weird is that WD Live apparently supports FLAC natively. Any ideas?
I’m not sure I like that Plex makes me name my files it’s way. I like my naming and structure…and Plex doesn’t.
I like XBMC’s front-end better than Plex’s. It seems a little more intuitive to me.
Anyone tried PS3 Media Server?
Again, I really appreciate all the input so far. Love to h ear more.
Stuttering in Plex might be because it is converting on the fly and not keeping up. I have seen this in my own setup in files that were created by others.
As long as your files don’t need conversion, it is smooth. This does mean that you would need a solid box to serve Plex from (I have a standalone Linux box for this). I think some NAS boxes run Plex, but I can’t imagine they do it justice.
I agree with your assessment of the naming standard. I like it because I am just beginning my Plex collection and I like having someone else’s standard to follow (and the metadata magically appears for everything!), but if you have a huge collection with your other naming convention it is a pain.
My music collection has my own naming convention, so I am hesitant to put it in Plex.
I use Handbrake with the Apple TV 2 setting with Decomb turned on. That seems perfect for anything of DVD quality to play from Plex without any hitches.
