I've seen a few in Maplins but 'it's Maplins'...

I'd like something that I can play music, video and pictures. It has to be HD compatible with good resolution. It needs to be networkable and wireless to share media from other domestic PC's. Silent. Good remote. Good connectivity to AV. Play all sorts of music files and video files that I'm ever likely to need. Good slide show options. Good music selection menus. Over 300Gbs. No need for PVR as I have a dedicated one already.

Help!?

 

KJ Global Ltd. TVIX M-6500A v2

I have v1 and works great.

 

What about the Popcorn hour one ?

Talking of Maplins, had to go in there today to pick up some audio cable for a job I was on, and they now have a USB VHS player/recorder thing that allows you to transfer all your VHS tapes direct to your PC via the built in convertor and USB interface

Even the bloke on the counter said its a strange item but it is selling

 

I know it's not exactly what you're asking for, but cheap as chips!

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/582239...r/Product.html

 

I have the popcorn hour player and it is good but it only supports IDE drives so 500gig max and the hard drive has to be taken out of the housing and installed into a pc to add media to it! As filling a 500gig drive takes some time.

Welcome To Popcorn Hour

 

Thanks for the ideas chaps. Hank, that site has loads to choose from

 

I have just noticed from my link that the new popcorn hour does everything that I said my popcorn hour doesn't. I think I may buy the newer version and sell mine on


This is how small the popcorn hour is and the icybox above holds 2tbs of blueray films

 

Yep, I've bought two from there as has my cousin, all good and he had a return dealt with ok.

If you want to look at all the options to a serious level, take a look at:
http://www.mpcclub.com/

and get stuck into the forums (usual forum thing tho, there is always a proportion of tools )

 

Can't you just stream rather than store locally??

Also a bit dissapointing that the NIC is only 10/100

Still looks an impressive bit of kit though

 

You don't need any more than about 40-60 to stream HD and the I/O is a limit on the sigma chipset all these players are based on, mine has Gigabit but will never use it as the chip can't handle any more than about 60 anyway (can't remember the exact number).

 

I don't necessarily want to stream as that means leaving the host PC on all the time. I've decided that I don't need wireless. You can gather I still haven't bought one yet

 

Western Digital have a new box out where it hasn't got a disk or network but you just put a usb stick/drive on it. Looks quite smart but don't know if I'd be arsed with the hassle of moving files around.

 

I use a Slingbox and have a 500gb usb drive connected to that, for times when I want to watch films but not have the servers and other computers running in my house. The advantage of doing it this way, is I keep all my files centrally, the other advantage is that I can stream BBC IPlayer/ YouTube etc straight to my tv which is controlled via remote..

 

use a ps3

 

PS3 doesn't support the most common HD file type.

 

popcorn hour a110 + internal sata drive.

Stream or serve locally, it will do both. You can ftp files to it from other machines, no need to remove.

Supports pretty much everything, HDMI 1.3 output too.

Steve

 

mkv? yes it does, you just need to convert it with ps3 mkvtovob. Which takes no time at all

 

I've also just bought a Pocorn Hour A-110 and it's a fantastic bit of kit.

I've just added an internal 500GB SATA hard drive but store all my media centrally an all my movies, including Bu-Ray stream perfectly.

I've started converting my whole DVD collection to ISO files whichc an be streamed to the Popcorn whilst retaining chapters, menu features etc

Another good feature of the popcorn is you can add your own jukebox, I've just installed the My Lil Movie Jukebox which shows you these screens when you browse your DVD collection

All that's stored on your Popcorn is the html files, images and actor details.
I'm just expanding it now to index my MP3 and Photo collection