Which Media Player would you recommand

[Nelly]

Hi all, I would like some suggestions on the best solution to the current predicament I have.

Like most people I have been using a PS3 as a media player, but with more and more titles having Cinavia disrupting playback, I am looking for a new network connected media player.

I have a Qnap nas that is capable of streaming hd video, I have tried twonky and servillo both work with the later capable of transcoding mkv files but my 2010 Panasonic tv wont play the mkv files very well or not at all, so I have had enough messing about having been editing this and that to sort it out.

So to the chase I am looking for suggestions as to the best player to sit under my tv (this will have access to a wired or wireless network), this can be from cheap and cheerful (does what it says on the tin) to howmuch! But look at the whistles and bells on this thing.
Ideally looking for something that will not be updated to include cinavia protection, can play hd files, mkv, divx avi etc with out tweaking this or that, if you can point out any extras you think are worth the extra cost etc, or pitfalls (I have read about the WDlive filling the qnap with duplicate files/ folders for all movies).

People with WDlive units feedback welcome, also (although not really for this forum) Apple tv users please feel free to give your opinion as a media player and finally but definitely not the least all of those who use many of the other devices mentioned in this forum please join the discussion.

Hopefully we maybe able to get a range of opinions for future users looking for a good network media player together, thanks.

 

[chaseruk]

hi mate,ive got 2 4yr old sumvision cyclones and a himedia 900b on my network,and all 3 do what i want them to...although the sumvisions are the mk1's and wont decode the dts,which
isn't a problem for me as the dts is passed through to an amp.
The himedia has played every audio/video format ive thrown at it but is more expensive than than the sumvisions (£149),but also has wifi and is hdmi 1.4.(plays 3d bluray isos fine)
The himedia also runs android as well although i haven't tried it on mine.

 

[Nelly]

hi mate,ive got 2 4yr old sumvision cyclones and a himedia 900b on my network,and all 3 do what i want them to...although the sumvisions are the mk1's and wont decode the dts,which
isn't a problem for me as the dts is passed through to an amp.
The himedia has played every audio/video format ive thrown at it but is more expensive than than the sumvisions (£149),but also has wifi and is hdmi 1.4.(plays 3d bluray isos fine)
The himedia also runs android as well although i haven't tried it on mine.

Thanks for that a great start, had a look at the Himedia with a quick Google search and looks good, a couple of points, I see from your link that you opted to change to a custom firmware, was is straight forward and why did you choose to do so. Also does it have a web ui or similar to setup or configure?

 

[chaseruk]

loading the custom firmware is easy,just put the fw on a usb stick,put the stick into the unit and power it on.the reason i use a custom fw is because there were a lot of bugs
in the original fw.The ollyp custom firmware is very similer to the original fw,except he has ironed out loads of bugs and added loads of cool features,YAMJ support being one of them.
there are a few dedicated forums 'futeko' being one of them.

 

[oneman]

For £150 you starting to get in to media stream PC territory which would be way more versatile and upgradable then any media player.

 

[liambalfour]

i have the wd media player, check that or the wd live for networking

 

[Nelly]

loading the custom firmware is easy,just put the fw on a usb stick,put the stick into the unit and power it on.the reason i use a custom fw is because there were a lot of bugs
in the original fw.The ollyp custom firmware is very similer to the original fw,except he has ironed out loads of bugs and added loads of cool features,YAMJ support being one of them.

there are a few dedicated forums 'futeko' being one of them.

Thanks for the extra information, this looks a good bit of kit and a great target to compare other suggestions against.

For £150 you starting to get in to media stream PC territory which would be way more versatile and upgradable then any media player.

This maybe correct but im looking for something at this moment that’s not going to take up a lot of my time, but for the thread please feel free to expand on your idea for others.

i have the wd media player, check that or the wd live for networking

Please expand, what do you like about it, what are the issues you have had with it, im hoping to collect peoples thoughts on what they have rather than the blub churned out by IT salesmen.

 

[ekwat]

It's not going to be the best route but for now I'm using a Raspberry Pi with raspbmc on it. Works with my NAS and plays 1080P no problem, though it won't play wmv. Using my Android phone and tablets as a control device.

I'm quite impressed so far but it's only a stop gap toy.

 

[oneman]

This maybe correct but im looking for something at this moment that’s not going to take up a lot of my time, but for the thread please feel free to expand on your idea for others.

Why would a media centre PC take up much of your time ?

How about this,

Acer Aspire Revo RL70 Nettop - Nettops | Ebuyer.com

£190 and it will quite happily run Win7. So if you are used to using a PC then its exactly the same.

The only thing missing is a wireless controller and there are loads of option. Of course being a PC you can do all the thing that a PC can like attaching cameras and phones. Basic game playing, web browsing, etc, etc. You can even it mount it behind the TV if you want it out of sight (though its not much bigger then a telephone directory).

 

[liambalfour]

as i said i have the wd media player, basically plug and play, stick a few Tb to it, it will play avi mp4 mkv everything i put on it. the live version was on hot deals have a read on amazon Western Digital TV Live Streaming Media Player: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories and here WD TV Live - £73 @ Amazon - Hot UK Deals

 

[Nelly]

Why would a media centre PC take up much of your time ?

How about this,

Acer Aspire Revo RL70 Nettop - Nettops | Ebuyer.com

£190 and it will quite happily run Win7. So if you are used to using a PC then its exactly the same.
The only thing missing is a wireless controller and there are loads of option. Of course being a PC you can do all the thing that a PC can like attaching cameras and phones. Basic game playing, web browsing, etc, etc. You can even it mount it behind the TV if you want it out of sight (though its not much bigger then a telephone directory).

At the moment I need what ever I pick to be plug and play (im having enough trouble getting my Qnap configured (lost all settings after one only week) at the moment) the pc option is going to need software install, additional connections and the like probably to get it how you would want it to finish up.

as i said i have the wd media player, basically plug and play, stick a few Tb to it, it will play avi mp4 mkv everything i put on it. the live version was on hot deals have a read on Amazon Western Digital TV Live Streaming Media Player: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories and here WD TV Live - £73 @ Amazon - Hot UK Deals

Looks good as a media streamer and a great price, for my own system I might have issues again due to the Qnap Nas (Bloody T3 reviews) according to the feed back on the Amazon page.

But thank you both for contributing to the post, please keep all opinions coming.

 

[Captin]

I was looking at the same thing earlier this year when my PS3 fan decided to start screaming after only being on 10 mins.

I looked at tons of media players to replace the PS3.

I decided not to go with a good brand name like WD or Sumvision. I decided to go with features vs cost.

I bought a Noontec V8 Nas media player. It costs £95 with no hard drive fitted. I already had a spare 1tb drive to put in it. It will work just fine with no hard drive too.

I does everything that all the other players do (even some at twice the price) plus lots more.

When plugged into the network it will find any shared folders on a NAS or PC. I have a PC with my music and Tv shows plus 2 NAS enclosures with films and music DVD's. The NAS enclosures do not need to do any transcoding as the Noontec takes care of all that.

It plays everything I've chucked at it from crappy vids shot on my phone to full 1080p blu-ray's with 7.1 Dolby True HD or DTS True HD surroundsound (providing you have the right amp). It plays all formats AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, 3GP, WMV etc..

It plays DVD ISO files with menu and Blu-Ray ISO files from the internal drive or over the network. Because of the gigabit network port there's plenty of bandwidth for streaming full Blu-Ray 50gb ISO files, providing you go through a gigabit hub and your pc has a gigabit network port.

It has a couple of USB ports so you can plug in an external hard drive or Wi-Fi dongle. Plus a USB 3 port to connect it to a PC with a USB 3 port for faster transfer. But I find sending things over the network to be fast enough. It also has an SD card slot.

It also supports playing 3D films on non-3D tv's by showing them in anaglyph format you need the old red/blue glasses though.

Because it's also a full NAS enclosure it you can use it for downloading and storage for your PC.

The built-in VOD and nTV is total crap though, but we only watch downloaded stuff and don't stream anything from the internet.

There are some bad reviews of Noontec products, but we've had this for a good few months now and apart from it locking up twice we've had no problems.

Noontec V8 NAS 1080p USB3 7.1 Dolby VoD nTV MKV- microdirect.co.uk

 

[tronads]

I have serveral devices in my gaff performing media player functionality for me.

In my back room I have a Asus Aspire Revo. This is bolted to the back of the TV so nicely out of sight. This is set up to dual boot into either XBMC Live, or whatever the Eden version of this is now called, and also to Windows 7. The default boot is XBMC, so it can be switched on by a single press, then after about 20-30 seconds , its onto the xmbc menu screen....therefore no messing with windows, or a mouse to click on the icon, or any of the loading times associated with it. I understand that some like to have the control of a PC, but I wanted a media player, not a PC, hence using the Live version of XBMC and not running XBMC on windows. I have a cheap 6 quid remote with a usb IR receiver that I have hidden away under the TV.

In the bedroom, I have a WDTV. Its the older version of the product, not the Live version, so films etc are played from USB devices attached to it. It does a nice job to be honest...the menu's are nice, and it plays most things....though I have to fix anything with compressed headers, which can be an irritation. Maybe the newer ones can handle those now though (probably).

In the main living room, I have 2 devices...mainly in use is the classic PopcornHour media player....which is just brilliant at either streaming or playing content on its own hard drive. Its main weakness is a less attractive and clunky menu system, particulary when streaming.
I also have a Samsung Bluray player which streams extremely well, and plays off USB devices, which includes NTfS storage (something the likes of the Sony's cannot do).

i also have a RaspberryPI with RaspBMC installed, but not yet had a play with it.

All these devices stream from my HP Prolaint Microserver which has about 6TB in it, getting more full than I would like.

All the devices have their pro's and con's....but I would say the Popcorn hour is my most used and favourite device.

 

[Nelly]

I was looking at the same thing earlier this year when my PS3 fan decided to start screaming after only being on 10 mins.

I looked at tons of media players to replace the PS3.

I decided not to go with a good brand name like WD or Sumvision. I decided to go with features vs cost.

I bought a Noontec V8 Nas media player. It costs £95 with no hard drive fitted. I already had a spare 1tb drive to put in it. It will work just fine with no hard drive too.


It also supports playing 3D films on non-3D tv's by showing them in anaglyph format you need the old red/blue glasses though.

There are some bad reviews of Noontec products, but we've had this for a good few months now and apart from it locking up twice we've had no problems.

Noontec V8 NAS 1080p USB3 7.1 Dolby VoD nTV MKV- microdirect.co.uk

Thank you for a review from a different angle, its these experiences that will add value to this discussion, had a quick scan at the link but I will have a proper look at this before deciding which way to go, this may just be the sort of thing i need.

I have serveral devices in my gaff performing media player functionality for me.

In my back room I have a Asus Aspire Revo.
I understand that some like to have the control of a PC, but I wanted a media player, not a PC, hence using the Live version of XBMC and not running XBMC on windows. I have a cheap 6 quid remote with a usb IR receiver that I have hidden away under the TV.

In the bedroom, I have a WDTV.....though I have to fix anything with compressed headers, which can be an irritation. Maybe the newer ones can handle those now though (probably).

In the main living room, I have 2 devices...mainly in use is the classic PopcornHour media player....which is just brilliant. Its main weakness is a less attractive and clunky menu system, particularly when streaming.

All the devices have their pro's and con's....but I would say the Popcorn hour is my most used and favorite device.

What sort of time did it take you to setup/configure the Revo and what software does it use for transcoding, will it handle all file types mkv, iso etc.
The wd live, if the header problem is sorted on the newer version would this then be your player of choice over the popcorn?
The popcorn hour is probably not for me by the looks of things but for others looking to start a new system this looks worth while, the main thing I need is a players ability to stream from networked storage, I have a couple of nas devices, one of which has a 5 1/2TB (raid5 for security) of storage and is set to become the main storage area for movies.

 

[Nelly]

Well thanks to those who took the time to add information to this thread and even more so to those who replied to quires, I raised the question as it was back in 2011 when people were last asked what they would recommend as a media player now.

I have made my choice and went for the Himedia based on versatility/ ease of setting up and support from forums. -- But I can give some instant feed back, the kit does play anything Ive tried, has lots of nice touches, to upgrade the firmware was a doddle and there are 2 custom firmwares out there (that Ive found) one of these has Yamj (but this is being a pain to get working, (not the players fault), so i have ended up again with more work than i needed) which looks really nice and more informative than the standard player app if you can get it working. As regards the forum support there is quite a bit, but a lot of threads do seem to go unanswered. One final note copying files over a network is painfully slow, i have tried several methods from Nas/ router/himedia player that are all supposed to be gigabit connections.

Hope this helps others out there who are looking to replace there ps3 media player!