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There are many comments regarding procs with HD video with 1080p support. Unfortunately, most of these do not come with DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD capability. A true multimedia box should have these capabilities and more. Take a good look at Sigma proc based multimedia players like the Popcorn Hour and you'll know what I mean.

I don't see why anyone would want to run XBMC on an Xbox in this day and age.

I see a lot of people using PS3/Xbox360 consoles, streamed from another high-performance computer over a gigabit LAN. I also don't get it. Get one of Popcorn Hour's awesome little players, it'll burn like, 8 watts, and play back anything.

Popcornhour http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=catalog is was ahead of the game. The model C200 networked media player will play back any file format and has provision for a local hard drive or blue ray drive.

The C-200 supports NFS, SMB, FTP, and multiple streaming protocols.

This looks like what I'd like -- do you ever have it play DVDs from ISOs over SMB shares, and does it do it OK without barfing/freezing/etc?

Another option you might want to look at is Patriot's $99 Box Office Media Player. I don't have one, but I just read about it in Anandtech's new Apple TV review as an alternative that "will play virtually everything you have, regardless of container or format."

The specs page lists support for UPnP streaming and "[MPEG-2] MPG/MPEG/VOB/ISO/TS/TP/M2TS", but this avsforum post indicates it might meet your needs. From the post:

• "Will not see any of my .iso or .mkv when using the UPnP feature, but sees all when using the "NET" feature (SMB share)."
• "Handles DVD .iso very well, menu functionality is retained for those that have it."

GoogleTV and AppleTV are low end devices that do not play back all file formats.

Popcornhour http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=catalog is was ahead of the game. The model C200 networked media player will play back any file format and has provision for a local hard drive or blue ray drive.

The C-200 supports NFS, SMB, FTP, and multiple streaming protocols. It also has a built in bit torrent client for media downloads.

I've had mine for a year and am very satisfied. It probably won't work with iTunes, but then, I'm not in to proprietary formats that cost money and are infected with DRM.

+1 for Popcorn Hour. They make very good media streamer with great community support and add-ons.

I use the following setup:

Popcorn Hour A-110 hooked to wired ethernet
Kroozbox for TV user interface
Personal Video Database for video database management

The way it works is I put a video file on a Samba share and run PVD from my desktop. PVD scans the share, finds the new video file(s), and populates the database with information from IMDB and posters from Amazon. Kroozbox runs on my Linux server and uses the PVD database to display the movie library information in a friendly way on the screen. The whole thing was a little tricky to initially configure but works very well. Everyone in the house was able to immediately browse and use the video library without any training (we're talking ESL grandparents here).

I also have a WD TV Live which is decent but the interface isn't nearly as good as the setup I described above.

PopcornHour Network Media Tanks ! We own two and LOVE 'em. Xvid, mkv, iso, vob etc. Up to 1080p.

No transcoding but it plays close to all formats

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

Popcorn Hour products are great. I've got an A-110 NMT, draws 6 watts w/out a hard drive (plays HD media from a fileserver), utterly silent
Alternately, if you don't need local storage, then the Popbox will likely do the trick.

While the XBMC still had a better interface, once I started playing more 720 and 1080p videos I bought a Popcorn hour.

There is a pretty active support base and it is pretty easily to customize it, but the options are still limited compared to what you could do with XBMC. But if your main use of XBMC was to play videos and now you want to play HD, a popcorn hour or similar device does it pretty well for $200.

Nothing beats a: Popcorn Hour device. It integrates into your home network and is great for getting media off of your PCs to your TV - wherever your network is it is. It doesn't handle DRM well but hey if your files are DRM'd your doing it wrong ;) It is a Linux device that integrates fine with Windows stuff that is what it is meant for but being Linux it also handles all your Linux systems, it supports NFS and even has Linux versions of the media servers to run on your Linux box.

You want a Popcorn Hour. I've had one for two years now, and I get a chubby just thinking about it. This thing plays anything. I honestly don't know how I ever did without one. I haven't watched a preview or FBI warning in months. Seriously. Check it out.

If this works as well as their spinoff Popcornhour Network Media Tank systems it will(?) be a success. We own two Popcornhours with a 3rd (C-200) coming soon. Great for xvid, x264, DVD ISOs, etc up to 1080p.

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Does anybody know about HD support, I know it has it but curious if it's limited to only 720p like the AppleTV or if it will display 1080i/p.

And is there anything to stop me from installing XBMC on there. (I doubt there is but I'm not a big fan of boxee)

I was looking for a high definition media player and ended up purchasing a Popcornhour Model C200 networked media player after ruling out Apple TV. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

The C200 accommodates 1 or 2 internal hard drives and has a 3.5" bay for a Blue Ray or DVD player as well. 1080P playback is not a problem. There are very few file formats that won't work with this player.

Here are the C200 technical specifications: http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=productspec&item_id=12

Does anybody know about HD support, I know it has it but curious if it's limited to only 720p like the AppleTV or if it will display 1080i/p.

And is there anything to stop me from installing XBMC on there. (I doubt there is but I'm not a big fan of boxee)

I was looking for a high definition media player and ended up purchasing a Popcornhour Model C200 networked media player after ruling out Apple TV. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

The C200 accommodates 1 or 2 internal hard drives and has a 3.5" bay for a Blue Ray or DVD player as well. 1080P playback is not a problem. There are very few file formats that won't work with this player.

Here are the C200 technical specifications: http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=productspec&item_id=12

We've used FreeNAS at home to feed our PopcornHour NMTs. The ZFS implementation works very well for what we use it for (6x750GB and 6x1.5TB drives in RAIDZ)

Now that 0.7 appears to be the last version based on FreeBSD that means ZFS will disappear with the migration to Linux. No, ZFS on FUSE is not an option; too many layers of abstraction for my liking.

Guess the next upgrade will be to native FreeBSD or OpenSolaris. ZFS is so damn great I'm using the filesystem to decide my next server OS.

Just sell it and use the money to get a real Set Top media player...
http://www.popcornhour.com/

Sell it, and buy a popcorn hour. Simple. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/ With that said, I have a 360 and the netflix streaming is very very nice, but no substitute for a popcorn hour and torrents.

Save your money on subscriptions.

Just get a no-frills (but decent) HDTV then pick up a PopcornHour Network Media Tank. Plays xvid, DVD ISO, x.264, etc up to 1080p.

First, I'd also like it to work without a full computer. I'm currently trying to transition away from a PC driving my TV to a NMT:
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

Secondly, I think there is the market for non locked content. DVD - you can pretty much play it on anything that says DVD on it, and many things that don't. iTunes doesn't cut it, but I recently tried Amazon's mp3 service, and that's what I like in UI and interface. It didn't care I'm using Opera. It didn't care I'm going to play it via Winamp and on my Creative Zen Vision from several years ago. And I could use my credit card already in there without needing to use some obscure payment system or join yet another service. That's nice.

I could see show subscriptions at reasonable prices however for no ads in your TV shows...

If you're mostly interested in a set-top box for HD video, why not save a few hundred and get something specialized for that.

If you don't want DIY and something non-geek friendly for ~$200 check out the popcornhour network media tanks. Streams from a server or user-installed hard disk. Plays x264, divx, xvid, wmv, etc all at up to 1080p.

We own two and just love them.

Why burn a copy? You can just rip & re-encode it (x264) to an MKV-file on an (external) harddrive, and play it using popcorn hour or similar. That way you can also take your movie collection with you when you visit friends.

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

low wattage CPU - check
1080p hardware decoding - check
flash, network & optional HDD - check
LPCM - don't know
power - 36W

Not quite there but close. The only downsides are the remote with a bajilion buttons and a dead-brain UI

You can play files in the Matroska container on any platform that mplayer supports

Which of those platforms might be a set-top box or portable player sold in stores in North America?

As for AVI, how well does it support multiple video tracks? Multiple audio tracks?

AVI supports up to 256 audio streams and apparently even multiple video streams.

Soft subtitles?

A lone AVI file may not support subtitles, but the players do.

Chapters?

Pinocchio_01.avi, Pinocchio_02.avi, Pinocchio_03.avi... add all to playlist.

you can play Matroska files on the popular Popcorn Hour set-top box

Where can I buy one in North America?

and on the COWON A3

Where can I buy one with cash?

I, too, laughed out loud at the Matroska => Windows disinformation, along with the "AVI is not flawed" posting above. Then there's the "no one supports Matroska in hardware" meme.

1) You can play files in the Matroska container on any platform that mplayer supports, and that's quite a few. But like the poster above me, maybe I was hallucinating when I watched those files on my Fedora box. The xine engine also supports Matroska. Have a file in the Matroska container with H.264 encoding, soft subtitles, and multiple audio tracks that you want to watch in Windows? Just install the CCCP. VLC isn't a bad alternative either, though it's just now catching up to mplayer with support for ASS subtitles.

2) As for AVI, how well does it support multiple video tracks? Multiple audio tracks? Soft subtitles? Chapters? You may not care about features like these, but I assure you there are many people who do.

3) As for hardware devices, aside from the support for cell phones/PDAs already mentioned, you can play Matroska files on the popular Popcorn Hour set-top box and on the COWON A3 portable media player.

I suppose it's naive to think that any open format like Matroska can possibly compete against ones that come from Redmond and its partners in big media. A couple of years ago I might have agreed with that statement, but the arrival of hardware-based Matroska players tells me the format might stand a chance. Revulsion at DRM might play a role here, too.

We all know how badly competing against closed platforms from Redmond turned out for Linux.

I have 2 Popcornhour Network Mediatanks feeding off a 1.98 TB RAID 5 server I have. Plays up to 1080p and all the mkv/x.264 you can throw at it. Even plays xvid, DVD ISOs etc etc.
The best $180 I ever spent on AV equipment.

From that uname output, it sounds like it might be a Sigma Designs chip, perhaps 8634? Sigma Designs themselves do ship their modified source code to the GPL parts: Busybox, kernel, etc., to downstream product developers. (Let us ignore the "binary driver includes blob of opaque code wrapped in simple kernel ioctls" issue).

That source includes a note to the effect that they confirm it is covered by the GPL.

Therefore, the product developers (possibly Minerva) should have no difficulty passing it on to you.

See Popcorn Hour for another company who are possibly using the same chip, and might be more helpful about providing that code - if only to prove to Minerva that it is possible.

What are these made-in-China products you have that were tested first? :-)

will there REALLY be accel HD video support?

hell, even on windows xp nvidia (piss be upon them) has not released accelerated video drivers for their year-old 8series cards!

I was one of the suckers who bought an 8-series thinking the 'hardware accel' onboard would finally solve my HD playback tearing issues. nvidia is infamous for video stutter and tearing unless you use 'magical commercial' dvd playback programs. the regular free ones don't seem to have the magic and the magic is NOT in the xp driver, that's for sure. and there's no way in hell I'm going to convert to vista just to get their new driver support. so basically, I have a 'fast frame buffer' in the 8series card but there's a whole lot of hardware that is sitting idle due to their 'push' to vista and how they want to force the DRM of vista on people.

ATI was worse; but maybe things have changed? I simply want to have glitch-free playback of HD sources on some kind of video card and NOT be locked into vista or commercial players.

but for now, I've settled on the popcorn hour box. it Just Plain Works(tm), is fanless and does NOT care about which OS you use to serve networked files to it.

Check out Popcornhour.com. They have a streaming media box for US$179 which plays almost everything: xvid, x264 (.mkv), dvd ISO images, etc. at up to 1080p.
I'm not related to the company, just a very happy owner of 2 of these devices.

The nutshell version. If you're mad at Vista for including HDCP support -- Leopard, the PS3, or any HD-DVD or BluRay player on the market has it as well. Get pissed at the entire industry or don't bother getting pissed at all.

My PopcornHour Network Media Tank doesn't have any copy protection and I can play x264 720p/1080p HD-DVD & BluRay rips, xvid, divx, dvd ISOs, et al. just fine.

I have no idea how people got suckered into buying one of the two formats with no clear cut winner.

When I was buying my Xbox 360 at BestBuy it was some special where they included a 'flippy' disc of 300, one side DVD the other HDDVD. SalesDrone told me that I really needed to buy the HDDVD add-on drive to see 300 in HD. I said that I already had an x264 720p rip of it already and was waiting for my Popcorn Hour Network Media Tank to arrive. Also told him I didn't need a fancy warranty as I was going to solder in the mod chip once I got home and the warranty would be void by the end of the day anyhow. It wasn't a good day for that lad.

You're right about being suckered, though. I had thought about it for a fleeting moment but common sense prevailed.

Get one of these PopcornHour Networked Media Tanks. Plays up to 1080p and even supports mkv containers with x264 encoding. Only US$180.