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DVB-T STB/MPEG2 Player That Can Access SMB Shares
feanor writes "Siemens is realeasing beginning of November the Gigaset M740 AV (German text). This is a DVB-T set-top-box that can access SMB shares either via ethernet or WLAN and store its MPEG2 compliant streams. Alternatively it can be used as an MPEG2 streaming client. Other cool features include the ability to hook-up standard USB hard-drives as storage, a dual tuner architecture and a very cool design."
English translation
I recently bought the D-Link DSM-320, which isn't a tuner, but allows you to play movies and music as well as view images from your computer, onto your TV via ethernet or 802.11b/g.
It doesn't use SMB shares, however. You run a server app on your Windows machine and tell it the directories you want to share.
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with it so far. The biggest problem is that using the wireless, a lot of movies don't have sound. From what I have read, this is a bandwidth issue and should go away if I go with wired ethernet, but I haven't tried that yet.
It also has a number of small usability issues. It doesn't respond to the remote control very well and you need pretty direct aim and also need to sometimes press a button multiple times. It sometimes hangs and responds late to button presses, so you end up hitting a button over and over again thinking it's not getting it, only to get all the button hits several seconds later.
On the other hand, the system allows for automatic firmware upgrades (which it did the first time I connected) and it appears to have improved significantly from earlier versions, so I'm hoping it will continue to improve. I considered taking it back, but I'm going to hold onto it and just hope that the firmware upgrades will eventually remedy most of these problems.
It's nice to see more of these types of devices coming out. My real goal is to build a MythTV box because I think that's going to be more of what I'm looking for. I have a DirectTV receiver with TiVo and the TiVo is great with the exception that I can't store the movies offline and I can't access my substantial collection of TV shows from my computer with it. So I think at this point MythTV is the only way to go.
Here's a simple summary. DVB is the digital broadcasting standard used in Europe (and some other places, like Australia). DVB-T is the variant used for "T"errestrial broadcasts; DVB is also used for digital satellite (DVB-S) and cable (DVB-C). Many European countries have started doing DVB-T broadcasts, with the intention of eventually eliminating analogue transmission. There are many DVB-T set-top boxes on the market, as well as televisions with built-in DVB-T tuners. DVB-T PVRs have also started to appear. This box is sort of half-of-a-PVR. Instead of using its own internal storage, it uses an SMB share or a USB hard drive. Clever - this should reduce the price. The point of using MPEG-2 is that this is DVB's native video format. This box is not doing any encoding whatever; it's just saving a copy of the stream as it comes in from the aerial. The box only needs to be able to decode - this, too, should keep the price down.
DVB = Digital Video Broadcast
ATSC = Advanced Television Systems Committee