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A Cheap and Easy Network Digital Media Player?

Posted by Cliff on from the so-easy-your-cat-can-use-it dept.

hethatishere asks: "Does such a thing exist? Better yet, is it easy enough for my parents to use? PRISMIQ seems to offer a pretty good one, but it has very limited codec support. D-Link also offers a wireless Media player, but it too struggles with the copious number of codecs available. So is there a cheap and affordable Wireless Networked Media Player, that supports most if not all common and advanced codecs (DivX, XviD, and various wrappers like MKV and OGG, etc), or is this still a pipe dream?"

7 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. MediaMVP by Jjeff1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I hear the MediaMVP from hauppauge is really nice, especially for 99$ US. A friend of mine has one and streams all his movies from a PC in his house. It does music, video (including divx) and stills. You can skin the interface if you don't like the canned one.
    On the downside, it requires you to install software on your PC, which I think is windows only, don't know if there is a OSS server yet for it. Also, if you intend to watch divx movies, you'll need a 1.8 Ghz CPU or better. Apparently the box is some type of VNC client, and the software turns your PC into a VNC server.

    1. Re:MediaMVP by rusty0101 · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are instructions for how to get it running as a front end for MythTV.

      First up is to set up a tftp server on your dhcp server. You might be able to do this with software for a Linksys 54g firewall/router, but you would probably be better off running both on a dedicated server behind your firewall, rather than on it.

      On the server you will need to have available the appropriate client image for the MVP to load up. That includes pre-configuring that image with the information on how to connect to your MythTV back end. There are instructions at http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=MediaM VP_LinuxHOWTO for anyone really interested.

      Enjoy.

      ~Rusty

      --
      You never know...
    2. Re:MediaMVP by enrico_suave · · Score: 2, Informative

      The mediamvp is pretty cool... I believe there's a lot of MediaMVP linux hacking at SHSpvr forum

      It playsback primarily mpeg2 but there are little transcode on the fly utilities that allow it to push divx/etc through it's mpeg2 decoder.

      howto use MediaMVP, PVR250, GBPVR make cheap/easy PVR

      There are "client" replacments for SageTV and GBPVR that allow you to extend the full functionality of your PC PVR to these little quiet clients over your wired network (a wireless version is in the works... some wireless bridge gateway shennagins are possible depending on the quality of your link/bitrate/quality)

      e.

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      Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
  2. xbox of course! by sycotic · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not so sure it is the cheapest solution, but it sure is the most flexible!

    An xbox coupled with xbmc (xbox media center) is the shizznizzle!

    URL: http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/

    (I just _know_ that any geek thats used xbmc will concur)

    --
    -- If I were a fish, I'd be wet
    1. Re:xbox of course! by Jherico · · Score: 2, Informative

      I concur. The XMBC app plays just about everything I throw at it, with the exception of some of the newer QuickTime codecs. The only downside I've had is that the XBox isn't powerful enough to render anything higher than 720p and sometimes not even that. I've got a number of movies that are encoded in HD and the XBox will sometimes stutter while rendering them during action scenes or if there's too much motion on the screen. You can also set up XBMC to play itunes media streamed from an itunes server somewhere on the net.

      --

      Jherico

      What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"

  3. VLC by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.videolan.org/

    --
    Pretty Pictures!
  4. Re:Squeeze Box by spagetti_code · · Score: 2, Informative

    I totally agree. I have been down the Netgear MP101 and can I say that the box is a big load of rubbish. It continually skips. Netgear keep releasing patches, and keep saying "on the next release we promise to fix streaming problems" (see here). But they dont (at least not yet).

    I tried using their own software - XP based. rubbish. I tried the twonkyvision server. Nope.

    There's lots of unhappy MP101 users out there.

    Then I bought a squeezebox. What a joy. The server runs on anything (perl). The box is reliable, quick, slick. The boxes can be controlled from the server (turn on, change look etc). The boxes are *really* easy to configure. I have my music on the mythbox which streams it to my stereo and PC. I have squeezeboxen in the bedroom and garage.

    My advice - dont waste time with the cheap crap. The extra few dollars for a squeezebox is worth it .