Ask Slashdot: How To Make My Own Hardware Multimedia Player?

An anonymous reader writes "I was looking at multimedia players from brands such as SumVision, Noontec and Western Digital. They all seem to be some device which accepts a USB hard-drive and commands from an IR remote control, and throws the result over HDMI. I have my own idea of what a hardware multimedia player should do (e.g. a personalized library screen for episodes, movies and documentaries; resume play; loudness control; etc.). I also think it will a good programming adventure because I will have to make the player compatible with more than a few popular codecs. Is this an FPGA arena? Or a mini-linux tv-box? Any advice, books or starting point to suggest?" There certainly have been a lot of products and projects in this domain over the years, but what's the best place to start in the year 2012?

Comments

The easy way

[Anonymous Coward]

XBMC

Re:The easy way

[NFN_NLN]

This story only has 2 comments right now. One recommending XBMC and another recommending RaspberryPi.
Correct on both counts. I don't think you need to reinvent the wheel on this...

Also, "USB hard-drive"? Do you really want to transfer media to a drive? Build a home NAS and stream everything to the media player. The media player should be small and quiet. There is no need for an HDD.

Re:The easy way

[spire3661]

Even with the best of tools and setups, pure streaming is not always an option. My synology NAS barfs on .mp4s sometimes. Flat out, dont use DLNA, it sucks, it has always sucked, it will always suck. Streaming is great, but it still not a universal thing that always works unless you very tightly control the media you feed into the system. You got things like the netatalk devs playing games, Apple messing around, its still complicated. LOVE my synology NAS, but DLNA sucks donkey dick. Im typing this as im waiting for handbrake to finish another pass trying to find the optimal format/size for xbox, android (nook color, hrdwre lmtd) and iOS.

Re:The easy way

[PNutts]

DLNA sucks donkey dick.

Hey, slow down. We're talking about building it, not what we're going to watch on it. But since you brought it up is it available on Blu -ray?

Re:The easy way

[lightknight]

Indeed. For some odd reason, people have such an aversion to just buying a PC, and hooking it up to the TV. People who will buy MP4-capable DVD players, who will spend hours re-encoding things so that they can watch it on the screen 20 feet from their PC. They all want appliances, for some odd reason, even though the decoding (let alone the encoding) of most popular items requires a rather powerful (by most PC OEM standards) machine. I'm starting to think it's almost racist bias towards having a 'PC' machine in the living room (nevermind the X-Box, Wii, and PS3), like they're trying to win a bet with someone, but can't admit they lost it years ago.

$800 for an appliance that cannot decode half the formats you have encountered, and will not decode the more-CPU / GPU intensive ones coming out later this year? Hell yeah, hook that up to the TV. Even has a 20GB hard drive, imagine that.

$800 for a PC with stereo out and HDMI, that can decode anything you throw at it? With a 2 TB hard drive? Why would I want that?

Why does the populace seem to treat machines like lepers?

You seem to have a realistic idea, at least

[damn_registrars]

The quote of

I also think it will a good programming adventure

Indicates that at least you have some sense of what it will take to do this and what the end result may (or may not) end up like. Too many people would go into a project like this with the idea of saving money (doesn't work) or making something that is better than mass market version s and usable by others in the household (no real chance of that).

But if you're looking for an adventure, this may be a good choice for you.