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

Posted by timothy on Saturday April 7, 2012 @09:37AM from the many-have-tried dept.

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?

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Re:The easy way by Keruo · 2012-04-07 10:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

XBMC
Combine this with AppleTV, it's only $99, and you have somewhat sane system.
It comes with remote already so one less extra step to tinker on.

Your question is about media and entertainment. Are you entertained by tinkering stuff or consuming entertainment generated by others?

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