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All Forums > Tech Talk > Tech Talk Forum Page 13 > media player boxes
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zambi
Senior Member

1451 Posts
3/10
Posted - May 22 2013 : 9:22PM

Which media player boxes do you use?
I have been using a WDTV Live Hub box. Its pretty good. Sometimes it has trouble playing particular .wmv or .avi files which probably need to be re-encoded. But in general it plays just about every file format I have. What I really like is that it can play my ripped DVD collection with support for navigating the menus just like a DVD player. But nowadays even VLC Player can do that. I think it also supports blu-ray rips. The internal drive is only 1TB. Would be nice if it has a real browser like Chrome. Playing Youtube videos thru their appp is clunky. Would be even better if you could write Android apps for it.
Having said that I noticed a bunch of new media player STBs are coming that do run Android. Most of them seem to be coming from China vendors so they probably won't have Google apps package installed but that's not a show stopper. This site has good list of media players and feature list:
latest media player boxes
I noticed lot of people using Roku boxes now but those seem more geared towards streaming video services not playing local content from hard drive.

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DarkDeveloper
Member

57 Posts
6/10
Posted - May 23 2013 : 4:00PM
Hi Zambi,
I like these media boxes (they are relatively compact and have a high WAF (Wife Approval Factor))
But, as your experience with the odd .wmv / .avi shows, they are not quite as flexible as a dedicated (HTPC) PC doing the job.
Yes, these HTPC's are large and clunky (unless you are using a Mini-Itx based PC), but they never fail to playback videos.
I've played around with XBMC several times, and although i like the plugins available (i.e. web browser, MAME Arcade Emulator), sometimes you can't beat the real Chrome browser (for browsing) or the original MAME software (for Retro game playing)
Of course, they can be fiddly to build, so that they are quiet and blend in (appearance wise) with the rest of the AV gear in your living room, but that's the price of flexibility I guess!
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Hardware All-Star Supporter
All-Star Member

Your other left
14594 Posts
3/02
Posted - May 23 2013 : 5:36PM
I tried the home theater PC route a few years ago but found it to be clunky in comparison to dedicated boxes. Plus, I wanted full-screen video and a controller that was in line with what DVD players have accustomed me to. So, I got a WDTV box, then replace it with the 'Live' version when it died.
I use DVD Decrypter to extract desired scenes from my DVD collection. Actually, it extracts chapters, which don't always coincide with the scenes. At any rate, Handbrake converts each file into computer format, usually mp4, but not always, and Avidemux re-merges files when necessary.
Avidemux does some basic edits, so I can usually remove the 'hanging chapter breaks' and other useless bits. It has handled VOB files just fine to date, but isn't as reliable working with computer-formatted files.
Hopefully, that's not too much information.
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zambi
Senior Member

1451 Posts
3/10
Posted - May 30 2013 : 3:06AM
Yeah using a PC is way too clumsy. The WDTV Live Hub box is very small, about 1/3rd the size of my new Panasonic BluRay player and it has full set of ports (i.e. HDMI, composite, component, ...). And the new generation of STBs are even smaller because they remove the internal hard drive and they only have HDMI ports now.
XBMC is available as an Android app now. That's another reason to use Android platform for these STBs now instead of something else. You want platform that allows you to add features thru apps or plugins. For example, WDTV Live Hub can automatically lookup info for movie files you have based on the title. It also downloads thumbnail images of the boxcovers. Unfortunately this feature doesn't work for adult movies. With Android you could do an app that provides this feature for adult movies. It could pull movie title info from IAFD database. Using that info you could do some cool searches like ... find all the video files or movies in my collection featuring a particular pornstar.
I thought you could use Handbrake to extract scenes from DVD or video file? I haven't tried Handbrake yet myself so I don't know. If you have the money to spend Camtasia is another option. Camtasia can convert and edit video files. But it is definitely not cheap at $300!!!
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Hardware All-Star Supporter
All-Star Member

Your other left
14594 Posts
3/02
Posted - May 30 2013 : 9:45AM
The latest Handbrake can extract video by chapters (not sure the earlier version I was using could), but part of my archiving strategy is to extract each scene's VOB files onto 'master' disks and work with those.
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Bill All-Star Supporter
All-Star Member

5334 Posts
6/00
Posted - May 30 2013 : 9:35PM
If you use DVD Shrink, you can copy individual scenes to their own title within a DVD folder on your hard drive. Then you can use Handbrake to convert each of the scenes to .mp4's.
The nice thing about this methodology is that you can very quickly set the start & end point of each scene within 1/2 second, which works great when a scene doesn't start or end at a chapter break. When you open the DVD folder in Handbrake, each scene will show up as it's own individual title. You can load each title to the Handbrake Queue, start the encode process and let Handbrake convert all of the titles (scenes) unattended. You can even convert scenes from multiple discs in one unattended Handbrake session.
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