Media Centres

D

Dr Who

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Hi

Does anyone have advice on which media centre's are the best at the moment? I currently have an older IOMEGA 500gb media centre which works perfectly except for the following issues:

1) IT IS ONLY DEPENDENT ON THE REMOTE, this is a worry as who knows how long those last.
2) It does not Play H.264 type files

So now that I am in the market for a second device for second TV and as I am running out of space on that one. Which model is the best? Are there any ones which can be operated from the console etc?

Thanks
 
i have the mede8er. It's played everything i've thrown at it. And best of all you can add whatever size of HDD you like up to 2TB, and has usb port for external drives, so basically you can have a 4TB. Buy the one without the hard drive and just buy a hard drive seperately.
And oh, it has all the controls on the player itself so if your remote dies you can still fully run it.
 
Have a look at the Mede8er. You can put up to a 2TB drive into it and add external drives via the usb ports. I know someone who has 2TB internally and two 1TB drives he plugs in via usb. It also plays almost every format. I only have problems with wmf every now and then. (usually the ones I downloaded from youtube.. )
 
Vega said:
i have the mede8er. It's played everything i've thrown at it. And best of all you can add whatever size of HDD you like up to 2TB, and has usb port for external drives, so basically you can have a 4TB. Buy the one without the hard drive and just buy a hard drive seperately.
And oh, it has all the controls on the player itself so if your remote dies you can still fully run it.
Click to expand...

Jinx :)
 
Probably between Mede8er, Popcorn Hour and Radeon

I have the Mede8er and am very, very happy with it. I don't even have a hard drive in it, I stream everything via Samba (HD content included)
 
Get a mede8tor from Esquire. They have excellent prices and they'll have cheap HDD's to put in it.
 
am i speaking to a "dom" sales consultant, or is this correct:

Roberts says: and last thing... does mede8er serve as a media server as well? so my PS3 can access the content on the med8er?
Arnout says:let me find out for you
Arnout says:it seems it is not currently able to do that
Click to expand...

*** this was a chat with their online sales consultant
 
Polemus said:
am i speaking to a "dom" sales consultant, or is this correct:

*** this was a chat with their online sales consultant
Click to expand...

He is correct: Mede8er is a Media Player, not a Media Server. For your PS3 to be able to play media from alternative sources, you usually need a DLNA compliant Upnp Media Server -- If you really want to, have a look at the PS3 Media Server (Software) -- This is a Java package that can run on almost any platform, which your PS3 will pick up and use as media source. http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

I believe the new Windows Media Player has similar functionality.

I used this for quite a while with different results -- In the end I replaced them both with the Mede8er.

Personal opinion: The only reason I would still go via that route is that I believe the PS3 does a better job at upscaling content to HD quality than for example, the Mede8er. Not much better, but better.
 
bin3 said:
He is correct: Mede8er is a Media Player, not a Media Server. For your PS3 to be able to play media from alternative sources, you usually need a DLNA compliant Upnp Media Server -- If you really want to, have a look at the PS3 Media Server (Software) -- This is a Java package that can run on almost any platform, which your PS3 will pick up and use as media source. http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/
Click to expand...

in that case popcorn hour would be the better option
 
I guess this relay depends on how inter-connected he wants to be. If he wants it linked to his pc/ps3 he would have to do some mingling. But if he just wants it with a hdd with media on it, and copying/moving files to and from pc, its a simple networ that needs to be set up.
And yes the mede8er doesn't upscale as good as the ps3, but i think its more convenient, especially when coming to play different file formats. I have the ps3 as well and it is a waste of electricity having you pc running to stream movies, when u can have one device that does it for you. Also if you file is in excelent HD format, you don't really need the upscaling function.
 
bin3 said:
Probably between Mede8er, Popcorn Hour and Radeon

I have the Mede8er and am very, very happy with it. I don't even have a hard drive in it, I stream everything via Samba (HD content included)
Click to expand...

I have the popecorn hour, its really awesome, BUT, no remote = no functionality :-(
 
Well; yes - you can use your network to copy files to and from the Mede8er. Thing is, the PS3, afaik, can not link directly to a Samba share -- It requires a UPNP Media Server, which the Mede8er does not have.

The Mede8er can mount Samba and NFS shares, and that's one reason I really like it: I have a linux file server using a LVM disk array so I can share quite a huge amount of media without having to worry too much about disk space. Think I'm up to about 4 TB now, and I still have one drive dormant in the LVM.
 
Why would anyone go out and buy a dedicated media player if you already have a ps3 though? Secondly, why would you want to buy a media player to act as a media server for another media player :confused:
 
robdutchmonkey said:
Why would anyone go out and buy a dedicated media player if you already have a ps3 though? Secondly, why would you want to buy a media player to act as a media server for another media player :confused:
Click to expand...

1. I used to ask the same question. I streamed everything thru my ps3. I thought it was perfect. Then I bought a Mede8er for my Mother in law. Plugged it into my tv to set it up and see how it worked. That was about a year ago. Its still there. I use it every night. Its just simpler and it just works. No remuxing mkv's or avi files. No PMS just dropping off the network halfway thru a movie.

2. So that you can access the media on it from the bedroom silly. (Duh! :D)
 
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