Media Centres & Players

derrilex

Roll on technology - as long as its gets proportionally easier to use and much cheaper, which I doubt 😃

Kelsey

It totally is tho. I spent $5500 on my first bottom of the line Mac laptop 12 years ago, the horsepower you can now get for a fifth that price is ridiculous. The AppleTV is great value for $129 and the Rasberry PI is just ludicrous at $25. iOS devices are super simple to use and the iPad is cheaper with the new model - and for most general purpose tasks I prefer that to my desktop. If I didn't think I'd need photoshop, I would've used it as my sole work device on a recent Sydney trip. Xbmc can be tricky to setup, but there a projects out there with the aim of making it easier. My media centre cost me about $200 to build three years ago - these days I think I could do it for $75.

derrilex

Fair call Kelsey. It is pretty cheap these days eh. The user freindliness aspect I'm not so sure about though ;D , maybe thats just me. I long for the day when I only have a screen and 1 box of tricks, 1 remote and 1 cable between the two that set up does everything known to man. Its pretty bad when you have to write a 3 page booklet on how to use the TV for the house sitter, or heaven forbid my parents. :rofl:

Brett_H

DX that's an easy one and a cheapie too but will take a little setting up. Get a universal remote that works with MMC or XBMC. I used a Logitech before getting media kb's. I used to have two logitechs, one for me and one for guests. The guest one was a $25 eBay cheapie Thad did 'watch tv,' 'watch DVD' etc. I have children and a life these days so the setup maintenance time for this is not worth the hassle currently.

UNM

I formally throw down the gauntlet

Kelsey wrote:

My media centre cost me about $200 to build three years ago - these days I think I could do it for $75.

Get me a shopping list of what I need and I'll make me a $75 media centre. Has to be currently available items. Is raspberry.pi actually available? Thought it was still limited production and over subscribed. Should be fun. Even though I can't really spare the time, I know I'll learn something.

Kelsey

My apologies UNM, I thought the Pi was available, hence that price point. When it is tho: $54 for vB, delivered to Australia. $15 for a case, delivered to Australia. $5 for a cheap HDML cable A spare USB stick or SD card. Controlled by the XBMC app for iPhone or Android.

derrilex

I tell ya, sometimes its just easier ( and nicer ) to look out the window and watch life.

derrilex

Yours or mine ? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

ash

Unfortunately no wife for me to sit back and admire here - hence I'll continue my next project before starting to save for the inevitiable upgraditis! Back to topic, does anyone have any experience with other OS/alternatives to W7 media centre? I'm getting a larger enough SSD to dual boot with windows7 (The comfort blanket fall back while learning a new system) with the idea of partioning it to learn about other options. The only problem to me seems that the various *nix systems are overly geeky and not ready for the slightly geekier members of joe public????

Kelsey

Installing XBMC has been pretty easy for a while now. A couple of years ago there was a guy making a self-installer that made the steps stupidly easy, but unfortunately health issues caused him to drop the project. However in the meantime, more than a few options have sprung up to take its place. This one looks particularly good: http://openelec.tv/ They've even got a hardware compatibility checker. Next time I build a media centre, I'll likely use this version of XBMC.

ash

Thanks for that Kelsey - much appreciated. I'll give this one a try when I get around to building my system, hopefully over the next 7-8 weeks, pay permitting! 🙁

UNM

Kelsey wrote:

My apologies UNM, I thought the Pi was available, hence that price point. When it is tho: $54 for vB, delivered to Australia. $15 for a case, delivered to Australia. $5 for a cheap HDML cable A spare USB stick or SD card. Controlled by the XBMC app for iPhone or Android.

OK, so Raspberry pi not a goer right now, but in the mix for future use. Meantime: HDML? I assume HDMI was what you meant. Got a couple lying around. Spare USB - only got 2GB, so not much of a media centre, but enough for proof of concept. Spare laptop on the other hand - got a Satellite 2410 which MAY or MAY NOT be powerful enough to run XBMC. It does have an IR port and firewire (not sure if that will be useful or not, but at least one of our PVRs supports firewire. Was thinking of an XBMC live install, but as the laptop doesn't have USB boot, that wont work. Will try that openelec.tv link tomorrow when our internet connection goes back to full speed. Right now even browsing crema is painfully slow. Another alternative would be the Dell notebook with XBMC live as it does support USB boot. Trouble is prising it away from number 2 daughter.

Kelsey

Yep - HDMI, the perils of foruming on a mobile device! You can also get some pretty good prebuilt options these days - the Zotac range, for example. Most of these run to under a couple of hundred.

UNM

Tried openelec last night. Really easy and quick to install. Just as well because it doesn't work on my hardware (hp dc7100). The generic build hangs after a few secs idle time or when setting up some things like screen saver. The intel build allegedly for my integrated graphics crashes. Ho hum, off to find a full xbmc build.

Kelsey

That's a shame UNM, XMBC for Linux can be a little bit finicky about hardware requirements. At the time I just wound up buying hardware I knew to be compatible with LIVE and went with that.

UNM

So what do people think about this? http://www.estore.com.au/Android_TV_Box_RDM0044.aspx Looks interesting for the price.

Brett_H

UNM wrote:

So what do people think about this? http://www.estore.com.au/Android_TV_Box_RDM0044.aspx Looks interesting for the price.

That's a serious amount of potential for the dollars!! Nice find. :thumb: P.s love ya footer!

Koffee_Kosmo

I was contemplating these offerings from Kogan - http://www.kogan.com/au/shop/televisions/smart-tv/ Purely for Internet TV and to play stored shows from a hard drive KK

UNM

I finally bought an android media player today. $80+gst ($88). as I am posting on mobile, will do several short posts to make up detailed review. First impressions - seriously good value for money. Never had a media player before (except s/w on the multi purpose pc). In the box: Media player unit. hdmi cable Power adapter (2 amp 5v) Usb digital tv tuner dongle Antenna Qwerty 2.4 GHz.remote Batteries for remote Component video and audio cables Crap instruction manual Unit has sd card slot, 2 external usb Wired lan 10/100 (also has built in wifi b/g/n) Hdmi and component output Running gingerbread 2.3.4 (there is an ICS update available, but there are, still a few issues with it). Works with sd card and usb stick. Hard drive supported but not yet tested. 720p no problem. 1080p - choppy initially, then settled down. Possibly caching issues. Few Apps by default and crappy browser. Will load opera so I can use crema chat. Remote has an accelerometer built in, so mouse control is fairly good. Attached a couple photos, with something to show scale. Edit: mfg.website www.geniatech.com This is also sold as neoniq android smart tv and several other brands

Brett_H

How are they making them for this price??? Looks great!

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