So, for most of my life so far I've had a computer in my bedroom/living room. I have tons of TV shows and films ripped to it, stored on a large external drive.
Tomorrow, I move into a new apartment. My computer will no longer be in my bedroom or living room but in a separate office/computer room. So I need to figure out a device that can take some of the weight off the host computer and run files on its own. The most demanding thing is going to be 720p x264 files in MKV containers.
As you may know, I'm a Mac guy. The Apple TV seems to be the cheapest solution. I'd have to hack full-blown Leopard onto it, which is a EULA violation. We probably shouldn't discuss that further but I know it's an option. I'm only concerned that it might choke a bit on the combination of network and HD content with such a weak processor and low RAM.
Aside from the Apple TV, do you know of any media extenders that would play the 720p files indicated? Tons seem to run XviD and DivX files, but that doesn't really do me very much good.
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CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I know, but I already have about 1.2TB of the stuff in that format. Transcoding it would take an extremely long time and a loss of quality. Now, I probably won't notice said quality loss but the time would be agonizing.
I'm not sure. I'm trying to find out if it has the horsepower for this kind of thing. I'm not exactly crazy to have an ugly gigantic black Xbox under my TV but if this is the more economical solution, that's probably what I'll do.
720p inx264 format huh? XBMC isn't for you then, that thing have a lot of trouble playing standard x264 files as it is, HD format will eat it alive.
XBMC will run your DIVX and XVID files great tho, but again, don't expect HD quality.
I play Blazblue, Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and soon Tekken 6... yeah... so add me if you want to play any of those.
AMD 780G motherboard $69.99
X2 4400+58.50
Probably $20 for ram, $40 for a WD800, and $50 for a little media center case with a power supply.
There, a real computer with HDMI out and hardware video decoding for about the price of an apple TV.
The other nice thing about the Mini is that DVD Player under Leopard has a really, really good upscaler, so using the Mini as a DVD player is pretty great.
Edit: XBMC is also available for OSX, although currently in beta. Works pretty well from what I've seen playing with it.
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An alternative is the Xbox 360 or PS3 (yes, seriously, even the 360 Arcade unit). With little effort, you can play most formats on these boxes. Streaming to these boxes is easy, and you could even set up dynamic transcoding (your mac would transcode dynamically and then stream) if your processor is fast enough.
Downsides:
360 is noisy
PS3 doesn't support streaming surround sound
This sounds like a good plan. I've heard really great things about the 780G's ability to decode video.
edit: You'll probably want to find a Micro-ATX version, though, so you can fit it in a smaller case.
Oh, and a 360/PS3 won't work, as these are MKV files.
I recently bought a Popcorn Hour and love it. I don't have it networked up (future plans) but I do have a USB ext that works perfectly.
Basically plays every file format out there. The GUI is improving, and via firmware updates, they are adding usb wireless N capability, just incase you can't run CAT5.
Best $198 I've spent in a while.
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