Heya guys!!.

Just wondering, I have a 1TB HDD sitting around filled with movies, and want to play these in bedroom, I don't want to have cords and s*** from the PC to the tv, but I'm willing to get some type of video player that I could plug the hDD into aswell as the TV and navigate through the movies and play at will, without 70% of them failing due to not having the correct codec...

Now, I used to have a modded xbox 1 console, with xbmc and that was absolutely perfect to the max, does anyone know if there is some player out there that can play all of the movies, short of having to buy a media pc??

Or is xbmc and a modded xbox the way to go.

Cheers!

I just bought a Pioneer DV310s DVD player that has USB input - plays every divx i can throw at it. Not sure of mkv's though.

if you dont want to watch hd media, its very hard to go past a modded xbox:

you mite be able to get away with a simple media caddy if you've got a hd ready to go

As far as media devices go, I've been hearing a lot of good things about the TVIX units, apparently they play just about everything. With consoles, you have things like TVersity you can stream stuff from a PC to a PS3, Xbox360 or Wii, then you have your HTPC market. Really just comes down to which option you prefer to go with, all three have their advantages and disadvantages.

Those things look rad and cheap at around $600.

I'd get a Popcorn Hour.

Exactly - www.popcornhour.com

TIVX is crap. Xbox (while nice) requires babysitting/tinkering.

Popcorn is plug and play.

Popcorn doesn't look like it does TV recording.

Correct - the poster is looking for a video player...

As far as I know, the only way to get flawless codec support is to use a media PC. I built one from old parts I had lying around, bought some extra parts to make it quiet. I just run XP with a wireless KB with built in trackball. No need to setup any media centre front ends - simple.

Yo, check out the mediagate s***: http://www.mediagateusa.com/products.html

I got a MG-35NDAS and it's frankly quite good for the rpices you can find online; dad has a diff model and he uses it to got from house to caravan on trips away. Loves it.

High recommendation

EEE box. It's a tad bigger than a hard drive and makes bugger all noise/uses bugger all power. You can get a "HD" model of them pretty much specifically designed for watching movies + HD content. Depends on the inputs on your TV too I suppose but my TV has VGA in and I think the HD eee boxes have HDMI output as well (I didn't get the HD just the stock std EEE box).

I'd rather have a PC as a media player that way if a new codec gets created or updated you know you're gonna be able to update unlike PVR's that may require and rely on updates from the manufacturer who may or may not be bothered to update their firmwares.

last edited by whoop at 19:17:54 23/Feb/09

Do any of these, other than xbox+xbmc, play movies straight out of RARs?

Why the hell would you rar up a video? Does it actually make them any smaller? (genuinely curious).

TIVX is crap.

How so? Just curious because eventually I'll probably bite the bullet and get something myself so I can get this of the htpc in the loungeroom, one less pc to maintain.

Mediagates are ok, I haven't used the HD mediagate but some relatives have the standard one and i reckon it has a s*** interface and only seems to play about 90% of divx/xvid, it's a pita having to reencode the other 10% of stuff to work on it.

Main reason why I've held off on one of these media devices is i'd love one that could scrape file info off the net much like your xbmc type software but i haven't seen anything yet that does that.

Why the hell would you rar up a video? Does it actually make them any smaller? (genuinely curious).

That's how they come when I rent them.

Why the hell would you rar up a video? Does it actually make them any smaller? (genuinely curious).

you idiot

That's how they come when I rent them.

Rent from Alt.Binz instead, it automagically unrars them.