What media player route did you take and why?

[Flomaster]

xbmcfreak's live version supports MCE remote out of the box.  so if you have your Harmony MCE configured then your good to go.

 

-=Jason=-

[WinHac]

Started using mediabrowser about two weeks ago and I love it.

[Giraffeninja]

I used XBMC for a few years, it was one of the best options out there. In the past few months I switched over to a Mac Mini running Plex and I can't believe how much further ahead of XBMC it is (considering it was a fork off the same code).

 

If cost isn't really an issue, Plex + a Mac Mini should be near the top of the list.

[talmania]

I used XBMC for a few years, it was one of the best options out there. In the past few months I switched over to a Mac Mini running Plex and I can't believe how much further ahead of XBMC it is (considering it was a fork off the same code).

 

If cost isn't really an issue, Plex + a Mac Mini should be near the top of the list.

 

Hmmm....ok so I have an older 1.8 (or maybe 1.6) mac mini that I NEVER use.  Would that be a good candidate?

[jamerson9]

I used XBMC for a few years, it was one of the best options out there. In the past few months I switched over to a Mac Mini running Plex and I can't believe how much further ahead of XBMC it is (considering it was a fork off the same code).

 

If cost isn't really an issue, Plex + a Mac Mini should be near the top of the list.

 

Hmmm....ok so I have an older 1.8 (or maybe 1.6) mac mini that I NEVER use.  Would that be a good candidate?

That would work for most content except full blown 1080p with very high bitrates.

 

One word of caution is that it is a working beta version. But, there is a very active development team with good communications with the user base.

 

It does take some babying currently to make somethings work, but it has great potential if you are already invested in mac hardware.

[batfink]

Which route did you choose and why did you make that choice?

 

Over the years I'be built various HTPCs, I own a WDTV Live, (still) own an Popcorn Hour A100 & also a C200 but moved to XBMC running Aeon on a Revo R3610 a couple of months ago and haven't looked back. IMO it's the best there is if you have a family and want to keep things simple (for them). I use Ember Manager to make sure all the 'scraping' is as I want it. Yes, I'm still looking forward to the upcoming rich C200 firmware update and maybe I'll have a change of heart when it arrives, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

The reason a bought a C200 (at release) was that I too wanted to retain full menu funcionality for my BD rips, but over time I realised that more often than not I just wanted to watch a movie (not the trailers & extras), and if anything, others find the flashy interface much more impressive than a BD menu! Fortunately for me I ripped my BDs to the folder structure as I had issues with several iso's with the early C200 firmware so moving to XBMC wasn't too painfull. In actual fact, I have deleted all but the main m2ts files (or created a single mkv file where the m2ts files were fragmented) to free about 2Tb of space on my server so can delay another HDD upgrade for a few months longer....

 

Just my 2 pence worth....

[chanders]

What media player route did you take

 

XBMC

 

and why?

 

Its interface blows everything else away....

 

What he said..

[DigitalDivide]

I just rebuilt my HTPC this past weekend and while thinking of getting something like a zotac I ended up rebuilding one from scratch with a Gigabyte H55M-US3 MB, i3-530 CPU, 4GB Ram and a 60GB SSD.  The main reason was I needed something with a blu ray player and 2 hard drives.  I don't like having one drive for both the OS and ripping my blu rays to.  How do you guys rip your blu ray dvd's?  When I use AnyDVD HD and ClownBD, although I can rip straight from the drive, it has to demux to the hard drive (although I guess I could have one drive in the server just for demuxing but that would just constantly write to the parity drive too which I don't care to tax too much).  Now I have one SSD drive for my OS and one hard drive for ripping my blu rays (demuxing part).  

 

So how do you guys with the little boxes handle ripping of dvd's?

 

I could have gotten an external drive but just didn't want to deal with additional wires etc.

 

I'm just using WMC 7 with My Movies and TMT.  I'd like to try XBMC but from what I've read it doesn't work too smoothly with TMT and blu rays.

[Flomaster]

im sure the guys with set top boxed don't rip with said box they use another server or desktop computer for that

 

-=Jason=-

[prostuff1]

im sure the guys with set top boxed don't rip with said box they use another server or desktop computer for that

 

-=Jason=-

 

Indeed true for my case. I usually rip from my laptop, as the only thing i want the HTPC to do is play back content, whether that be from a DVD disc or from the .iso file on my server.

[Rajahal]

Yeah, I do all my ripping/encoding on my desktop, as the extra CPU power helps a lot (I generally don't keep full ISOs anywhere).

 

I just upgraded to XBMCfreak on my Zbox.  It is nice that you don't have to change any settings manually, and my GPU is finally recognized correctly...although now the ATOM CPU isn't.  Which means I no longer get temp readings off my CPU, only off the GPU.  Oh well.  On that note, the GPU is reporting 90+ F...doesn't sound too good, but then again I haven't had any problems with it.

 

I also started using the Night skin, just because I love the way it looks.  I seem to have lost the ability to put the box on Party Mode (which plays random music videos), but maybe my music video library just isn't set right or something.

 

I played around with the ability to add custom home menu options, which seemed great at first.  I added Docs, Stand Up Comedy, etc.  I then tried to define the playlists that those options would reference and....nothing.  I don't get it.  Guess I'll have to spend some time over at the XBMC forums.

 

On a side note, my iPod Touch/Collect3 remote system stopped working more or less completely.  I updated the IP address, etc., and it worked for a while.  Then it would crash intermittently.  Now it crashes every single time I open it.  Very disappointing.  I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling it.  If that doesn't work, I'll try Collect3's support.

[Flomaster]

Raj, seems Smart Play lists are the thing to do

 

create one for each menu item you want and add as such in Night skin.

 

-=Jason=-

[Rajahal]

OK, I'll have to look into how to create Smart Play Lists, as it wasn't obvious from messing around in the menus.

[Flomaster]

Raj,

 

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=563641&highlight=smart+playlist#post563641

 

-=Jason=-

[Rajahal]

Sweet, thanks a ton.

[CornerSage]

How do you guys rip your blu ray dvd's?  When I use AnyDVD HD and ClownBD, although I can rip straight from the drive, it has to demux to the hard drive (although I guess I could have one drive in the server just for demuxing but that would just constantly write to the parity drive too which I don't care to tax too much).

 

Is this how everyone is ripping their DVD's?  I was planning on ripping directly to the unRAID array, but I didn't realize it would tax the parity drive.  Isn't demuxing just separating the audio and video?  Can you please explain why ripping it locally and then moving it over is better than ripping it directly?

[Joe L.]

How do you guys rip your blu ray dvd's?  When I use AnyDVD HD and ClownBD, although I can rip straight from the drive, it has to demux to the hard drive (although I guess I could have one drive in the server just for demuxing but that would just constantly write to the parity drive too which I don't care to tax too much).

 

Is this how everyone is ripping their DVD's?  I was planning on ripping directly to the unRAID array, but I didn't realize it would tax the parity drive.  Isn't demuxing just separating the audio and video?  Can you please explain why ripping it locally and then moving it over is better than ripping it directly?

For the little bit of "ripping" don't sweat the usage of the disks, regardless of which disk it is.  (even if your collection is HUGE, the parity disk will be fine.)

 

Think of it this way, Filling every byte in every one of your disks in a 20 disk array will result in writing the parity disk 20 times completely.  That is nothing, since any given sector would only be written about 20 times.   

[BRiT]

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=563641&highlight=smart+playlist#post563641

 

Thanks for the pointer too. It's something I didn't know about either.

 

[Bags]

So generally most of the mac folks are using Plex and Mac minis? Is there a set top box that uses Plex yet? I see the new LG tv's will have it but I don't see myself buying a new TV just for the app. Also I doubt LDG will update the old BD 390 media blue ray player I have. I hate the interface of the BD390 which is why I bought into the new apple tv. I now understand the problem with Apple. I tunes was great to get started with but now I see its restrictions. I just picked up the seagate theater plus from new egg but havent opened it either, I may donate it to the 6 year olds room. So while I am new to unraid and have a slew of apple products I think I need to stick with what I have. If I understand correctly Plex will work with my I phones, touch, Ipad, and Mac mini, but to stream to the others I have to have the mac mini on all the time and not in sleep mode. Hopefully after the first of the year PLex will open up and I can install it on the unraid box like air video? And at this point I cant stream movies to the ATV2 through Plex. Now that atv2 has been jail broken and since it is OSX based I am guessing it is only a matter of time before it ends up on ATV2. While ATV2 has some advantages I dont think it is capable of playing 1080P and HD sound no matter what someone does to it. Can XMBC be run on Ipad and I phones? My head hurts as I am on home theater overload right now.

[dgaschk]

I was using Plex on my GMA 950 Mac Mini, but I started having problems playing high bit rate m2ts files ripped from bluRay. I replaced the WIFI with a Broadcom HD card and started using XMBC because it supports the Broadcom for video processing. It now plays everything that I thrown at it.

[roastdawgg]

I went with the WDTV Live. The WDTV has a nice balance of price to performance to supported video codecs. Not to mention there is hacked firmware for it to expand its capabilities.

[Paak]

Just saw this article: http://lifehacker.com/5707959/how-to-install-plex-on-your-new-apple-tv

 

Hacks the new $99 Apple tv to run Plex.  An off shoot of XBMC for the Mac.  Seems interesting. I love Plex and XBMCs' interface, though from what I've read on different sites 1080p playback is uncertain as of yet.

[lewcass]

I went with the WDTV Live. The WDTV has a nice balance of price to performance to supported video codecs. Not to mention there is hacked firmware for it to expand its capabilities.

 

Ditto.

 

I had a WDTV HD generation 1, modified for network access, when I first built my unRAID to serve it. This year I moved to the WDTV Live which has built-in network access with more processing power and memory. Using b-rad.cc's WDLXTV firmware, it is a fun, capable device (with new capabilities continually be added by the WDLXTV community).

 

Also I agree with roastdawgg it's a very good value.

[KeeWay]

After testing a few out there I eventually went with the Dune Prime 3.0 (and smart D1 on the way for the bedroom) with the zappiti indexer menu system. i originally tried out the WD gen 1, WD Live and MediaGate MG-M2Tv and my friend has a patriot box but they never were able to handle full blu ray streaming/menus and the dune did with no problems so far. also the dunes with the zappiti interface allowed my wife and kids to navigate and play all the movies/tv shows with no problems.

 

 

thanks

James

[Bags]

Many choices.....I simply want to play blur ray rips with hd sound and I dont want a box that is bigger than my tv, and does not cost 500 bucks. I would love for it to support Plex.