Media players. i.e. Apple tv

[50s]

Just out of curiosity .. do you have any larger HD files? I would be interested in knowing how it performs streaming a 4-8GB 720/1080p movie over the WIFI signal.

Ok I am streaming Gone With The Wind which is a 18.3GB single 1080p .mkv file. During the 20 mins of viewing, the video and audio are as smooth as silk, the picture so sharp it looks real, I want to dive in! I gotta get a bigger tv! (this is 46")


The following picture shows the WD TV Live box on the floor next to the remotes for scale, and I moved the pc's antenna into view with scissors for scale. The antenna connected by USB you can see is huge. The modem/router is also a goodie, so the wifi streaming infrastructure is quite good. The modem is in the room behind the brickwall a few meters.

[guest8]

Ok I am streaming Gone With The Wind which is a 18.3GB single 1080p .mkv file. After 20 mins the video and audio are as smooth as silk, the picture so sharp it looks real, I want to dive in! I gotta get a bigger tv! (this is 46")


The following picture shows the WD TV Live box on the floor next to the remotes for scale, and I moved the pc's antenna into view with scissors for scale. The antenna connected by USB you can see is huge. The modem/router is also a goodie, so the wifi streaming infrastructure is quite good. The modem is in the room behind the brickwall a few meters.

Awesome! Thanks for the pic! That is a HUGE WIFI antenna! I guess that goes to show that WIFI can handle large HD files IF you have the right equipment. I know I am running an older WIFI AP and the PS3 does not have any external antenna. So that could have factored into my issues with stutter and freezing.

[50s]

At about 40 min mark it had three one or two second thinking pauses in quick secession but since has been smooth. I guess it will do the same every 40 mins or so. I'll see from watching other movies (which could be years haha) if it happens again/ is annoying, but worst case I can use an Ethernet cable instead of wifi. Nearly all my movies are of smaller than 18GB file size so they should be ok.

Next I will try a blu ray, which can have single files up to around 40GB. I have some decrypted uncompressed blurays copied to pc to test.

[Mirosae]

Steve.. ......ay, ay

the blu ray for Gone with the Wind is soooooooooooooo good you should get the blu ray one... trust me on this. Yes. I have all kind of versions all for that film. Including mkv and VHS.  Blu Ray is the best one for this film.. top lollipop

re media players. I will investigate other set ups, though I am in love with my IOMEGA, simple to use, 1TB (PLUS 1TB extra memory), and chus chus, it plays anything ISO files, mkv... ETC  any time, any day 

[guest8]

re media players. I will investigate other set ups, though I am in love with my IOMEGA, simple to use, 1TB (PLUS 1TB extra memory), and chus chus, it plays anything ISO files, mkv... ETC  any time, any day 

Care to elaborate on what piece of IOMEGA equipment you have? As well as what the heck Chus Chus is? I googled it and couldnt find anything about a media player.

[Mirosae]

I bought the Iomega ScreenPlay  1TB Director Multimedia Drive. USB 2.0/AV/HDMI/Ethernet. And  I use it with the IOMEGA Wi-FI adapter, so it is wireless, which is one thing that I really wanted - hate cables. I bought it for £150 2 years ago... And like most of you, I have extra memory so can watch everything .. one box does it all...

It is very similar to WD, though I find that this one plays everything, all mkv files, etc. AND AUDIO files as I have lots of films from places like Hong Kong, etc so the audio is a real bugger for some of these films.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/computers-accessories/dp/B002R03ZDU

chus-chus = off you go, ready to go/ use/ watch ..

[guest8]

That Screenplay seems pretty nice, my only issue with it would be the inability to add more drive space to it and by more I mean 5+ TB.

lol @ Chus-Chus 

[enki]

The WDTV also plays everything. MKVs, etc. Even ISO files from DVD/BR rips.

Gone with the Wind has a ~4 hour runtime, so a 18.3GB file is still only averaging less than 10mbps. Any 802.11g/n AP and network card should be easily able to handle that amount of traffic. Assuming of course that you have a good signal and low contention.

One of the biggest factors for home media streaming is conversion. The WDTV doesn't need it, but the Roku (w/Plex Media Server) does. The server needs to convert the media on the fly. This does take a lot of CPU resources, but isn't too bad on newer hardware. But if your computer is doing other activities at the same time, it could cause stuttering. 

[50s]

Well playing an uncompressed bluray is not watchable via wifi streaming on this setup with my configuration. It is playing a 43GB .m2ts file from Titanic and stutters stopping for a 2 second think about every 10 seconds.

[guest8]

Well playing an uncompressed bluray is not watchable via wifi streaming on this setup with my configuration. It is playing a 43GB .m2ts file from Titanic and stutters stopping for a 2 second think about every 10 seconds.

That sucks, I was getting my hopes up for wifi!

[50s]

That sucks, I was getting my hopes up for wifi!

Yeah, well, nearly all my movies are compressed to around 5GB so they should be ok. Networking through the power supply would be the next best no cables (sort of) solution.

Maybe there are settings I can tweak in the router or elsewhere to improve it, but that will likely take half a day or more searching the web for clues.

[50s]

Just watched my first movie (Airport 1970) on the now setup HTPC thingy using the WDTV Live streaming media player which sits in the home entertainment system (connected via USB to 4TB harddisk).

That sure was a lot of work, but now I have about 600 movies each with .xml and .nfo files for movies metadata/details (plus a thumbGen software metadata file), various images for cover art/poster, background fanart, moviesheet (fanart with embedded/overlaid movie info/details). So these movies are ready for use by both XBMC and also WDTV Live. I chose country of origin poster images to be the cover art for each movie (unless they were really hideous like some USA posters I used another country like Italian).

Here is a screen grab of the movies carousel in one of the movie folders:



I am using the default theme with the WD TV Live box which has its limitations such as the rating (star icons) system not working as it doesnt align to the IMDB ratings.

I embedded the IMDB rating into the end of the description field

followed by some of my own made up codes such as f:(foreign language), b:(black and white), c:(separate audio commentary track), plus others for levels of sex and violence, an alternate english audio dub for foreign language films, cinavia protection, animation. There is also a video technical quality scale I added: q2 (almost unwatchable),q3,q4 (dvd),q5,q6 (bluray). These codes tell me quickly a lot of info about the film.

[guest8]

Awesome looks great! I am working on putting together another centrally located storage device at the moment. I'm not sure if I want to stick with an independent computer sharing folders or if I want to go with a Synolody/Drobo or other NAS device.

I just got these in the other day. I havent had time to take them apart, we've been doing some remodeling on the house, so at this time I cannot even get into the theater room or my office!

[50s]

Thanks

I just got these in the other day. I havent had time to take them apart

That's a lot of disk space, 15TB. Will they be for one off copies of data (15TB) or will you use them to duplicate your data (7TB + 7TB ish - I dont know the terminology... RAID?)

So you will pull the drives out of the Books and stick em in either PC or NAS? If so, why did you buy them as Books rather than just the drives, I guess it is the odd situation where the package is cheaper than just a drive. You sound like you know your stuff, I'm sure you media sharing setup will end up very impressive

[guest8]

Yeah, it was cheaper to buy them like they are than it was to buy basic internal hard drives. They were on sale for $99.99 each and I got an extra $20 off at check out so it was only $480 for all 5 and now i have some USB 3.0 cases to put my old drives in if I want.

You are right about RAID, there are different types of RAID though. The 7/7 as you mentioned is called Mirroring (Raid 1) and is the least efficient use of drive space. I will probably do a RAID 5 or RAID 6. With RAID 5 one of the hard drives is used as a "spare" so in this case with all 5 drives installed I would have 12TB usable and at any time I could lose 1 hard drive and I would not lose any data. I would just have to replace it ASAP, because if you lose a 2nd drive at the same time, you lose everything. That's where a RAID 6 comes in, with RAID 6 you have 2 "spare" drives. But in this case I'd only have 9TB of usable space. But if there was any failures I could lose 2 drives at the same time and I would still have all of my data.

[Mirosae]

WoW, that's an incredible set up.. i am not keen on streaming, i dont want to rely on the internet to watch my films but i gather that it works well? It certainly looks quite good. I might give it a try.

[guest8]

WoW, that's an incredible set up.. i am not keen on streaming, i dont want to rely on the internet to watch my films but i gather that it works well? It certainly looks quite good. I might give it a try.

That would be one downfall to only streaming and one reason I back up most of my movies. I think with my current HDD setup I have ~700 movies and a ton of TV shows. (I really have no idea how many TV shows are there) So if my ISP blew up for a week I'd still have things to watch, although I'd miss out on any new TV shows!

[50s]

WoW, that's an incredible set up.. i am not keen on streaming, i dont want to rely on the internet to watch my films but i gather that it works well? It certainly looks quite good. I might give it a try.

It works great so far... One movie and counting! No stutters, smooth as. It also streams from certain internet sites too, you can surf youtube, facebook through the tv interacting with the remote or by using a keyboard (plugin or wireless). Not sure what applications come with the boxes sold in UK but USA boxes have access to Netflix, Hulu (I think they are subscription based movies streaming services?), and a handful of others. In Oz of most interest is access to a government tv station called ABC which allows you to stream to catch up on programs you might have missed on tv (its called iView service)

[archie leach]

WoW, that's an incredible set up.. i am not keen on streaming, i dont want to rely on the internet to watch my films but i gather that it works well? It certainly looks quite good. I might give it a try.

Or... you could save yourself a ton of headaches (not to mention cash) and just get one of these... which is all most people will ever need.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/#netflix

My brother-in-law's team helped develop this...

[guest8]

From what I see that's essentially just a screen sharing device? You have to have another piece of equipment (phone or another computer/tablet) that will play or stream what you want to watch and all that this appears to do is let you play it on the TV like a secondary screen. Not to mention it only supports certain apps? Which at this point looks to be limited to Netflix, Chrome and Youtube?  And it's only good for streaming from the internet on WIFI? So how would one go about playing large HD files from local storage??

I think they missed the boat on that device, had they marketed it as a screen sharing device I think it would be a major hit for $35, but you would have to be able to share any window, not just supported apps. Hell if all someone wants to watch is Netflix and Youtube, most Smart TV's have that built in and you can stream that over ethernet and avoid any WIFI lag/connectivity issues.  

[archie leach]

From what I see that's essentially just a screen sharing device? You have to have another piece of equipment (phone or another computer/tablet) that will play or stream what you want to watch and all that this appears to do is let you play it on the TV like a secondary screen. Not to mention it only supports certain apps? Which at this point looks to be limited to Netflix, Chrome and Youtube?  And it's only good for streaming from the internet on WIFI? So how would one go about playing large HD files from local storage??

I think they missed the boat on that device, had they marketed it as a screen sharing device I think it would be a major hit for $35, but you would have to be able to share any window, not just supported apps. Hell if all someone wants to watch is Netflix and Youtube, most Smart TV's have that built in and you can stream that over ethernet and avoid any WIFI lag/connectivity issues.  

It wouldn't because most people don't need to do it.  My comment wasn't directed at the two of you, it was for her and people more casually interested in such things.

BTW, it's a pretty big hit already. 

You can share any window you want (as long as you are using a Chrome browser) although there is a slight delay.  Wired dubbed this the 'pornslinger'.  Their list of apps will greatly expand in the very near future, as will the number of sites the will direct stream (as Netflix/youtube already do).  Like anything else Google does, this product should be considered in its infancy.

Here is a nice breakdown of why this could matter...
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/07/5-reasons-google-chromecast-will-transform-tv

[Mirosae]

Well.. all of you have given me food for thought.

I like what Steve has but with a backup option- as fallenangel1 says better to be ready. And I do agree with him that streaming can be a bit ''on the dark side''.

And ideally, i hope one day we can get all this just by the touch of small tiny, clever, cheap ever-so-wonderful  device. No wires, cables or nightmares....  so something that i could just plug in as the one Archie Leach suggested- Archie- your brother in-law-is-a-genius-

And I ain't buying a Smart TV. NOPE.NO. NIET. I bought a plasma TV when they first come out and i ain't spending one more penny on telly melly...NO WAY..Got posters to buy...

So, if anyone of you have found Heaven on Earth - Media player etc wise, do let me know. i'' follow your lead yesir.

[guest8]

That's just silly, they keep comparing it to a Roku and AppleTV when its nothing like either of them. Both Roku and ATV are Independent devices. You plug them in and use a remote, everything is done through the Roku or ATV.. With CCast you have to use another device to do all of the heavy lifting. So, instead of having a remote, you have to navigate the web on a laptop, tablet or even worse a cell phone and you can then use the CCast to see what you are doing on a TV screen. Sounds like basic screen sharing to me, and its limited to only 1 browser and some streaming apps.

And when I mentioned "sharing any window" I wasn't talking about surfing websites, who really wants to surf websites on their TV anyways. I meant things like windows explore (and whatever MACs version of that is) or other local media players. People (even casual users) have some kind of local content that they want to watch sometimes.. ATV and Roku know that, that's why they made their devices to accept an external HDD.

I guess I just don't get it, everything that the CCAst does I could point to half a dozen Smart TV's that are capable of viewing the exact same Apps and websites. Not to mention the Roku and ATV do all of that and more.. Sure they cost more, but those devices truly are for the low tech casual users. You hook it up and forget about it. Grab the remote to watch what you want when you want it. How many casual users do you know that want to be sitting with their laptop playing a video in their lap just so that they can watch it on the TV at the same time. Or even worse trying to surf websites and youtube on their phones.

And they kept saying how this piece is so cross platform that all the devs will jump on board and write their code so that it works with the CCast.. hahaha .. yeah right! I don't know what devs that they have been talking to but everyone that I know HATES rewriting their code to support a new device or browser! ONLY IF this thing takes off and literally takes over the market could I see the smaller groups adding this to their coding. It's easy for places like Netflix they have hundreds of employees and can just tell them to do it. But with the smaller groups it'll take time and while all those devs are waiting to see how this will fair in the market place people will get bored with it and move on to the next toy.

As for the name 'Pornslinger' its funny and good writing from Wired, but that's all I can see this being .. a toy for some college kids wanting to play around with.

[archie leach]

And when I mentioned "sharing any window" I wasn't talking about surfing websites, who really wants to surf websites on their TV anyways. I meant things like windows explore (and whatever MACs version of that is) or other local media players. People (even casual users) have some kind of local content that they want to watch sometimes.. ATV and Roku know that, that's why they made their devices to accept an external HDD.

I have used all three for quite a while and chromecast is by far the easiest of the three.

You can run local content through chrome...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/07/how-to-play-torrents-on-your-new-chromecast/

[guest8]

I have used all three for quite a while and chromecast is by far the easiest of the three.

You can run local content through chrome...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/07/how-to-play-torrents-on-your-new-chromecast/

ahh ok.. well its getting "better" but its still just a glorified screen sharing device!