Best streaming media player?

[evilnewbie]

I have the Qnap 1079 Pro with about 3 TB of movies on there... I want to stream it to TVs and PCs... I have already networked the PCs so they can all access the movies... I need to do the TVs... Is there an all-in-one solution such as a receiver with DLNA to directly access the movies to stream to the TV? Or do I have to buy a separate receiver and a separate DLNA digital media player? Does anyone have any recommendations? Some of these video files are over 2 GB and they are all in .mp4 format... Thanks!

[onlyalex]

Hi mate

I would recommend eighter an oem media player like boxee box or if you want to build yourself an ion based htpc like asrock or acer revo etc with xbmc live as os. Do a search and read some reviews. Xbmc is the king of mediacenter os. Boxee box is a fork of xbmc packeged on its own hardware by dlink. You cant go wrong with any of the two alternatives above.

Cheers

[Bob5AD]

You need a media player unless the TV has a media player built in.

As to what to get well XBMC is king of the hill if you want a fancy GUI and great media support plus tons of add-ons, you can now buy an XBMC set top box called the Pivos XIOS DS, they are very new and still need debugging but long term is the easiest way to get XBMC.

Other options
* WDTV Live, cheap and easy enough to use media player, no fancy GUI like XBMC.
* AppleTV, only works if you have an iPad/iPhone, install a DLNA client like Media Link Player then set Airplay output as AppleTV, only works with MP4/M4V videos.
* Boxee Box, good all round media player but no longer supported by Boxee, better UI than WDTV Live.
* DuneTV101, solid and reliable media player, it's not very fancy but it does the job.

[evilnewbie]

Thanks for the replies... I looked at the Boxee reviews and I see some negatives about it loading files from servers... mostly about it taking forever... considering how big my library is, I may have to find something better... Is the Pivos compatible with the 1079 Pro? I don't see many reviews about it...

[Briain]

Hi

I just looked at that Pivos device and note that it's really just another £100 (or thereby) player which probably just fits it along side the other 'slightly better than cheap and cheerful' boxes that are currently on the market. For example, I note that it has no Toslink or S/PDIF outputs (so you'd have to de-embed the audio from the HDMI if you wanted to plug it into your HiFi, or you'd need to have an AV amp with HDMI sockets and thus a built-in de-embedder). I note that it also doesn't handle FLAC files, so that's another thing they should address (but that would surely be just a firmware update).

I guess the issue might be that since so many TV's are coming out with DLNA features built in to them (though some of them are somewhat poorly implemented) so third party set-top box manufacturers are probably assuming that there's no point in making a more expensive multimedia streaming box, since at that level in the market, the features in the posher TV's will likely soon mean you just don't require one*. That's a great pity as it would be really nice to have the option of a slightly higher quality (and preferably fanless) version of the boxes we can get now; something that works well, sounds okay and has a snappier menu system (a swifter CPU so it responds to remote commands than the current WD devices). I got a WDTV Live Hub and it's pretty okay; I've not yet seen anything that would drive me into replacing it (though it would be nice if that product did exist).

Bri

* I wonder how long these external WDTV and Roku type boxes will be about in the market; I'd expect almost all but the very cheapest models of TV will perform all these functions within the near future.

[onlyalex]

The pivos will be a great and cheap box for running xbmc. However the project is still in alpha stage so dont expect a smooth experience just yet, also you willmost likely need to get your hands dirty to get it working when in development. If you need a cheap xbmc box today i would rather get an atv2 that has +1 year more development on it.

As for boxee box taking long time to do its initial scan i would say its relative. I scanned several TB of data over night without no problem. I have 3 boxee box and never any real issues with it and dont think you will experience any issues like library taking to long. Boxee box is still cheap hw that bitstreams hd sound, includes media scrapping and a good movie library experience. Also its "user friendly" no shell hacking or compiling to get things working, very straight forward.

Cheers

Cheers

[Bob5AD]

The scanning is only if using the media library on the Boxee Box, if your just using the file listings then its super quick the fastest network browsing player aside from XBMC. I've never had any problems with my Boxee Box and QNAP NAS & your only using it for MP4 files.

Just keep in mind Boxee are no longer supporting the Boxee Box 1, they've moved onto the development of Boxee Box 2 so don't expect any further firmware updates to it.

Personally I'd wait for the Pivos XIOS to go on sale, they are going to be releasing a linux firmware for it so it just runs XBMC only no need for Android OS (which it currently runs). This would give you a box with long term support and XBMC which has one of the best media libraries & plenty of other features, plus skins you can even make it look like an AppleTV.

[onlyalex]

Boxee box2 that sounds interesting. However if i need to wait i think i will wait for vu+ to finish there satelite tv with xbmc box, all in one that will replace my htpc and pvr

[evilnewbie]

Can I use Apple TV instead of Boxee or Pivos to play my mp4 files to the receiver and TV? I have a Sony STR-DA5700ES receiver. Thanks.

[schumaku]

Can I use Apple TV instead of Boxee or Pivos to play my mp4 files to the receiver and TV?

Depends.... Yes, stock ATV2 and "new" 1080 ATV can act as Airplay receivers aside of Apple Remote on iOS playback from iTunes (not from the QNAP iTunes serrvers) - but from the NAS Twonky DLNA uing Twonky on iOS or Android as play-to device. However, there is no screen UI on the Apple stock firmware to browse anc play the mediafrom the NAS.

Worth having an eye at aTV Flash by firecore.com ....

[evilnewbie]

So it seems then that Apple TV won't work for me... I saw that Pivos also has the Aios as well... it seems better than the Xios DS that people are recommending... is there a reason why people are recommending Xios? It seems the Aios also puts cover art on the video files like XBMC but that was just from still shots of people using it...

[Bob5AD]

So it seems then that Apple TV won't work for me... I saw that Pivos also has the Aios as well... it seems better than the Xios DS that people are recommending... is there a reason why people are recommending Xios? It seems the Aios also puts cover art on the video files like XBMC but that was just from still shots of people using it...

The Aios is an old Realtek based media player which wont run XBMC and Realtek have existed the market for media player chipsets so no more future development on those products.

The Xios now has a linux/XBMC firmware (which runs great) and has Davilla one of the XBMC developers working on it (full time I think) so I would expect long term support for that to be much better than any other off the shelf player which are typically release and forget, the linux/XBMC firmware is also open source so users are helping debug it too.

If you want something off the shelf right now get a WDTV Live, it has a basic media library that can scan network shares and it just works for the most part.

[scoobynz]

popcorn hour - plays everything.

[Khaelas]

I use a Raspberry Pi, I have 4 around the house, each connected to the network by ethernet, but you can get wireless adapters for them.
They're only £35 or so, doing the initial scan can take some time, and it's improving a lot, the menu can still be a bit laggy at times, as in, not 60FPS menu transitions and such, but my parents use it all around the house and don't complain.

Someone is designing an OS built purely for the Pi and XBMC.
It takes a lot of the background components away from XBMC live and boots very quickly.
Take a look here;
raspbmc.com
It's what I have running on each 2GB card in each of the Pi's round the house.

tl;dr;
Not the snappiest and quickest solution, but for £35 for the whole thing, you can't go wrong with raspbmc.