Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, Twonky does on the fly transcoding.

Of 1080p content on a weedy ARM processor in a consumer NAS box unit? I'm skeptical of that. Basically I think Grim... is confused about something.

Mind you, last time I watched something at his house (Expendables?), we couldn't pause it without making it go back to the start and we couldn't fast forward it once it had restarted. So he's hardly the AV King of Beex.

Oh, it does it. I didn't say it did it well.

Mine is not a self-built HTPC. It is a thing hewn from nothing by sheer force of will, forged with the sweat of a million rebuilds and the blood of unrolled edges. It is the child a dozen failed cooling solutions, a dozen more 'silent' cpu fans and numerous fly-by-night case foam projects. It is born from the frustration of endless codec tweaks and beta downloads, patches that fix, patches that break, random crashes, crazy bugs and maddening reboot cycles. It has survived the never ending onslaught of many plugins and attempted replacements, 5 different TV cards, 8 graphics cards, 3 televisions and countless wireless keyboard combos. It is a living, breathing thing that connects me to world.

After 8 long years of toil, I am happy.

It is stable. MrsP knows how to use it.

It's staying.

(Your mileage may vary)

... and that is exactly why I swapped. I was 2 years in and still tinkering...

*sobs into PC screws*

Did you remember to put in enough LEDs?

There are none, save the power light. Even the light on the cd tray has lx tape on it.

Whatever turns you on dude...

mmm.... pointy.

Aye, that's because we watched it direct to the TV, which doesn't like to skip around in some files. Which is why I use the PS3 instead, of course.

[edit](And it wouldn't go back to the start - it just wouldn't pause).

[edit][edit]Thinking a little bit harder, I'm fairly sure I am the AV king of Beex. I welcome all challengers.

[edit][edit][edit]And if we're judging on "things not working", I'm pretty sure your Airport demonstration kicks you out, too

If we are having an AV off, then baggsy the blue corner and "eye of the tiger" theme tune.

/warms up new Squeezebox

Oh, when we say the Boxee "does" iPlayer, does that mean it gives you a browser window pointing at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer or does it properly download the stuff you want ready to be played back?
Because streaming video off the internet isn't very reliable, due to a long and flaky phoneline. Hence wanting a magic box to do it.

It points you to the TV version of iplayer, which is a bit different to the web version, but still streaming.

Nothing out there will download from iplayer, apart from a self built HTPC, as far as i'm aware.

You need a usenet account and sickbeard

Whatever turns you on dude...

Sigh. *I* have that. I need to replicate it, and then I need a user-friendly front end with a remote control.
Would a mac mini do all the above?

Fixed that now. It just turns out the wifi signal was too weak to cope with streaming from the laptop to the base station and back to the Airport Express. If you put the thing playing the music in the router room, it works fine.

Downloading from iPlayer is a breach of the BBC's T&Cs and technically piracy, so there's absolutely no legit solution to this problem. None of these media streamers is going to help you.

Except the rubbish silverlight thing they offer themselves, of course.

Possibly, but a Boxee probably would for a lot cheaper. You can add a USB drive to the Boxee and serve it up to the network via SMB, so you can replicate your files onto there if you don't want to leave a server up and running.

I thought iplayer gave you a time limited download option underneath the play window? Or has that gone, or is that the "silverlight" thing?

http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-tv-hd-live-media-player-usb-2-68PH.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product+search&utm_content=Q200

I got one of these and its brilliant. Front end isnt the prettiest, but it has played anything Ive thrown at it so far and done it well.

Flis is currently catching up on Breaking Bad in HD. It has an ethernet port so you can just connect it to your router and away you go. It even lets you connect an external HD to it via USB which you can access via the network.

You dont need a beefy pc to play HD videos either as I have used an Acer One Netbook just fine.

Can it play directly from the Internet? Or just from network-mounted drives?

It can play directly, but is somewhat limited to what is available. Its recently had a firmware update but I havent really used it lately so not sure if it can play iplayer, 4 od etc...I suspect still cant. Playing MKV files from Sickbeard kinda makes up for that I suppose.

I bought a Revo 3700 and put XBMC (under windows) on there, playing files stored on a NAS.

Sometimes it's a little clunky, but being able to use the ipad or iphones as remotes still seems so wonderfully modern to me. Lady T just about knows how to use it, although most of the time just asks me to do it. I think the biggest drawback is actually the shitty wireless keyboard with built in trackpad that I bought to go with it. Once I've got round to getting a USB IR receiver so I can use the Harmony One with it, things should be pretty well set.

Latest revision of the Boxee Box hardware has replaced the play/pause button on the remote, with a button that opens Netflix

It's as if they want this to fail...

Then how do you pause?

You have to go through the on screen menu.

Fuck. That.

Indeed. As soon as there is an Apple TV with enough grunt to run 1080p content, they are screwed. I expect most people will move to a jailbroken AppleTV with XBMC.

Anyone know anything about the Roku kit? Looks very similar to Boxee, but hopefully without the self-crippling aspect.

http://www.roku.com

Roku is pretty much streaming online content only, as I understand it. So if that is all you need, then they are pretty good. A fair few people on the boxee forum come from a Roku and go back when they can't be arsed with the Boxee anymore.

If you want to stream local content, the The Boxee Box is still the best thing out there, which is disappointing

Incidentally, firmware 1.5 has been released for The Boxee Box, and it is quite a bit better. Still locks up every few days though and needs rebooting, which is my main issue with the box these days.

There appear to be a fair few options for getting local content working on the Roku.

Yes, but without all the whizzy front end and library stuff that you get from Boxee? (I would do a google myself, but the Orange network has fucked up again out here in Peterborough, and i'm stuck on GPRS at the moment )
It all depends what you are after If local streaming is going to be your main use, the the Boxee has easily the best UI out there for that, and the best compatibility and it will do online stuff just as well as the Roku.
If online is more important to you, the Roku will do the same as the Boxee, but at a cheaper price (and probably more reliably)

Both boxee and Roku effectively talk to a webserver for all the remote content, that has video files and XML definitions for how the content can be presented. There are various options for doing the same thing with a webserver on your local content repository.

I would disagree (and just because of the double 'the'). I tried the windows version of Boxee and it was very confusing. I had a 'mare of a time getting it see my video library.

If Media Center had a 'watched' toggle it would be perfect. For me, natch. YMMV

The boxee box doesn't work like that, it only talks to locations it knows about, you wouldn't be able to force a connection to a webserver of your own making, without creating your own app, but that is really against the point of it

Boxee scrapes your local content and presents it within it own UI.

Boxee Box runs different software to the HTPC version of Boxee.

and we were talking about streaming boxes, not HTPC. If you want to go the HTPC route then you can do what you want

I don't know what you are asking

I quite clearly said " "

Ah, then my answer is

We have an accord.

I done bought one. Review to come when I've made it work!

Can I have your Boxee?

Boxee Box continue apace with their "fix one bug, add ten more" approach to development. The quality control of each release is shocking.
It says something about the other contenders on the market, that even with that, it is still the best thing out there...

I'll be keeping a close eye on the AppleTV 3 though, if that gets a tried and tested XBMC install that plays 1080p with no hiccups, and the jailbreak is untethered, then I'll be moving over.
Or if something else comes out that does what the Boxee Box is trying to do.

I don't have a boxee. Using the 360 as my header unit at the moment.

That's a bit irritating. Can you buy a boxee for me to have, then?

I bought a new skinny Samsung TV just before Christmas — it does 3D apparently but I haven't bought the glasses. Anyway, it pretty much reads any video file format you chuck at it and will even deal with streams from my mac via wifi. However, I simply have a big USB flash stick shoved in the back at the moment in one of the many USB ports, one of which is powered, so I'm thinking of buying a portable HDD. Granted, it isn't the most awesomely pretty UI but it's very useable nonetheless and the fact that it can read HDDs and your 'pootah via wifi if needs be, has the internet and a ton of other apps on it makes it far more useable than my previous Samsung TV

Can it get surround sound from Blu-Ray rips into your amp, though? That's the Achilles heel of TV-based playback for me.