Media Streaming To Tv

[Tomm]

Right, I want something to play media on a TV. Kind of like the Apple TV thing but not as restrictive - I don't want to use iTunes and I don't want to have to have the PC on all the time. I've done this previously using XBMC on an xbox, which worked perfectly streaming everything over the network onto the TV. That's now 6 years old and since then we've now got HD content and iPlayer - Neither of which will play on XBMC, unfortunately. I was imagining that someone must have remade XBMC for the xbox 360 complete with these extra features, but it doesn't seem like they have.

The simple option is to build a HTPC and use that, but that seems like a waste of power, money and it's noisy etc. I know there are some boxes (E.g. WD TV Live) you can buy to stream media, but as far as I know, none will do iPlayer as well? Any suggestions?

[ZeroMatt]

I believe one of the A.C. Ryan PlayON media players can do iPlayer, also have hdds rather than just streaming too.

Edited November 13, 2010 by ZeroMatt

[eskimo]

An obvious one would be a PS3. But i can't help but think there's something missing that you're after, otherwise you would of mentioned it.

[Joe Aston]

This is something iv looked into in a lot of detail so a little bit more information and i may be able to help you out.

Where is your media stored and what format is it in.

Are you on a wired or wirless network?

Do you have a budget, if so what is it?

What do you want from your system?

Joe

[Muel]

The simple option is to build a HTPC and use that, but that seems like a waste of power, money and it's noisy etc.

Not with modern kit dude, with something based on the Intel Atom processor (most likely a D510), you can build an HTPC for around £250-300 that is pretty much silent and only needs a 100-150w power supply tops. The big spending area with them is the hard drives though,if you only need a single 2tb then it's not too bad, but any more than that and the cost soon ramps up.

The Atom D510 can be passively cooled too, so the only fan you need is in the power supply, but with a 150w power supply they can be passive too, so the only noise coming from it is the HDD.

[Joe Aston]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/236579

If your just streaming and dont need a disk drive they are perfect. also there is loads and loads of information on them over at have forums. Then as an interface you could use one of either XBMC, WMC, Media portal there are loads to choose from, personaly i use MMC because its easy to set up, looks nice with a new skin, and it does everything i need it to do, there are loads of plugins aviable to acses all the tv on demand services that out there.

joe

[Tomm]

My data is currently stored on a 1Gb NAS (WD MBWE) which is running out of space. However, it's slow, noisy and one of the hard drives has just failed so I might just get rid. I don't use the hard drive except for media, so it would make more sense to just get one unit for playing and for storage (E.g. internal 2tb drive as muel says). File sharing from the device would be good but not essential.

I've got a random assortment of file types, most SD a few HD. No DRM.

I don't really have a budget in mind, cheaper would be better obviously but it depends on the features. £250 would probably be the limit though.

Re: network - Ideally will be wired in at some point but there isn't good access at the moment so wifi would be useful

I've played with XP MCE but that doesn't seem very customisable. I gather Win7 is a lot better for that.

[tomturd]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/236579

If your just streaming and dont need a disk drive they are perfect. also there is loads and loads of information on them over at have forums. Then as an interface you could use one of either XBMC, WMC, Media portal there are loads to choose from, personaly i use MMC because its easy to set up, looks nice with a new skin, and it does everything i need it to do, there are loads of plugins aviable to acses all the tv on demand services that out there.

joe

I have one of those (used as an htpc) but I find the picture is laggy (although I'm using ubuntu so win 7 may help) and its a bit of a jack of all trades....

Next on my list would be an eGreat a1080 (or whatever the latest thing they bring out is) which seems to be a pure HTPC (no streaming from iplayer by the looks of it) - but pretty good for everything else.

Saying all that, it seems that blu ray players are slowly becoming htpc-ish. This sony one is cheap, plays blu rays, streams youtube, iplayer etc and has (limited) network capabilities. I would give it another 6 or so months before we start seeing proper network streaming capable blu ray players becoming mainstream

Edit, also have a look at xtreamer.net - it says its compatible with internet TV but I would check first. There are problably UK resellers on ebay.

[Fish-Finger-er]

I may be being hugely daft here, but would a netbook not do the trick, with some added bonus of being a portable pc if needed.

ive currently got a compaq/hp mini 311c,cost me £290 about a year ago, dont know what there worth now, granted i spent a few quid upgrading it (£30 on ram, £40 on a hdd) an ive stuck vista on it

but i quite often use it with a wireless keyboard/trackpad set up on it, plugged into my lcd tv via hdmi , it plays movies in 1080p fine, is obviously uber low power and can handle youtube/vimeo/iplayer.

pretty sure you could get a remote for it(whether running windows mce and one of the remotes for it would fit the bill).

quite often play files off my desktop pc through it onto the tv.

Could quite happily(and this has kinda been my plan for mine since my need for a netbook is pretty low now) have it plugged in out the way with a long hdmi cable running to the tv, a cheap external hdd plugged into it, with tversity or whatever running on it. can use it to watch files/youtube/iplayed on your tv, can put files onto the drive off other pcs in your house. and can also watch all that stuff on the other tvs in my house via my 360.

[Krisboats]

My old housemate used his laptop to play everything on. I went for the HTPC option. It's not gaming so you can buy silent fans and run them slowly which makes it nearly inaudible (save for the hard drive). It's running an old graphics card too and the actual power draw is under 150watts under load (1080p vids).

[eskimo]

So no one's into the PS3 then?

[Krisboats]

So no one's into the PS3 then?

Got one of those too, prefer the HTPC by far though.

[Tomm]

I just discovered that recent builds of XBMC can play iPlayer perfectly. This is 9-year-old hardware with 64mb of RAM and it constantly surprises me, I love it. In fact, my laptop struggles more with iPlayer sometimes.

[tomturd]

I just discovered that recent builds of XBMC can play iPlayer perfectly. This is 9-year-old hardware with 64mb of RAM and it constantly surprises me, I love it. In fact, my laptop struggles more with iPlayer sometimes.

Ah, excellent. I have to say, an old xbox running XBMC is the best thing I've found so far too.

Coupled with some "HD" cables it looks good too.

I'll be downloading that tonight.

[Tomm]

I spent a little while yesterday sorting it all out. A recent build of XBMC plus the iPlayerV2 plugin is what you need. I'm not sure how recent the build needs to be though - the version I downloaded last night is a bit unstable I think. I've had to hard-reset a few times and I never remember that previously. iPlayer now works though.

What HD cables can you get?

Are there any other TV-on-demand services that are worth using? I believe 4oD is not available.

[tomturd]

What HD cables can you get?

I used to have one of these - but ended up selling it on ebay for £8.

http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-Component-Video-Cable/dp/B00005TN7U

I haven't looked around, but thats essentially what you'd be looking for.

It wont give you full HD, but it will take you up to 480/720 or somewhere around that Once you have one of those cables plugged in, a special option appears in one of the xbox main menu menus which you need to enable (assuming you can still boot to the default dashboard)

I'll take a look at the latest xbmc binaries, not in any major rush to upgrade just yet.

[Tomm]

There's probably a stable release that will work fine. "For the XBOX you need at least XBMC4XBOX (http://www.xbmc4xbox.org) revision 30413" which is at least several months old. I don't know where to get the latest stable version from though

I'm amazed they're still updating it daily.

[JT!]

Google TV? Or am I missing something?

(I'm not saying google the word 'tv', I mean 'Google TV'.

[Krisboats]

There's probably a stable release that will work fine. "For the XBOX you need at least XBMC4XBOX (http://www.xbmc4xbox.org) revision 30413" which is at least several months old. I don't know where to get the latest stable version from though

I'm amazed they're still updating it daily.

It is cracking software. When i'm not using the HTPC in internet browsing mode it's running XBMC as i've found that it's one of the most stable bits of software for problem free 1080p playback. Didn't realise there was an iplayer add on for it, so i guess i can look at installing a basic linux build with xbmc now and remove windows altogether now.

[tomturd]

It is cracking software. When i'm not using the HTPC in internet browsing mode it's running XBMC as i've found that it's one of the most stable bits of software for problem free 1080p playback. Didn't realise there was an iplayer add on for it, so i guess i can look at installing a basic linux build with xbmc now and remove windows altogether now.

This might be worth a look http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_Live

[Tomm]

The main problem with XBMC for a proper HTPC is lack of proper DVB watching / recording. That's not an issue on the xbox - it is what it is (which is remarkable) and no one expects to be able to record live TV.

I did a complete reinstall of XBMC, wiped the directory and complete reinstall rather than an update. So much snappier now! And no random crashes. Huzzah!