External Multimedia Player

Old Jim

Anyone have any recommendations for a external multimedia player (the ones where you can play content directly from external harddrive)? 320GB+.

fenris

PC World have an Iomega 500gb one for €199
seems to be an OEM of the same device as the Argosy media player from ibood.

zod

cheapest on pix
http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/638604/art/iomega/screenplay-360-gb-usb-2-0.html

Gozer

Got one in PC World 3 days ago for 199.
i think it is a great piece of kit.
It can play almost any type of media.
With 500gigs it has plenty of storage.
The included remote is small so could get lost easily but it works perfectly.
A mate has a Packard Bell Store and Play 3500 but the Iomega is in a different class.
The only problem with it is it does not recognize Mpeg4 files encoded with Nero 8.However all Divx etc files play without problems.
There are lots of connections on the rear of it including scart.I have connected it to all the tv's in the house and it played perfectly on them all.
Good setup menu to suit your personal tastes.
I am by no means an expert but I have to say it does what it says on the tin.

Gerry1995

Does this kit support playlists for music ?

johnp

fenris wrote: »

PC World have an Iomega 500gb one for €199
seems to be an OEM of the same device as the Argosy media player from ibood.

I like the look of this. I did a little research and some guy says it doesn't play DivX 6. Would this be a problem for someone who might acquire movies/tv program from the interweb (not me obviously ).

Also, does anyone know what make of HD is in it?

banchang

Old Jim wrote: »

Anyone have any recommendations for a external multimedia player (the ones where you can play content directly from external harddrive)? 320GB+.

Help me

Whats the difference between this & a regular external hard drive ?

I can play all media perfectly well directly from my 500GB Medion Ext HD from Aldi Eur 105, or am I missing something ?

baronflyguy

I would recommend PopCornHour if money is not an issue for you.
It is getting great reviews out on the net.
A friend at work bought it last month and its the bee knees

Has everything you will want for an External Media Player.
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
NOTE : You need to buy an IDE HardDisk separately to put into it (doesn't take SATA, AFAIK, no External Media Player currently takes SATA, but I could be wrong)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB IDE ATA/100 16MB 7200RPM
Costs 109 (ext delivery cost) on Komplett
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=338767


Pixmania have a few economically priced external media players if you want toi keep cost low. Some come with HardDisks in them others you buy the harddisk separately.
I myself bought a NEO External Media Player from pixmania.com back in August 2007. Got it for 170 euro which included a 500 Gig HardDisk. Great value for money. It was on special.




For banchang
External Media Player allows you to plug the device directly into your TV and so you can watch DIVX,AVIs,MP4 etc on your TV direct from the HardDisk without any hassel of converting and burning to DVD etc. You get a remote control with them also so very handy for living room comfort. The External media players are small and discreet and blend in well with TV, DVD player etc. You can also plug it into your Computer via USB or network connection to upload files.

banchang

baron

thanks - you've convinced me !

because I have a video converting as we speak to bring onto my ipod, & from there to play through TV ! Crashed 2 times already !

degsie

baronflyguy wrote: »

AFAIK, no External Media Player currently takes SATA, but I could be wrong

The Argosy 2.5" media player I bought from iBOOD recently has a SATA drive, excellent player so far

fattestman

What format are you folks putting your movies in to play on your external media players?

I have such a player and I'm in the process of putting all my movies onto it. I'm ripping the movies using DVD Decrypter but then to reduce them and get them onto my FAT32 formatted drive I using Auto GK to convert them to .avi.

This takes ages - about 8 hours per movie! My computer qorks fast enough otherwise.

Am I converting to the wrong format or can anyone else think of anything that might help me...please?

Cheers.

yoyo

fattestman wrote: »

What format are you folks putting your movies in to play on your external media players?

I have such a player and I'm in the process of putting all my movies onto it. I'm ripping the movies using DVD Decrypter but then to reduce them and get them onto my FAT32 formatted drive I using Auto GK to convert them to .avi.

This takes ages - about 8 hours per movie! My computer qorks fast enough otherwise.

Am I converting to the wrong format or can anyone else think of anything that might help me...please?

Cheers.

Would you convert to NTFS file system (I'm persuming your on xp etc and not 9x), also if DVD Rippings taking ages check if theres a modded firmware for your drive, which could speed up ripping discs, HERE is a good firmware site, of course if you have a slower computer with older hard disk ripping/encoding will be a good bit slower, 8 hours seems very excessive tbh though! Takes me roughly 16 mins maybe less to rip a full movie, and only about half an hour to convert to Xvid (Auto GK)

Nick

fattestman

Cheers for the quick reply.

I've no problem ripping the movies - that's only taking me about 15 or 20 minutes. It's the conversion from .vob to .avi that's taking so long.

I had to convert the harddrive in the mediaplayer to FAT32 but because that's the only format the external media player will work with. As FAT32 has a 4gb limit on files (and .vob files are considerably larger) I have to convert them.