Which Hard Drive Media Player?

Zascar

I bought a Media Player Hard Drive on iBood a while ago. It was crap I sold it. The menu system was awful and it was just generally disappointing.

I want to buy another and I'm thinking of getting this one from Freecom: http://www.freecom.com/ecProduct_detail.asp?OID=12601&ID=3750&catID=8060&sCatID=1147633&ssCatID=1147633

I want one to hold movies etc that I can leave looked up to my TV - I want a good menu system for browsing movies. My router is beside my TV so wireless is not 100% necessary but nice to have.

Ideally I'd love one that can be used as a NAS. Is this the best one or are there any others worth considering?
Thanks

keith_d99

There is a lot of hype around this

www.popcornhour.com

You put an internal hard drive into it - or use external usb drive
Has HDMI output, plays all formats, plenty of support/firmware updates, and a good price

You have to get in queue to even order it though, due to demand. People even selling the invites to order on eBay

Zascar

Thanks that does look pretty cool. You can actually get them on ebay for ok money,but you have to remember the cost of a hard drive.

Do you think the freecom one is any good?

keith_d99

It's really hard to know! I've been looking around for this type of product for a while now - and it really is a bit of a minefield. There is lots of complaints about poor UI etc. It says firmware upgradable - but that's no good unless they provide upgrades!

One thing though - that 199 price is without a hard drive!

The reason I went for the Popcorn Hour - is that support is excellent, with firmware upgrades nearly early week. Also there seems to be a good community out there too! Plus they apparently play all types of files, and if they don't, there is a good chance they will via a firmware upgrade.

Popcorn Hour is at the moment 140 delivered - it's coming from outside EU - so customs may get a slice.
Throw in a hard drive - and you can add approx another 100

Zascar wrote: »

Thanks that does look pretty cool. You can actually get them on ebay for ok money,but you have to remember the cost of a hard drive.

Do you think the freecom one is any good?

BArra

can you use an external harddrive connected into the pch through usb to play content?

keith_d99

You can indeed - takes internal too - or both
Got mine there last week - I can really highly recommend it!!

It plays anything from Divx, ISO files, blu-ray rips etc. etc.
Has Youtube and other applications on it - You can access it as a network share from another computer on the network

Has played anything that I have thrown at it! I finally get to see what proper HD looks like - it's something else.

If you pop an intrernal drive into it - it even has it's own bit torrent client

BArra wrote: »

can you use an external harddrive connected into the pch through usb to play content?

BArra

does it matter what kind of harddrive is within the external harddrive though?

i read that it doesnt support SATA hard drives, only IDE, how will i know which one is within my external 500gb seagate?

keith_d99

As it is connected through USB - it doesn't matter!

I have even plugged a USB stick into it - and it reads and plays stuff fine!

Internal is IDE only alright

BArra wrote: »

does it matter what kind of harddrive is within the external harddrive though?

i read that it doesnt support SATA hard drives, only IDE, how will i know which one is within my external 500gb seagate?

BArra

thanks for the replies, i got my invite to order one today and im quite tempted to get one.

coming from china did u get hit for import duty? who delivers them

and finally whats the story if something goes wrong with it warrenty wise? i read that the mini istar has a lifetime warrenty and does pretty much exactly the same as the PCH, that and it has optical in wheras the PCH has coax in? but i think u can get a converter to adapt it

muckwarrior

I was lookin for one of these for ages. Couldn't find one with everything I wanted (NAS, HD, PVR, SATA) so just ended up throwing a media centre pc together. Beware of ones that say they have a LAN connection. This is usually for streaming only and not NAS.

keith_d99

Came to 140 including shipping
Got hit with 17 customs on top of that - so all in 157
DHL deliver it alright

Didn't even look into warranty - it's 1 year at least
When you open it up - there is very little inside - so hopefully very little to go wrong.

What's good about the PH - is that there are always firmware updates - always a good sign

Optical out you mean? For sound? Yeah PCH has co-ax out!
They are both similar boxes - based on the Sigma Chipset - but what I like about the PCH is the large community of owners (and excellent forum)

BArra wrote: »

thanks for the replies, i got my invite to order one today and im quite tempted to get one.

coming from china did u get hit for import duty? who delivers them

and finally whats the story if something goes wrong with it warrenty wise? i read that the mini istar has a lifetime warrenty and does pretty much exactly the same as the PCH, that and it has optical in wheras the PCH has coax in? but i think u can get a converter to adapt it

keith_d99

Yeah so was I - there are so many out there - but nothing that exactly matched what I was looking for (not unless I was willing to pay mad money)

Just stumbled across the Popcorn hour thing - for the price, it's a great piece of kit

It supports smb (so NAS) - you can stream from it, or to it! You can even play a dvd from a shared network drive

muckwarrior wrote: »

I was lookin for one of these for ages. Couldn't find one with everything I wanted (NAS, HD, PVR, SATA) so just ended up throwing a media centre pc together. Beware of ones that say they have a LAN connection. This is usually for streaming only and not NAS.