Best Media Player\Streamer for Ireland

Yatesonskates

I'm looking at the WD TV Live Plus, Apple TV, Roku Player or other media player\streamer but most of them seem only setup for a work with US streaming sites. Can anyone recommend a Streaming Media Player that will also access Irish content such as RTE player, TV3 Player ...?

Yatesonskates

After doing more research, it looks like the Boxee Box might be the best bet, but I'm not sure if it will work with RTE Player and other Irish content? Can anyone confirm this?

DeadSkin

I'm currently looking into media players/NAS etc for a setup at home & from I what I have read, folk with an Apple TV can jailbreak it & install XBMC. There is a plugin here for xbmc to watch RTE.

\\\\\\waits to be corrected :pac:

PogMoThoin

Yatesonskates wrote: »

After doing more research, it looks like the Boxee Box might be the best bet, but I'm not sure if it will work with RTE Player and other Irish content? Can anyone confirm this?

Boxee Box works fine with RTE Player, works and looks better with this link, you can bookmark it.
http://www.rte.ie/playerxl

Yatesonskates

Thanks for the replies and PogMoThoin thanks for confirming the RTE Player works with Boxee.

Yes, a jailbroken Apple TV is a great option, but sometimes things get dodgy after a jailbreak. Plus the Boxee box and remote seem to be far superior.

PogMoThoin - I'm thinking of taking your advice and buy a Boxee box in the US and have it shipped to my sister in NY so she can bring it back at Christmas, I've seen them on sale there for $149 and less. I had one almost bought last night, but they wouldn't accept my Irish CC or Irish Paypal account even though I was shipping to a US address. If I can get a Boxee for $149 or less, I think it'll be worth it. Then the next step would be to buy the Sis a Slingbox, so I can add her TV listings to my Boxee though I'd have to reciprocate and also get a Slingbox so they can watch RTE in NY.

Stuxnet

i have an atv2 with xbmc installed, kinda sorry i didnt get a boxee now !!

boxee > atv2 ...defo :cool:

L'prof

iPwnage wrote: »

i have an atv2 with xbmc installed, kinda sorry i didnt get a boxee now !!

boxee > atv2 ...defo :cool:

Why so? I'm ridiculously happy with my ATV2!

fergalom

@deadskin and @Yatesonskates

Recommend the XBMC PVR builds
This way, you can have all your movies, music, pictures and livetv through XBMC = single remote and extremely usable by wives, gf etc.

As you mentioned NAS/frontend, you can get a relatively cheap setup and get saorview and freesat channels as a bonus.

My setup:
QNAP NAS running TVheadend with DVB-T (saorview) and DVB-S/S2 (feesat) usb tuners in the attic.

Frontend mount on back of TV
Acer revo 3600 with openelec XBMC PVR

Also have jailbroken ipad2 with XBMC installed - watch livetv (only SD channels though), movies music etc from your NAS.

Stuxnet

L'prof wrote: »

Why so? I'm ridiculously happy with my ATV2!

i find it doesnt handle 1080 well, a lot of my (1080) mkv's do stutter, and i find smb networking hit and miss, doesn't always mount my hard drives, even tho i have them wired through my router, can take a few on/off restarts to mount them

its great for regular avi's etc and can do 720 well, dont get me wrong

PogMoThoin

iPwnage wrote: »

its great for regular avi's etc and can do 720 well, dont get me wrong

At first XBMC only supported 720p on the ATV and upscaled but then the newer versions allowed 1080p, but there are problems. Its a hardware limitation, it's not designed for 1080p

L'prof

iPwnage wrote: »

i find it doesnt handle 1080 well, a lot of my (1080) mkv's do stutter, and i find smb networking hit and miss, doesn't always mount my hard drives, even tho i have them wired through my router, can take a few on/off restarts to mount them

its great for regular avi's etc and can do 720 well, dont get me wrong

Haven't tried a 1080 yet, might buy the component and install the driver at some stage to enable it. I have my hdd plugged into my router and haven't had any problem mounting it so far.

banquo

Boxee!

Boxee.tv

thebigredmachin

fergalom wrote: »

@deadskin and @Yatesonskates

My setup:
QNAP NAS running TVheadend with DVB-T (saorview) and DVB-S/S2 (feesat) usb tuners in the attic.

hi fergalom,
just wondering what version of tvheadend your running?
trying to set this up myself on a sheevaplug nas i have running debian squeeze.

when i go into the web interface to "Add DVB network by location" Ireland is not listed in the country list..

any help appreciated, sorry for the thread hijack.

really like my atv2 xbmc setup. the new builds of xbmc are great. amazing software.

saorview streaming from the nas would be last bit of jigsaw!

fergalom

@thebigredmachin - you're almost there and on the right track, click on next tab instead "Multiplexes" and then on "Add mux(es) manually"

Set Frequency 738000khz and bandwidth to 8Mhz and all others to auto.
Hit save and once its found all channels, go back to general tab and hit "Map dvb services to channels..."
You should be set then.
Hope that helps
F

thebigredmachin wrote: »

hi fergalom,
just wondering what version of tvheadend your running?
trying to set this up myself on a sheevaplug nas i have running debian squeeze.

when i go into the web interface to "Add DVB network by location" Ireland is not listed in the country list..

any help appreciated, sorry for the thread hijack.

really like my atv2 xbmc setup. the new builds of xbmc are great. amazing software.

saorview streaming from the nas would be last bit of jigsaw!

thebigredmachin

thanks fergalom. will try it tonight.

i had already manually added the frequency for maghera (690000) as thats the nearest transmitter to me based on this: http://free-tv.ie/saorview-frequencies

When i added maghera I got a "no service" log message at the command line.. and that mux did not scan in the web interface.. (might need to check the ariel input signal maybe?)

also just as a matter of interest what brand usb tuners do you use. I bought a cheap Avertv green hd one and had some serious pain getting the firmware and drivers loaded for debian, would have been so much easier if i had got one that is supported out of the box in the main kernel.

fergalom

Should work, have you tried connecting to your tv directly to see what strength signal you have?

Another suggestion is try using the usb stick with your laptop to see if you get decent reception.

I use a hauppage, link below, works straight out of the box.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hauppauge-WinTV-NOVA-T-USB-Stick-freeview/dp/B000F8RPQE

Does the tuner appear to be loaded correctly looking at the output of dmesg?

thebigredmachin

fergalom wrote: »

Does the tuner appear to be loaded correctly looking at the output of dmesg?

yea when i did a "dmesg | grep dvb" last night I could see that it seemed to be working (warm state) and firmware seems to be loaded..

not running tvheadend as a service or anything yet, just manually starting it from command line. just wanted to get it working first..

bit of a linux newbie!

i have it just plugged into the mini ariel that came with the usb stick but will try swapping in the proper ariel input from the attic instead. i know the saorview is coming in strong on that anyhow.

thebigredmachin

again sorry fot the thread hijack!

just for the purposes of the original poster, this is my setup and feedback:
Server
esata sheevaplug server running as NAS
debian squeeze OS running on 16gb sd card, big hard drive plugged into usb for storage/media.
transmission and flexget installed on server
Media Player / Streamer
apple tv2 with xbmc installed (latest stable eden build)
plays everything. intuitive ui, looks great, media scrapers work nicely when you add new files.

The only thing that's a bit annoying is the size of the darn appletv remote, you get used to the navigation with just 7 buttons after a while but keep losing the remote down the back of the couch!

Not sure about rte player streaming apps/add-ons for xbmc as this is not somthing i have looked into but there are a lot of US content streamer add-ons.

If you want to play around with it you can download the windows version to see all the features before making the big jump to the appletv or a home theatre pc purchase...

thebigredmachin

thanks for the help. got it working. just needed a better signal.
saorview streaming now nicely to xbmc