advice on hardware to play HDTV captures

[halsboss]

Seeking advice on a hardware player (Australia, a PAL country) ...

I'm wondering, is there a cheapish DVD player (not blue-ray) on the market nowadays which can play say mpeg2 HDTV captures and not just the ordinary DVD spec formatted DVD containing PAL 576i/p ?

eg something where I can capture say 1080i or 1440i or 720p mpeg2 OTA .TS streams with webscheduler, then edit it with videoredo and then burn the resulting .mpg file or something onto an ordinary DVD and it'll play in HDTV ? I have a hdmi lcd HDTV on the receiving end.

I have a 2 year old sony dvd player which play AVI's, but it only plays 576i divx and is fussy.

Surely in 2009, you'd think there'd be something... any advice ?

[SeeMoreDigital]

There's no such thing as a regular DVD player that's able to support playback of high-def files. Indeed, any device that offers playback of high-def (MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and WMV) media also offers network connectivity as standard. Nowadays however, very few devices have built-in DVD drives.

Such devices (with DVD drives) are not that cheap either...

[halsboss]

Thanks and so I'm finding out. Equivalents though ... WD TV seems nice and is cheap but no network. V2 of it is due "any time by xmas" and will have network, no price available. Asus O!Play is one I'm googling but apparently has limitations. Popcorn C-200 I'm also googling but cost $$ so someone said. In Aus PVRs with measley internal hard drives generally cost $$$ and don't seem value for money with limited functionality by comparison ?

The WD TV apparently has some sort of limitation saying no more than 4 reference frames in an avc - what does that mean, and what is it's pragmatic consequence ?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Shame.... up until October 2008 Australia had its own high-def network media player manufacturer called Ziova. Sounds as though the CS505 would have suited your immediate high-def MPEG-2 playback requirements.

That said, high-def TV is moving from MPEG-2 over to MPEG-4 AVC, so you should consider a playback device that's more future-proof.

You can check out some of the newer spec devices over at the MPC Club web site.

[BigDid]

Thanks and so I'm finding out. Equivalents though ... WD TV seems nice and is cheap but no network. V2 of it is due "any time by xmas" and will have network, no price available...
Hi,

There are unofficial firmware (not tested) for external optical drives, ethernet connections etc... see:
http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv
http://wiki.wdtv.org/doku.php?id=supported_usb_devices
http://wdtvhd.com/index.php?

Did