Finally, an H.264 player AND MKV player!

[cogman]

So I was browsing along when I found this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136325

Pretty interesting Eh! I did a search and the only other MKV player out there costs ~400 USD.

I know this is fairly new, but I was wondering, what does this puppy support as far as encoding standards go? Can I throw at it all my high x264 settings or will it chock on me (if any knows, or knows where to find this out)

[Dark Shikari]

Popcorn Hour is $180, so its not like all of them were $400 before, but this looks quite nice as well.

[plonk420]

i hear the Popcorn Hour is good, too, from someone i know somewhat well on IRC.

[Ranguvar]

Not bad at all, but nothing beats a just-retired box running Linux and MythTV IMO ;) No annoying companies getting in the way of your format support - if the rig's fast enough, it'll play. And, you can upgrade!

[stanjr]

MPC Club! (http://www.mpcclub.com/)

[martino]

Nothing beats an HTPC. Period.

[TEB]

Ive been using the Popcorn for half a year now.. and i must say love it.. ;)
Used to have a hacked xbox for my videos, now popcorn is the one and only.. Tho i agree that a HTPC would be best.. but the hassle... oh the hassle and investment.. noise and so on..
Popcorn with the newest software eats all but 1 or 2 HD testclips ive given it ;) And the container support is excellent

[chainring]

There was a thread on the WD player over at CDFreaks.com since it was on sale at Best Buy for $99. The sale has since passed, but I gathered quite a bit of information very quickly. Simply put, it appears as if it can play just about anything thrown at it, and will pass 5.1 via the optical out. I favor a device like this since it's small, very unobtrusive, low power requirements, and the storage is not tied to the unit.

[dukey]

you could always build your own player like me :D
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/251/ianshtpcsv9.png
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/6948/ianshtpc2ct8.png

supports streaming from HDD/Lan/DVD
Wrote it in directshow so i can use coreavc :)
Plays mp3 .. can view jpegs etc, basically whatever directshow will play.
Hardware i built from a broken shuttle pc

[saint-francis]

Simply put, it appears as if it can play just about anything thrown at it

Anything? Like 16 refs?

[Snowknight26]

Anything? Like 16 refs?

If the resolution is low enough. It has troubles with 1080p files with more than 4/5/however-many-the-resolution-permits-to-still-be-considered-L4.1 refs.

[plonk420]

Not bad at all, but nothing beats a just-retired box running Linux and MythTV IMO ;) No annoying companies getting in the way of your format support - if the rig's fast enough, it'll play. And, you can upgrade!

all i need is MP3, maybe SOME OGG playback (for some content i can't get in WAV/MP3), AAC, Xvid, H.264 HP L4.1 support. MKV and/or MP4 container support, and i should be good. as long as people keep with the L4.1 standard, everyone should be fine with said device.

Nothing beats an HTPC. Period.

true, but if you can get a popcorn hour for $180, i'm not sure how much it can be beat by...

$65 (decent AM2+ mobo)*
$59 (X2 5000+ retail or 4850e (+$1) .. or maybe a LE-1660 2.8GHz 1core (can any free software do 1080p on said 1core?) for $36)
$50 (smallest HDD of a decent size... you COULD go $40)
$19 2x512mb DDR2-800
salvage an optical drive (otherwise $20?)
salvage a case (otherwise $20?)
salvage a PSU (otherwise $30? minimum?)

so... $193 .. before windows .. or as low as $160.

if there's free software that can do everything you need (at procs this speed), then you might need no more.

otherwise

with windows ($90 xp home) you might be able to do MPC HC without a $30-40 video card (4350, 4550, AR). however i never got it working with my GF8200 onboard. instead of a videocard, you could go CoreAVC ($30) if you think you may encounter video your GPU can't handle.

unfortunately, i don't know much about the state of h.264 decoding speed on Linux. (but i believe you CAN run CoreAVC on it)

*mobo you could go wiht a Gigabyte GF8200 for $58 before shipping but AR.

edit: oh, there ARE some 790G mobos for $60 .. but i WOULD like a more solidly built mobo like my MSI 8200 which was $80

edit2: ohhh my MSI is now $65 AR. prices adjusted.

so to recap: so... $160-193 if you DON'T need windows or extra software.

$250-283 if you need windows + i'm ASSuming you may need $30 CoreAVC if you want to play your outside-of-L4.1 h.264 files.

and this is all if you already have optical, case, and PSU.

can anyone do better? (and confirm if you can get 1080i/p24/25/30 playback on linux without breaking a sweat on the proc)

[plonk420]

don't get me wrong. i LOVE my HTPC, but i spent a fair amount on it back in its day

$150+ (?) X2 4600 939
$100 (maybe $80) K8NGM2-FID mobo
$70 Aspire (back then) X-Qpack
$70 Silverstone 420 watt PSU
$60 replacement Antec 500 watt PSU when the Silverstone blew
$300 7800GT (now a $180 HD3850 because i thought the 7800GT was significantly more power hungry and led to the previous PSU's demise)
$70 2x512 DDR400 (then $150 2x1GB DDR400 when i needed more)
$20 Chaintech AV-710 (love that soundcard .. wish i could have bought a couple more before they went OOP)
i'm running an illegit version of vista (but i have a copy of Business Edition OEM that i don't want to tie to hardware yet) i upgraded for free from a $110 or $130 copy of XP Pro OEM.
i could have sworn i paid $30 on CoreAVC (tho i may have only spent $20).

HTPCs were not cheap :(

edit: i'm likely going to replace it with a $70 M2A-VM (cheap and good as well as a slightly unstable at default settings dog of a mobo) and $70 or 80 4200 (which might be upgraded to a 5400 BE once i sell my 939 procs), and $40 2GB DDR2-800 (thank god DDR2 is cheap!).

[nm]

and confirm if you can get 1080i/p24/25/30 playback on linux without breaking a sweat on the proc
H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2 hardware decoding is now possible with NVIDIA's VDPAU (http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2008-November/040279.html) (though VC-1 works with only some GPUs). Deinterlacing has not yet been implemented in the MPlayer patch, but it should be possible with some effort.

[mr soft]

I spotted this the other day.
It´s an external 2.5 inch multimedia case with mkv,ogg playback.
It´s in Spanish but you can read the specs quite easy.

It has a Sigma EM8623 chipset under the hood.

http://www.pccomponentes.com/IAMM_NTD_27_CARCASA_MULTIMEDIA_2_5__MKV.html

[Ranguvar]

Woah... that HTPC is way overpowered IMO.

Biggest benefit of an HTPC is upgradeable internal storage... 1TB hard drive, anyone?

And extensible... streaming? Record from your cable box? New optical disc format? Check, check, check. Upgradeable, too. And you can use it for other tasks... hardware firewall, for example, at the same time.

Standalones cost less immediately, but cost more in the long run, and can't do nearly as much.

[plonk420]

i game on it, too. i don't think i could stand to play WoW on anything smaller than a 88" screen. pretty immersive :D

oh, and keeping on topic, i offload SD encodes to it once in a great great while. i DO often use it in addition to my other system(s) for converting BMPs to PNGs with PNGOUT or Irfanview .. PNGs are easier to encode with AVISynth. BMPs run into a HDD bottleneck.

[wata]

check here http://www.midte.com

[foxyshadis]

Hardware discussion -> hardware forum.

[damorsoft]

Do you know if this WD unit will play from an external DVD player? It would make the unit even more usable.

[CruNcher]

Nice they took a my book case modified it put some DSP inside it (what else then Sigma), not bad so we are @ the 100$ edge :) :D the same edge ASP was @ after that it was fast going down, seeing all the announced new DSPs though none yet from China :( it maybe goes down more rapid now. Currently it's like Sigma Designs owns the whole market and the only one left after the ASP boom.

[atreides93]

I actually just ordered a Tvix 6500A.. it was on sale at newegg for $369. I know its expensive...but two of my coworkers have it and love it. It plays H.264 and mkv's with AAC audio. That's what I mainly backup blurays to now using megui. I also can use it to play back my camcorder AVCHD videos.

As for a HTPC...I built one before...but it ends up costing the same and is a lot bigger and uses more power than the Tvix.
To each his own though...I think there is always more than one way to play your videos :)

I looked at that WD media player..and it looks ok...but the lack of component output really stinks because my dad's 65" 1080i projection tv, only has component inputs. But if you only need to use it on sets that have HDMI, then I guess its ok...

[CruNcher]

Though the problem i see with such SAP's is Firmware support i would rather pay a little bit more knowing i have minimum 1 year Support and a Nice Team of Developers i can reach or some kind of Forum or enough Community support that people begin to RE the Firmware :). Not sure if WD would take it serious if people write about Bugs per E-mail, especially as they most likely don't even write the Firmware but some contractor and the main parts are for sure even developed @ Sigma and licensed out via SDK's :D so i guess it makes even more sense to bug the Sigma guys sometimes directly ;)

[smok3]

some questions about the wd tv:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572&language=en
a. does it play the DVD folder with all the whistles? (menus, subtitles, ect)
a1. does it play the DVD ISO -"- ....
a2. could i use my old usb external dvd drive with it for DVD playback with all the whistles?
a2.1. can i copy from one usb device to another (i see there are two ports)?
b. how does it handle interlaced mp4
c. how does it handle anamorfic mp4, what flags, --sar? ect
d. anamorfic mp4 with soft subtitles?
e. HD mp4 on pal TV?

[jshumate]

smok3 -
There is very big thread here on the player:
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic358929.html

I have one and while I am pleased with it and it works for my needs, it is NOT perfect. I tested a DVD ISO file. It happened to be in a foreign language and had English subs. It defaulted to playing the English subs, but I was completely unable to access any menus on the ISO. The movie simply started playing automagically. This is not ideal. The small remote control has no button to change language or subtitles so with no menu access, you get whatever the default play gives you. There may be a setting in the setup to select particular languages for subtitles, but there's no way to change this otherwise.

I did not try to play a DVD from a folder, but I think I saw some reports that suggested that playing from folders may be somewhat like what I saw with the ISO, but you need to confirm that. The people at videohelp may be able to confirm it. I can't answer your other questions as those are all things I didn't try. Some people are having horrible sync problems with the player. I have not had this problem, but there are suggestions on dealing with it in the thread I mentioned above.

[smok3]

ok, so i do actually use dvd navigation (i do author quite a lot of cartoons for the kids and all come with thumbnail navigation so they can select visually what they want), that would mean everything would have to be transcoded to say mp4, which would be a lot of work (and experimenting with PAR/DAR)...., any additional info in this regard would be very welcome.

silly q: Do i understand correctly that thumbs are generated automagically for supported formats or is that something user must provide (jpegs?)?

[jshumate]

smok3 - Sorry, but I don't always check the Doom9 forums. There are thumbnails, sort of, with the player, but they are only a generic image and are not in any way visible indicators of what the file is. If a person can't read the file name (ie. a small child) then he/she would simply have to play files one at a time until the desired file began to play. I really don't think this is going to be a good option for you.