The year's best... TV media players 2010: it's a wrap Networkable media players aren’t new, but in 2010 the addition of BBC iPlayer and similar services to set-top boxes and TVs made more consumers aware of the possibilities of online entertainment pumped straight into the living room, while Windows 7 made it simpler to stream content from your PC’s hard drive …
Hi,
I own a Samsung UE40c8000 and it does support the iPlayer as I've used it. It seems Samsung have deployed the iPlayer for their TVs but not the Blu Ray players as it doesn't work on my BD-5900.
It seems for some reason the software and/or licensing issues vary on whether you're using Internet@TV on a TV or a player...
I have an Asus O!Play HD 1080p HDP-R1, which retails around £65 now. There is a wireless version and a R3 wireless N version. The menus are clunky and the built-in streaming features are rubbish (mainly asian and religious channels, when they work!) but it plays just about any media format and supports UPnP so you can stream from a media server. I even managed to get Sopcast streams to work with the help of TVersity. We have a Virgin Media contract so we get a lot of catch up services through our VM STB anyway so the O!Play does everything I need.
Out of curiosity - and bear with me if this sounds like an odd question - but how many of these media streamers will play MP4/H.264 videos over DNLA?
We have a Sony BDPS370 Blu-ray player, which also makes a decent enough network media machine (I especially like the YouTube feature). The great, howling, inconceivable problem with it, however, is that the player cannot handle MP4/H.264 video files over DNLA - meaning that about 90% of the vids on our Synology NAS device are "unrecognisable".
I contacted Sony support, who replied that the DNLA spec doesn't include that format, and basically it is at best highly unlikely that the BDPS370 will be able to play MP4 videos over DNLA in future. I flat out don't believe that the "iPod video format" is unplayable by any DNLA players anywhere... or am I mistaken, and Sony is correct?
Let me fire up my 360.
Ok where is Netflix...nope.
Ok Where is iPlayer....nope.
4OD? nope.
Any tv streaming other than Sky? nope.
A large range of movies to watch in the Zune movies section? nope.
My 360 fails at anything media wise other than playing movie files off a NAS box.
The 360 isnt a media center. Its a console trying to be a media center. Whereas the PS3 is a media center trying to be a console.
This was a pretty poor year-end review for two very obvious reasons:
1. Hardly any prices quoted in the article itself. Instead you're expected to follow each link to old reviews which may not have current price information anyway.
2. No re-review of the equipment at the end of the year. I bet all the equipment featured had firmware updates during the year and would have fixed bugs and maybe added a few features too. They all need re-reviewing as to their state now, not 6 or more months ago! My 8320HD just had a massively better firmware update that may have added another 10% to its rating for example.
I am, for the first time, horrified by an article on the Reg.
The group of products tested is a real mish-mash and has missed so many key choices in this field.
The technical content in this article is poor at best and I'm inclined to believe that the originator has no real knowledge of these devices at all - it would honestly suprise me to find out that they had any hands on time with the units.
Poorly researched, poorly written and not informative or useful in any way. Complete waste of my time - not what I have come to expect from the reg. Please do better.
There are some great solutions that you can put together with things like a Mini (or even by jailbreaking a first gen Apple TV), or building your own small-form-factor PC.
However, if we'd included home-brew stuff too, then we've have been even more pushed for space. I'd have had to annoy even more people by not mentioning their personal favourites.
Considering that one of the top contenders is PC-software-turned-appliance, the idea that you can just build your own with minimal fuss or cost is a rather obvious point. If any PC hosted content is a part of your solution then you will be engaging in the futz-ware anyways.
The real question is why are the free software solutions still spanking the consumer electronics consoles?
Wii, Xbox etc are games consoles primarily and though they do do media playback, that's not their prime function. These are dedicated boxes, which is why we didn't also mention a variety of PCs, Macs etc.
Likewise iPad - can be connectef to a TV, but most people will not do so.
Roku, Vudu - for a variety of reasons didn't make the cut.
While online content was a consideration in what to look at, our starting point was media streamers in what, I think, most people would consider the 'traditional' sense, ie units that can be used to play back media you already have in your home.
And, for online content, in the UK iPlayer, other broadcaster's catch up, and services like LoveFilm are key things that we looked for.
Vudu is a platform for online content, rather than a specific single product; not to mention that it's US online.
The current Roku boxes too, aren't really media streamers in the sense that we were looking at; sure, you'll have a load of US-only internet content, but they too are not UPnP/DLNA media players, so they won't be much -if any - good with content you have already.
You never can get enough hard disks into a SFF case. My TV box lives in a full tower, has 12 x 1.5 TB drives in a ZFS raidz, for 16TB of redundant storage (half full now), and runs a homebrew recording/playback/downloading system that is solely controllable by web browser (ie from my phone/tablet), using data from tvrage.com to find US shows for download and and tvtimes.co.uk to find UK shows for recording from Freesat HD.
On the other hand, I don't have any friends :/
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
