do i live in a fantasy world...
Moderator: Sigma
-
darkwingduck
- Posts: 6568
- Joined: Thu May 20, 2004 9:31 am
- Location: at&t park
do i live in a fantasy world...
when all I want is a TV to have a harddrive filled with hundreds of my favorite movies in Hi-def...?
-
still illiterate
- Posts: 5543
- Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:53 am
- Location: Roa, Va
- Contact:
Lots of people do shit like this....ever look into popcorn hour?
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
-
Seiko Flossberg
- Posts: 9486
- Joined: Thu Dec 07, 2006 7:03 pm
- Location: Where one of the greatest MC's was a local cat
-
Seiko Flossberg
- Posts: 9486
- Joined: Thu Dec 07, 2006 7:03 pm
- Location: Where one of the greatest MC's was a local cat
-
darkwingduck
- Posts: 6568
- Joined: Thu May 20, 2004 9:31 am
- Location: at&t park
Something like the WDTV would possibly suit your needs. It's a small box with a HDMI output and a couple of USB ports for connecting up hard drives and USB sticks and it supports all of the common file types and containers like AVI and MKV at up to and including 1080p. There's quite a boxes like that out there now that you can pick up for well under 100 bucks.
A step up from that would be something like the new Boxee Box which adds web streaming services and support for things like Pandora, Last.fm etc.
If you need something better than that, look at the Popcorn Hour boxes, which do similar things to the Boxee, but some of them have a hard drive bay and optical drive bay for local storage and optical media support.
There are versions of all of the above devices that stream locally from a network either wired or wireless.
Finally, there's the HTPC (home theatre PC) which gives you the most flexibility as you can build it yourself so you can add things like TV tuners or cable cards and you can use it as a DVR to record stuff, plus you get all of the benefits of having a full PC under your TV. It can get expensive though if you want a fully featured one with Blu-Ray.
I've got the original version of the WDTV that has no network support, so I use a little Passport external hard drive that I fill up with movies. It's better than using an Xbox 360 or PS3 in some ways because it's totally silent, it consumes only a few Watts of electricity and it supports a lot of codecs/containers that games consoles don't support natively, MKV for example, which is the container used by all scene groups for HD movies (assuming you're downloading them).
A step up from that would be something like the new Boxee Box which adds web streaming services and support for things like Pandora, Last.fm etc.
If you need something better than that, look at the Popcorn Hour boxes, which do similar things to the Boxee, but some of them have a hard drive bay and optical drive bay for local storage and optical media support.
There are versions of all of the above devices that stream locally from a network either wired or wireless.
Finally, there's the HTPC (home theatre PC) which gives you the most flexibility as you can build it yourself so you can add things like TV tuners or cable cards and you can use it as a DVR to record stuff, plus you get all of the benefits of having a full PC under your TV. It can get expensive though if you want a fully featured one with Blu-Ray.
I've got the original version of the WDTV that has no network support, so I use a little Passport external hard drive that I fill up with movies. It's better than using an Xbox 360 or PS3 in some ways because it's totally silent, it consumes only a few Watts of electricity and it supports a lot of codecs/containers that games consoles don't support natively, MKV for example, which is the container used by all scene groups for HD movies (assuming you're downloading them).