What's a good media extender?

[Fleegle]

I saw a digg link about media extenders and the UMF is now in play!
http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/11/30/alternatives-to-the-apple-itv/

Are any of these good? I'm not worried about hard drives on the unit because my main PC has 900GB of internal space and a 250GB external drive. I want something that will display in 1080i, though.

[Otto]

I too have been looking at these for quite some time. Mainly I want something that will play movies from my PC in my bedroom on my living room media system. That's why I bought Marc's old Xbox. :)

Honestly, from what I have read/seen, the hacked XBox running XBMC is easily the cheapest and by far the most capable solution. It'll do 720p with no issues. Word on the 'net is that it has a damn good upscaler too. There have been reports of slight problems with 1080i on DVD's though, but some people say it works fine. Only thing is that it's not wireless, but in my case that doesn't matter (router is right next to my TV). Or you could use a wireless adapter.

I don't have an HD set yet, however I do plan on purchasing a 1080p capable unit at some point in the next 6 months.

[mercurial]

The 360 is one of the better ones out there- espeically if you even remotely think you might play a few games.

[Fleegle]

Yes, but it only streams WMV files. I want something that will stream other formats.

[mercurial]

Depending on your backend, there are some good real-time transcoding applications coming out that have gotten good reviews which makes the 360 more viable for multiple formats.

[Fleegle]

Depending on your backend, there are some good real-time transcoding applications coming out that have gotten good reviews which makes the 360 more viable for multiple formats.

If I wanted to transcode, I could transcode to Divx and play them on my DVD Player. I'm looking for something that makes viewing the media on my TV as easy as possible.

[mercurial]

Uhm.. Yes. This program (don't recall the name but it's in the 360 thread on TCF) resides on your server machine and transcodes on the fly. Seems pretty easy to me. You don't have to worry about the format and you don't have to pre-convert.

[Uther]

I have the Zensonic Z500 (http://www.z500series.com). I've been pretty happy with it so far. Looks like there are cheaper alternatives that do the same thing as the z500 now, but at the time I bought it, it was the best out there. :)

[JYoung]

I'm currently using an old laptop with S-Video out and streaming via VLC player.

[Fleegle]

I'm currently using an old laptop with S-Video out and streaming via VLC player.


That's the thing, I want to output in 1080i... I can't tell if many of the ones out there will do that.