So I am debating between the 2, and I thought I would get some oppinions.

This would be used to play BRD ISO's and DVD Vob folder format, though I can convert them to ISO's if need be.

Video and audio output to my Pio Elite SC-05 (DDTHD, DTSMA decoding) and video from there to my panasonic projector.

Do either of them bitstream the HD audio, and can either of them handle dvd folder or BRD ISO's?

AFAIK, neither support Blu-ray ISOs, and likely won't in future.

If you have to have DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD passthrough, Popcornhour is your choice, because the WD TV-HD does not support it (hardware limitation, HDMI 1.2 port).

so from my understanding, the differences are few..

Popcorn hour has the ability to put the drive internally, WDTV uses external only?
Popcorn hour streams from a network disk, WDTV doesnt without extra's?
and Popcorn hour streams BRD audio formats?

What format does the BRD's have to be in for that to work, and in that format, does the menu's and such work, or is it just the main movie?

There is no device that will magically become a Blu-Ray player (that is what you are asking when you want menus and advanced audio codecs). There are licensing and legal issues that the manufacturers have to deal with if they want to have full DVD and BR support. (not gonna happen). The best bet is to rip your DVD/BR and place them in .mkv container (do not re-encode). No menu or extra needed. If you want full menus with all the extras and advanced audio then use a BR player (they are the only devices licenced to do it).

so from my understanding, the differences are few..

Popcorn hour has the ability to put the drive internally, WDTV uses external only?
Popcorn hour streams from a network disk, WDTV doesnt without extra's?
and Popcorn hour streams BRD audio formats?

What format does the BRD's have to be in for that to work, and in that format, does the menu's and such work, or is it just the main movie?

I wouldn't call those minor differences. Networking or not...lossless codecs or not? That's the ballgame. Good luck.

CD

I had the choice to pick WDTV or PCH for the same price
I choosed WDTV, really the PCH looks horrible where GUI are very important to me
And the only +PCH had was Internet connectivity which isn't important to me and actually now is available for wdtv as well with Custom Firmware

PCH has better subtitle support I think.

I had the choice to pick WDTV or PCH for the same price
I choosed WDTV, really the PCH looks horrible where GUI are very important to me
And the only +PCH had was Internet connectivity which isn't important to me and actually now is available for wdtv as well with Custom Firmware

This is your idea of a horrible GUI? Why, let me see your WDTV one.

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee136/CDLehner/500px-ScreenShot_MainIndex.jpg

CD

The main difference it´s the price... if you have money you can buy pch (obviously it has more features out-of-the-box, but cost a lot more), and if you want cheap 1080p HD choose WD...

I bought both last week, and they both go returned, WDTV with the lack of network support is a pain to drag a USB drive over to the tv everytime you have new content
and the menu was very boring it played Blueray rips in mkv file format just fine and passed DTS as well

I ordered a HDX1000 (same as pch) I spent the entire day trying to configure the machine, it crashed a few times while playing with the addon's like youtube, torrent search, I tried to get YAMJ so that I could see the movie covers and movie info. I never managed to get it installed, My content was installed on a MAC, and I also have a Windows machine. I tried to get the pch to work with YAMJ and it is a major pain in the but. I've modded a Xbox and got Xbox media center working in less time back in 2002,

So the end result was both machines went back and I bought a refurbished mac mini 1.83ghz for $499cdn and installed plex, I got all my movies up and running complete with a nice slideshow of all the movie titles. it plays 1080P content complete with DTS passthrough to my reciever. 1080p bluray of james bond was a little laggy due to the the network, I was trying to stream a 8gig file over wireless.


the mac mini is more money, but the way I looked at it, is time is money, and I wasted alot of time trying to configure PCH, so spend the extra money and spend more time enjoying your movies.

thats my 2 cents.

Edit: the only downside to mac mini is the lack of support of DTSHD and trueHD, but the DTS sounds pretty good for bluray rips. and I have a PS3 for those times I really want DTSHD

the only downside to mac mini is the lack of support of DTSHD and trueHD, but the DTS sounds pretty good for bluray rips. and I have a PS3 for those times I really want DTSHD

I agree with much of what you say, but the lack of HD audio is a major shortcoming--a deal-killer, in fact, for me. I've got a BD player, for when I really want to spin a disc, but most of the time rely on a networked TViX M-6500a. Yes, the native interface is fugly, but it plays BD/DVD/HDTV beautifully. (Setup was simple, too.)

I have a PS3 for those movies that I have to have HD audio, other then that for all my dvd rips over 200, and the small amount of bluray rips I have done 9 to date(time consuming process) the mac mini is a nice setup for me.

Maybe someday a mac mini will support native HDMI for audio and video and give us DTS HD Ma but for now I am happy witht the setup

Hi all,

I am currently in this exact dilema! Wether to go for the WDTV, or for the PCH which costs double!

What i want and dont want is as follows:
1. Dont need networking
2. Dont need inbuilt hdd capability
3. GUI can manage whatever it is, as long as all my files are played - audio/video/photos (I am not too fussy about the format i play, i generally use the downloaded stuff from torrents, and that is mainly avi or mkv)
4. Dont require the HD Audio for the next 2-3 years ( will anyway buy something new then)

5. WANT - fastForward function wherein i can skip to say, 30/40/50 minutes thru the movie, Many a times i see the movie half, and continue the second half some other day, so need to get to that portion faster than the 30sec ff! (i saw a demo of the WDTV with 1.01 fw, and in that i couldnt skip thru to the centre of the movie without having to ff 30 seconds all throught the movie - this is real pain.)

6. If i go for WDTV, i would be using video out thru HDMI, and audio out thru Optical coaxial, so with such setup i hope i wont get any lip sync problems???

7. Wont be needing subtitles ever, so doesnt matter if one plays it better or not.

8. WANT : vertical video size option again. (Most of the movies i see, they all get the black bars top and bottom making the viewable size smaller, so i need to stretch the movies so that it will cover the whole screen without cropping any of the movie part.

So summarising it , the Main thing i want is the faster forwarding/skipping to a certain part of a movie, which i hear the PCH does support outofthebox, while WDTV, i am not sure? Also, is the vertical video sizing.

now that i have mentioned what i need and dont, So what do you guys recommend i go for? If i can save some bucks by opting out of some features i wont use, i might as well do it, and spend more after 2.5-3 years when i will buy a new box with the latest features then prevailing.

Please help me clear this confusion! i am breaking my head over this from past one month! (In my country, there is no facility where i can buy one of them and return back if i dont like it within x no of days! so i gotta be sure i buy what i want)

Thanks!

5. WANT - fastForward function wherein i can skip to say, 30/40/50 minutes thru the movie, Many a times i see the movie half, and continue the second half some other day, so need to get to that portion faster than the 30sec ff! (i saw a demo of the WDTV with 1.01 fw, and in that i couldnt skip thru to the centre of the movie without having to ff 30 seconds all throught the movie - this is real pain.)

WD TV can skip in 10 minute intervals. Hit FF once to get 2x then use Skip forward to jump in 10 minute intervals. So there's no need to go through the whole movie at 16x.

8. WANT : vertical video size option again. (Most of the movies i see, they all get the black bars top and bottom making the viewable size smaller, so i need to stretch the movies so that it will cover the whole screen without cropping any of the movie part.

That one is tough since there's no automatic way to know how thick the black bars are in the video frames. So you'll have to trim the black bars and correct the aspect ratio yourself for each file.

-Mod

Hey Mod,
Thanks for the reply!

So you mean even the PCH doesnt have this feature?
Also, Can you please suggest any good software to do the cutting of the black bars?

Thanks!

Hey Mod,
Thanks for the reply!

So you mean even the PCH doesnt have this feature?
Also, Can you please suggest any good software to do the cutting of the black bars?

Thanks!

I don't own a PCH so I can't speak to its features.

I haven't used it but I believe Handbrake will allow you to crop the image pixels and change the aspect ratio to fit a 16:10, 16:9, or 4:3 screen, thus elliminating the black bars stored in the video frames. The image will be distorted however (a circle will look like an oval for example).

-Mod

I don't own a PCH so I can't speak to its features.

I haven't used it but I believe Handbrake will allow you to crop the image pixels and change the aspect ratio to fit a 16:10, 16:9, or 4:3 screen, thus elliminating the black bars stored in the video frames. The image will be distorted however (a circle will look like an oval for example).

-Mod

I have never seen a player that had automatic support for this and I own a bunch of them. XBMC is probably the most flexible and easiest to crop with that I can think of.

Thanks for the replies, MrMod and Sean.
Will look into the Handbrake soon.

Meanwhile, can someone please tell me more about what i should go for? Would the WDTV be just right for me, or would i be missing some important features (other than the ones i mentioned that i dont need) ?

Thanks!

learn how to rip and do what you want on a PC and then get a streamer...

you never really outlined what you wan to accomplish besides the kitchen sink. some realistic goals and compromises would make picking one easier...

I use my xboxes, duet and air port expresses for music playback. xboxes for pics and SD video. I bought a PCH for 2 reasons. 1. it was inexpensive. 2. It plays BD rips with Lossless Audio over HDMI 1.3

WD's lack of an ethernet port is just a real puzzler for me. ANy device without good network support would never be on MY list....

People can help you if they know whats important and what your willing to compromise on....

Having been doing this for a while I honestly thought the state of media players would have progressed farther in the last 5 years but it hasn't.. Hopefully in less than a year we will have a full flown capable media player running on the Nvidia ION platform powered by XBMC.

Sean

learn how to rip and do what you want on a PC and then get a streamer...

you never really outlined what you wan to accomplish besides the kitchen sink. some realistic goals and compromises would make picking one easier...

I use my xboxes, duet and air port expresses for music playback. xboxes for pics and SD video. I bought a PCH for 2 reasons. 1. it was inexpensive. 2. It plays BD rips with Lossless Audio over HDMI 1.3

WD's lack of an ethernet port is just a real puzzler for me. ANy device without good network support would never be on MY list....

People can help you if they know whats important and what your willing to compromise on....

Having been doing this for a while I honestly thought the state of media players would have progressed farther in the last 5 years but it hasn't.. Hopefully in less than a year we will have a full flown capable media player running on the Nvidia ION platform powered by XBMC.

Sean

i use the pch in my bedroom because of streaming abilities.

i use the wd player for a portable player. the external hdd i use has both usb and esata. normally, it is connected to the pc with esata. to go portable, i connect it to wd with usb.

i will probably replace the pch with an ion if those meet their potential.

Having been doing this for a while I honestly thought the state of media players would have progressed farther in the last 5 years but it hasn't.. Hopefully in less than a year we will have a full flown capable media player running on the Nvidia ION platform powered by XBMC.


You would probably enjoy a Mac Mini with Plex, which is an XBMC offshoot. After spending time with a PCH I have given that to the kids and adopted Plex as my main. It has really kicked my media streaming interest into overdrive. Now... it's not the cheapest solution for sure...

Thanks...

I have a MacMini running Plex and an ATV running boxee and XBMC in addition to the 11 xboxes running XBMC. Boxee is still just too damn buggy. It will be nice when they finally get it work correctly.

I bought a PCH to stream lossless audio which is impossible unfortunately on the mac mini.

I look forward very much to the XBMC on ION and finally getting lossless audio support with full 1080P capability all within the greatness that is XBMC.

Sean

Thanks...

I have a MacMini running Plex and an ATV running boxee and XBMC in addition to the 11 xboxes running XBMC. Boxee is still just too damn buggy. It will be nice when they finally get it work correctly.

I bought a PCH to stream lossless audio which is impossible unfortunately on the mac mini.

I look forward very much to the XBMC on ION and finally getting lossless audio support with full 1080P capability all within the greatness that is XBMC.


Hehe wow...

Yeah the mini is sucking me in, but I don't need the lossless audio. Just got my RAM in the mail today for my new 2.26 mini. Hope I can get it open ok...

Sean,

AS i had highlighted my importances in few posts above, the 8 points are what i want and dont want.

Could someone please tell me if there is any picture quality difference between the PCH and WDTV?

As i understand, the only thing better in the PCH, compared to the WDTV are:
1. Networking
2. Internal hdd provision
3. Better Remote
4. HDMI1.3

If these are the only extra with the PCH, then i think i am very happy going with the WDTV as these above mentioned 4 features i wont require, atleast not for the next 2-3 years.(then would buy something new with the latest features)

So for now, i mainly require something for good video playback in hdmi , DTS is just fine for me, will connect digital coaxil thru my Yamaha DTS receiver.

Could someone please tell me if there is any picture quality difference between the PCH and WDTV?

As i understand, the only thing better in the PCH, compared to the WDTV are:
1. Networking
2. Internal hdd provision
3. Better Remote
4. HDMI1.3


Those are only hardware differences yes. Software ofcourse is completely different. PCH supports dvd menus that WDTV doesnt. WDTV supports sub/idx that PCH still doesnt (expected future feature sometime this year or next...) etc.

Could someone please tell me if there is any picture quality difference between the PCH and WDTV?

Something I'd like to know too :)

The use the same chipset. I would expect the PQ to be very similar if not identical over HDMI. Component would be a whole different story and have no read any A/B comparisons of component output.

Sean

Hehe wow...

Yeah the mini is sucking me in, but I don't need the lossless audio. Just got my RAM in the mail today for my new 2.26 mini. Hope I can get it open ok...

I upgraded both mine to 4 gigs and it was pretty easy... I found a metal putty knife was easier than plastic. just be patient and careful. A little force is required to get the cover off and the rest is just about being delicate....

Sean

Those are only hardware differences yes. Software ofcourse is completely different. PCH supports dvd menus that WDTV doesnt. WDTV supports sub/idx that PCH still doesnt (expected future feature sometime this year or next...) etc.

PCH also has component out, which is helpful for folks with older tvs/projectors that don't have HDMI. I'd probably own WDTV if it had component out since I have an X1 projector. I am not buying PCH because I don't want to pay so much for it.