I have spent the last few days screening this forum and boy do I have a headache: WD TV, Pop Corn Hour, Niveus, ... with a wide range of costs.

My needs are fairly simple. I struggled to find the one machine that can do them all.

I have a huge collection of photos, music, DVDs, and home videos.

DVDs
My collection of 200+ DVDs has been ripped into TS_Video and TS_Audio folders. The device needs to be able to use DVD menus with all the navigation capabilities.

Same goes for home made movies. I have spent the last few years digitizing all the family/vacation/birthday movies, and burned them onto DVDs with all the menu structures, transitions, background audios, ...

Music
I have thousands of mp3 files and as such have spent great deal of time creating playlists for different occasions and moods. The new device needs to understand and play those playlists.

Photos
I have created tens of slideshows with transitions, background music, titles, ... that have been burnt on DVDs. Also all photos have been carefully tagged and need those tags to be understood by the device.

So basically what ever I can do on my PC today should be done by the new device with a very easy to use interface so my wife and kids can use it.

Niveus said they can do all that with their new ZONE player or RainierHD through Niveus Movie Library. Surprisingly I have found very few threads in all of AVSForum about Niveus.


Thank you.

As far as I know the Niveus products are just amped up PC's with a fancy interface which is why they are not discussed here. You could assemble one cheaper yourself by using the advice in the HTPC forums here on AVS. All you need is a properly spec'd PC and use one of the nice fancy HTPC frontend's on it.

As far as a pure streamer none of them will do everything you want because of your Photo requirements. If you want to view pictures in a folder or via a playlist most can do that. Reading and understanding the tags on the photos...err no. If you want to give that up then we can help you but in any case the WDTV or the PCH will require you to do some hacking (either firmware or add on software) to the products out of the box to achieve what you are looking for.

Laters,
Jeff

I have spent the last few days screening this forum and boy do I have a headache: WD TV, Pop Corn Hour, Niveus, ... with a wide range of costs.

My needs are fairly simple. I struggled to find the one machine that can do them all.

I have a huge collection of photos, music, DVDs, and home videos.

DVDs
My collection of 200+ DVDs has been ripped into TS_Video and TS_Audio folders. The device needs to be able to use DVD menus with all the navigation capabilities.

Same goes for home made movies. I have spent the last few years digitizing all the family/vacation/birthday movies, and burned them onto DVDs with all the menu structures, transitions, background audios, ...

Music
I have thousands of mp3 files and as such have spent great deal of time creating playlists for different occasions and moods. The new device needs to understand and play those playlists.

Photos
I have created tens of slideshows with transitions, background music, titles, ... that have been burnt on DVDs. Also all photos have been carefully tagged and need those tags to be understood by the device.

So basically what ever I can do on my PC today should be done by the new device with a very easy to use interface so my wife and kids can use it.

Niveus said they can do all that with their new ZONE player or RainierHD through Niveus Movie Library. Surprisingly I have found very few threads in all of AVSForum about Niveus.


Thank you.


Its simple. you want a PC hooked to your TV. Aka HTPC

Niveus is an HTPC of which there are many....

Sean

So basically what ever I can do on my PC today should be done by the new device with a very easy to use interface so my wife and kids can use it.


Basically you do not want a PC, however you need to store this information somwhere...and herein lies the cost. A decent capacity NAS will cost about 600 to 800 pounds sterling, a player about £150 to 300.

Setup is very simple with most NASs and Players, but you need to hide the NAS as they all make a lot of noise...players are reasonably silent.

Its simple. you want a PC hooked to your TV. Aka HTPC

Niveus is an HTPC of which there are many....

Sean

Yes ignore the post above this you need an HTPC, Home Theatre PC. Theres a forum here about.If your just looking to play dvd's and not HD content you could build a very cheap pc because you won't need much power.

Even if you want it to do HD it doesn't need to be that expensive.