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Retire XBMC replace with a Blue-Ray or other device?

post #1 of 8
11/11/09 at 8:35am
Thread Starter 
Newbie here. I'm wondering if there's either a network-able Blue Ray Player or some other sort of Media Player that would let me retire my Xbox media Player? I want to be able to use the device to play Blue-Ray discs and access and play all kinds of video formats in my video library (including Blue Ray or HD files), which are on a computer on my home hardwired cat5 network.

A plus would also be the ability to access and play Hulu and other similar content on the net.

Does such a device exist?
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post #2 of 8
11/11/09 at 9:39am
Retire the Xbox, but not XBMC. Nothing else has a UI or playback engine that's half as good.

You can build a full-on HTPC, or go with a small ION nettop like the Revo. Either one will allow for full 1080p BD rip playback.
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post #3 of 8
11/11/09 at 11:32am
Thread Starter 
Thanks. Your reply just had me reading for an hour about that Revo, the 10 page thread. It doesn't look like its exactly plug and play yet, oh well.

I guess I'm looking for the ideal device that isn't built yet. My expertise isn't sufficient to do alot of hacking-- not much more than putting XBMC on the Xbox with a step by step instruction. I'm willing to hack and tweak for a few hours, but then I get frustrated.
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post #4 of 8
11/11/09 at 1:52pm
honestly I find XBMC better than plex and far more stable....

if you build a fast enough machine and dont have to worry about GPU accelleration. C2D 3.0 Ghz will do the trick and dont care about HDMI audio then you can build something relatively cheaply and easily.

You can always buy a pre-configured HTPC for 1500-2500 that will save you the hacking....

if you want something that plays a lot of videos but does not have the nice interface you can always try something like PCH A-110. Its cheap, it plays 1080P with HD Audio. Its a crappy photo player and music player and it crashes far too often but you can have it up and running in a hour.

Sean
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post #5 of 8
11/11/09 at 2:51pm
its getting really close that you will be able to just load it up on a windows machine and just let it fly... I'm hoping soon, I have 2 boxes I need to replace soon as well... they are dying left and right.... lost 2 in the last year, and I'm expecting the others to be gone next year..
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post #6 of 8
11/11/09 at 2:55pm
close but no cigar....

HDMI audio is still an issue in general....

lack of HD Audio support is the main thing that will keep me from retiring the PCH A-110.

all you guys are talking about video here....

has anyone tried to see if on the ION under windows you can play 44.1Khz and get 44.1khz versus 48hz. Has anyone tried to play and see if it will output a 24bit 88Khz or even a 24bit 192Khz recording... HDMI is certainly capable of this. no PAP is required. but does it work. certainly does not on 09.04.1 XBMC Live. Maybe camelot will hold better luck....

Sean
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post #7 of 8
11/12/09 at 2:58pm
Dell just put up the order page for its new Zino HD today. Still waiting to hear from the one guy in the thread who has one to see if it will do HD flash streaming or not. It will definitely do 1080p blu-ray and h.264 MKV.

At just over $300 with a ATI 4330 GPU ($400 with blu-ray), this should be a serious consideration. It won't bitstream HD audio (no PAP), but the 4330 is capable of 7.1 LPCM.
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post #8 of 8
11/12/09 at 5:11pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by candre23 View Post

Dell just put up the order page for its new Zino HD today. Still waiting to hear from the one guy in the thread who has one to see if it will do HD flash streaming or not. It will definitely do 1080p blu-ray and h.264 MKV.

At just over $300 with a ATI 4330 GPU ($400 with blu-ray), this should be a serious consideration. It won't bitstream HD audio (no PAP), but the 4330 is capable of 7.1 LPCM.

Help me understand, for the layman, whats up with the HD audio issue. So some of these devices use the HDMI to pass along video, but not the audio? What does it take to pass audio along with the HDMI cable? Lastly, what workarounds do we use to get things like Dolby 5.1 or 7.1? Are the workarounds any less of a result?
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