Recommendations Needed: Best non-Cinavia Media Player under $200 - Page 2

Yes, A210 can do 2D BD Iava menu. Most of the players with Sigma 8642/3 can.

AIOS's UI like most of the players using Realtek chipsets are mostly based on Realtek's UI with small amount of customization. If you don't like AIOS's UI, you are not going to be happy with most of the players use Realtek chip.

I also don't think any Realtek chip based player can do full Java menu. None Java menu may be but with Java, some player will play with lite menu and some wouldn't play at all.

As for NTV550, if you don't care to play MKV with external foreign subtitles then it is a decent player for full BD rip. but PCH A200/A210 using the same is a better choice.
Edited by PawPawDog - 12/15/12 at 11:22am

Except for Mede8er's implementation. They've set themselves apart in terms of UI, jukebox, stability and support.

the 200/300 series of PCH does not support full resolution 3d, Just side by side half resolution mkv formats. If you want full 3d playback from like an iso file you have to look at the mede8er or the a400, Right now the A400 is having issues so if you need to purchase now go mede8er

Get the Mede8er 600X3D if you don't need internal HDD capability (it's cheaper), otherwise the 1000X3D if you do. If you're stateside, these guys are great to buy from.

It'd probably be easier to list what they aren't having problems with.

NEOTV550 no jukebox, it is discontinued, and no further support.

I believe Brajesh said he was throwing his up on ebay, you should PM him to see if he still has it. DiamondHomeDesign says they expect to have some 12/21. As long as you don't expect it to work out of box and can wait months for it to, with luck, then you should be fine. The A300 still isn't fully fixed and it's been a year.

I've owned a WDTV LIve, Netgear 550, PCH A-300 & Dune Smart D1.

The WDTV coupled with B-Rad's custom firmware makes it a nice little box for the price but no BD full menu support and the GUI is slow. It just feels underpowered but will play BD ISO without a problem. B-Rad's firmware allows for web interface and NFS, FTP, etc.

The Netgear: for the money it does/did a great job with full menu support for BD ISO's. It played everything my Dune would. There aren't any good movie scrapers (free) that work natively with the 550 and the firmware is very buggy. Sometimes all of my moves would display the same poster. NFS support but not much more. As another member here pointed out; it is now EOL.

The PCH A-300; Their website is very misleading in that you think it handles BD ISO with full menu but most movies wouldn't work for me. I'd had to fall back to Lite. I had to cycle the power on the thing from time to time as it would just hang. The firmware may have solved these problems but I sold mine. I actually bought it from a guy who ditched his for the more stable C-200. the A-300 maybe played three titles with full menus out of the 60+ movies I own. Also, the A-300 (as well as the A-400 from what I'm reading on the forums) has a hard time playing BD ISO's. I had to extract them into folders for even the few that worked to actually play.

Dune Smart D1: I paid ~$250 for mine but they have since gone up to about $350 in price here in the US. It plays just about everything I through at it. I get a free app (Zappiti) to scrape my media which works fine for me. Dunes beta firmware runs stable has can be. It just works plain and simple. BD ISO with full menu support and hasn't puked on one movie I've thrown at it.

I urge you to put down the extra bucks to go with a Dune. I hear the Medi8er is a great player but I'm not sure any of them support full menus.

Save you the time and hassle of what I went through.

I plan to purchase another Dune for full menu support but haven't made my mind up on what to do about 3D content. I'd really like to have full resolution 3D but I may use a player for 3D movies. One of the reasons I'm poking around here today to see what others plan to do.

Dune's new Base 3D unit will NOT support full menus. Heck no media player will as far as I can see.

Cheers,
FTL

Thanks fasterthanlight, that was very useful info. It looks like you've used about all the players that supposedly support full menus. As I suspect the Dune is the most reliable. It's a shame they're so expensive. :-\

Yes and yes. If your interested in a jukebox it won't have an integrated view of the internal and NAS if that's important to you. Hopefully that will be an option in the future.

I've asked Micca about a jukebox, and it doesn't seem to be something that will be available in the near future.

Yes but he was talking about the Mede8er.

Well, that's easy Mede8er has their own hybrid jukebox YAMJ2Mede8er. I believer they are working on getting some other jukeboxes to work for them such as My Movies and Yadis. I believer their TV Show support is lacking though.

Hence my statement "Hopefully that will be an option in the future."

From what I've read Synology has some issue streaming 3D movies.

Can you be more specific (please)?

MED450X then. Cheaper than the 3D models and gets you what you want.

I was using a Synology 212j to stream 3d without a problem.

I have a Synology 812 which streams 3D to Mede8er X3D over SMB perfectly. While the NFS packet size has been corrected, if your network is setup well there should not be need for NFS.

Does Mede8er work well with JRiver?

Do the mede8er boxes do forced subs correctly? I'm thinking mostly of mkv format with embedded subs, but I suppose I could use something else if it's supported. If so I think the MED450X2 is the device for me.

I can't believe how hard it has been to find a device that will just play blu-ray rips in full HD video and audio from networked storage without spending $300+.

To PillPu$her, does the WD Live do DTS-MA with the B-Rad firmware? It doesn't natively