Comments on: Is there a future for £100+ media players?

By: Nigel

Nigel — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:59:17 +0000

Well, yes, there will be people who do that – but that is the ‘geek’ end of things. A small number of companies will make a modest living out of that, but I don’t think it’ll be a big part of the market.

For most people, the WD TV Live, or the Viewsonic VMP74 and similar bits of kit will do just fine.

Boxee may get the tech crowd chattering, but without lots of great content, it’s hard to see what makes it worth the extra £100 for most people.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:04:14 +0000

The Samsung TV I have (8000 series from 2009) works pretty well for playing back MKV files, but severely lacks the tweakability factor I’m used to in XBMC. It’s a shame that Samsung et al, seem resistant to people coding up firmware modifications, whereas the Topfield PVR encouraged it via the use of TAPs.

In spite of this, the SamyGo firmware project is making good progress adding in extra features to the Samsung TV media player.. adding support for DTS and embedded subtitles. You just run a small risk of bricking your TV, and certainly void the warranty, which is why I’ve avoided it so far. In fact, I think I’d rather spend ~100 on a WDTV Live and know it covers off a lot more formats.

I think there is a market for > 100 media players if that means building a mini-itx system and loading XBMC onto it. That box can act as your NAS as well as probably the best media player there is

By: Alastair

Alastair — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:23:58 +0000

The most frustrating thing about media streaming on the more ‘mainstream’ devices (e.g. TVs, PVRs and Blu-Ray players) is that it can be very difficult to know exactly what formats will be supported.

I recently considered buying the Sony BDPS370 but had to trawl through forums to find out if the media streaming was any good. In the end I decided that it probably wouldn’t play a lot of the media I have so went for the WD TV Live instead.