Pick me a media extender

amoryaamorya
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I currently have an AppleTV which I have hacked to make it fit for my needs. However, the end result is not as good as I had hoped: in particular there are often freezes in the UI for up to 30 seconds. (This happens mostly when using the hacked plugins, but also when using the original Apple software to browse one iTunes library that is very large. I think the AppleTV struggles to stream stuff from a >100GB library.)



I'm not interested in the arguments about what the AppleTV is supposed to do, or what Apple want it to do. I know my requirements and want a product to meet them. Please don't try and tell me that the things I want are wrong.



I'm after device suggestions that do the following things:



Required
  • Plays popular codecs (H264, DivX, MPEG-2, Theora)

  • Plays popular container formats (AVI, MKV, OGM, .mov)

  • Plays media mounted over SMB. (This can be through a file browser, or through a library/metadata system that indexes the remote drive... as long as the indexing is done automatically and doesn't require a manual refresh.)

  • Is navigated by a remote control

  • Plays YouTube, including a search interface

  • Network mounts must be set up using a GUI on the device.

  • Subtitles support

I'd quite like:
  • A searchable video library, that is an aggregate of all the SMB shares we have set up. (As mentioned above, this must auto-update. I don't want to have to hit a refresh button just to see some changes.)

  • Metadata, pulled from IMDB or wherever. Show me my TV shows split by season, and get me the episode titles.

  • iTunes music support (so I can browse songs on the device from our iTunes libraries around the house). Bonus points if it aggregates these too, rather than having to specify one single library.

  • Keeping track of which episodes have been watched

  • Uses the iPhone keyboard for typing, like AppleTV. I could write this myself if the device has an open API.

I DON'T need:
  • Anything US-only like Hulu. No use to me I'm afraid!

  • DVR functionality. I don't watch TV much, and am considering getting rid of my TV licence.

  • An online rental service. I'd probably use it if it was there, but it's not a factor in me choosing a device.

So, what should I do? I know some people here regard hacking the AppleTV as bad because it does what it's meant to do... do you have any suggestions of a better device to meet my needs?



I have considered transcoding everything for AppleTV, but I haven't found a decent program to do it. (It must do batch converting, as I'm not about to sit there feeding in each file.) That would still be a big annoyance, though, so I'd prefer something that plays everything. A hacked AppleTV isn't too bad at playing stuff, but fails at a H264/MKV combination. (Even if I put the H264 stream into a .mov, it still chokes: I guess the bitrate is too high. They tend to be about 1024x540 or so, so they're not quite HD...)



Amorya

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    djames42djames42 Posts: 298member
    You might be interested in Popcorn Hour. I haven't personally used one, but a friend of mine has the original A-100 and says it plays every format he can find (and does have support for some Internet content. Via Bonjour, it probably can see your iTunes library, but obviously nothing (other than Apple products) are going to play your protected content.



    The only con I can think of is that (out-of-the-box) it requires ethernet. They do have a bundle with a USB WiFi dongle, however. It also supports external drives (via USB) and you can slap any SATA drive inside the box as well.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    amoryaamorya Posts: 1,103member
    Oooh, that looks quite promising. Has anyone used one? How reliable is the SMB connection? (I.e. if the computer it's connected to goes to sleep, can it pick up where it left off when it wakes up again?)



    Amorya
  • Reply 3 of 4
    amoryaamorya Posts: 1,103member
    Hmmm... I guess it would require me to remake some of my files -- I have everything in .mov containers (even WMV), and it seems to only support H264 in .mov. Could be worse though... at least I wouldn't have to reencode.



    Amorya
  • Reply 4 of 4
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Amorya View Post


    I currently have an AppleTV which I have hacked to make it fit for my needs. However, the end result is not as good as I had hoped: in particular there are often freezes in the UI for up to 30 seconds. (This happens mostly when using the hacked plugins, but also when using the original Apple software to browse one iTunes library that is very large. I think the AppleTV struggles to stream stuff from a >100GB library.)



    Amorya



    I am using the AppleTV with Boxee.

    My library is a lot bigger than 100GB. Lots of TV and Movies.

    I am streaming via 802.11n @ 5GHz



    I don't get lock-ups and the experience is good.... But not great.

    There are three main problems.



    1) Boxee's interface is not particularly well written. Each cover thumbnail seems to use about a megabyte of memory - which is immensely wasteful and causes the interface to be sluggish. Boxee are supposed to be re-writing the interface. Fingers crossed.



    2) 720p playback sometimes lags. This is the Boxee software player. It's less efficient that Quicktime. There are quicktime-based media extender software. But they don't do the nice metadata stuff that Boxee does automatically.



    3) The AppleTV processor isn't that great.

    This might be the deal breaker. The AppleTV is good enough for 720p (at 24fps) - but some containers and some bit rates will break it. If you want a player that can cope with *anything*, you need something that is as fast as a Mac Mini.



    The only other alternative is to transcode movies to fit the device. I transcode everything using Visual Hub.



    C.
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