AppleTV vs Alternates
 

Hey Guys..

Long time, no post!

Just a question for the sound techies out there as I'm looking to purchase something to stream media from my PC to my TV/Stereo system in the lounge wirelessly.

I know the limitations of the AppleTV, in that it can only work with certain codecs for video, etc etc, but otherwise is a very versatile wee box.

Are there any other alternates, such as Media PC's that people think are better?

Personally, I'd love to have the ability to record to hard disk from TV, stream YouTube clips, stream all my video clips from my PC, potentially browse the internet on my main TV in the lounge and do it all digitally (HDMI with Optical/Coaxial Digital audio)

Has anyone implemented this type of solution in their homes? Any suggestions of best tech to use?

On the whole, AppleTV does what I want, it's just the nice to haves that I'm wondering about.

Thanks for the help

Haydos.

I think all of that can now, or in the near future, be done by a PS3.

Get a MacMini and you can install the AppleTV software on it and still utilise the base OS for all your other requirements !

imo what sucks about the mac mini option is it doesn't have support for playing Blue ray/HD-DVD disks, and won't quite have enough grunt for playing /recording 1080i freeview/sky streams glitch free with EyeTV.

Possibly a silly question, but would one of the Xbox360 HD-DVD drives work with a mini?

No experience myself but my guess is possibly as a drive it might work, but not for playback. OSX doesn't have the secure path DRM shit vista has for that, and apparently it will be a 10.x style update before it will.

PS3 works fine for this type of stuff.

Reason I ask is because one of the DVDPlayer.app updates in 10.4.x was listed as adding support for HD-DVD

yeah there's "HD" options in DVD player. Afaik it's for playing back HD content you've authored yourself, rather than bought movies. But I could be wrong.

For me blueray/HD disk support is the one missing part of the apple multimedia setup. They seem to think people will prefer to download HD rentals with AppleTV. That might work in the US, but here a 720p movie is ~1/2 of the average person's monthly download, it's a joke. Because they are so out of whack on this, I'm thinking the best option for HD movies on the mac is to put a blue ray drive into the hackintosh and rip the disks to watch them.

hey mate.

im selling my media player.

it runs media portal.

downloads schedules, can queue recordings, episodes etc. running mysql backend as well so u can load a client on any other pc on the network and watch said tv streams as well as any media on the box, including movie trailers from apple youtube etc..

its a xp2000+ cpu, 792megs of DDR, 600GIG of space. pvr150 haupaige tv tuner / encoder, also has hacked UHF sky running primo as well. used it as the everyday media box watching 24-7 tv etc for the flat. comes with mce remote. make a offer its yours.

I had an old system very much like Rockets also running MediaPortal.

Replaced it with a reasonably grunty machine to play every media format there is. Blu-ray/HD-DVD/DVD, stream HD MKV's/Divx etc as well as recording and viewing TV via Freeview satellite.

Rig cost $1000 all up, reusing 2 old HDD's (total 180GB) and my DVB-S (satellite) tuner card.

Considering I can pull out the wireless keyboard and mouse and use it like a normal PC - it was well worth the price over an AppleTV or PS3.

MediaPortal is what I would definitly recommend over one of these pre-built systems. So solid, so well built and so easily expandable with plug-ins.

If you get an Apple TV check this out http://www.applecorellc.com/

aTV Flash - Ver. 3.0

Key Features:
- Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more)
- Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them
- Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files
- Browse the web with a Safari based web browser
- Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com
- Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers
- View local weather forecasts
- View RSS Feeds
- Enable SSH access
- All original Apple TV features remain intact
- And much, much more...

Supported Codecs:
# AVI, DivX, Xvid, and FLV
# MKV formats supported up to 480p resolution (hardware limited)
# MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), MPEG Layer II Audio
# AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
# Subtitle support for SSA and SRT

That's exactly what I need! Thanks mate.

Was considering HT PC but I wouldn't use the features of it and it's just more hardware to maintain.

Will buy the AppleTV tomorrow and then try to find a guy with a Mac I can use to flash it.

centerstage mac (free)
http://centerstageproject.com/

itheater mac (free)
http://www.itheaterproject.com/

MediaCentral mac (commercial)
http://www.equinux.com/us/products/m...ral/index.html

OSXBMC mac (free) port of xbmc to mac
http://www.osxbmc.com/