HDD Media Players - Any recommendations?

[DVantrease]

Hi, I just learned about these HDD (harddrive) Media Players. I want to get one, but with so many available, I'm looking for recommendations. If not exact models, at least post some features I should look for so I can decide. A few notes:

I really don't want to spend more than about $60 (plus the harddrive).

I've seen some for 2.5", 3.5", IDE and SATA drives. I am flexible on this, as I will need to buy a new harddrive for it anyways. I probably won't get a 2.5", because although they are smaller, and the media players can be had for around $35, the HDD's seem to be more expensive than the 3.5", plus the cheaper 2.5" players generally don't have a cooling fan, which I think is important (I heard they run hot). As far as 3.5" IDE vs SATA, they seem to cost about the same and I don't really know the difference.

I also want one with at least S-Video output. I'm no expert in this, but it's my understanding that S-Video is a cleaner signal than RCA (is it also the same resolution?). I currently don't have an HD TV, so S-Video will do for now.

As for video playback, I'm still reading some posts about this. I read some players have trouble with divx 6.x videos, is that true? If so, then I would need to re-encode everything, correct? That would be nice to avoid if possible, but not that big of a deal. I would love to hear from someone who actually has experience with one of these players, and tell me exactly what settings you use when encoding avi's from DVD (ie what codec, what resolution, etc).

Any other information would be GREATLY appreciated! These devices look really cool on the surface, especially if they work like advertised, but I'd like to know the good and the bad of them. Oh fyi, I'm probably looking at about a 250GB HDD, not sure how many movies / tv shows I can get on there.

Thanks!

[redwudz]

Divx 6 is esentially the same as Divx 5, but with added features like menus, etc., that emulate a regular DVD format. Those features are unlikely to work unless the drive is Divx Ultra certified. But otherwise Divx 6 should work with no problems.

A few players:

http://www.meritline.com/mpeg4-divx-video-playing-enclosure.html
http://www.cooldrives.com/macpowercases.html
http://www.firewiremax.com/divxplayers.html
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=95999

[jman98]

The less you pay, the less you should expect from these players. Don't expect miracles, nor should you expect that these cheap players will necessarily play every Divx file you have. Things like QPel, GMC and packed bit stream can be problematic, not to mention potential issues with video bit rates and various audio issues (ie. they may not play DTS unless the video bit rate is low, VBR MP3 may go out of sync, etc.).