Netbook or tablet as HDMI-out media player? (For everything)

[Asterra]

(This will be a bit long-winded. Apologies.)

The time has come to think about investing in a solution to my media woes. What woes are those, you ask? I shall outline common problems:

1) Most of my Bluray movies are in semi-permanent storage, or difficult to locate in their unorganized piles. Nevertheless, I also keep them on hard drives, which is far more convenient.. until it's time to bring one to the parents' house so everyone can watch it.
2) A great deal of the videos in my collection are in MKV format. Pretty much the only thing that can play MKV files is a computer of some sort. Converting them / preparing them for the PS3 is a huge hassle which often fails utterly, for reasons which are never pinned down.
3) A great deal of the DVDs in my collection are PAL. Once again, the PS3 cannot play these, which means whenever I want to bring one of these DVDs along, I also have to pack up my Xbox 360 (which CAN play them, thank you very much).

See the pattern? I need something that will enable me to just take one bit of apparatus along and basically plug & play whatever the heck I want. The less hassle, the better.

Now I'd better outline the particulars of what I'm looking for. In essence, if I cannot achieve all of what follows, then I will just continue to wait for the day when it is, in fact, possible.

A) HDMI output, all standardized resolutions, including interlaced modes, plus 1080p59.94, 4:4:4 color (no subsampling to 4:2:2). Also including PAL modes at 50Hz. Some examples: 1) PAL DVD via external drive. Would need to be able to choose between native 25Hz and movie-native 23.976Hz like the famous "PAL TruSpeed" in WinDVD. 2) Say I've got a hd video which is encoded at 1456x1080 (this has happened). Somehow, this would need to be output at 1920x1080 with appropriate black bars, in order to maintain compatibility with home theater equipment.

B) Enough power to play just about anything I throw at it, including Bluray ISOs, both from an external BD drive (or other USB-based solution) and from internal storage.

C) Audio streams handled without issue (either passed along via HDMI or decoded into 2.0 or 5.1 or 7.1 PCM).

D) Above all, playback must be seamless. What do I mean by this? I will answer by providing two contrasting examples. You put a disc in a DVD player or a Bluray player, and you expect the entire experience to be flawless from beginning to end. No skipped frames, no hiccups, no vsync tearing. If you experience anything wrong, your first impulse is to check the disc for problems because the hardware playing the disc is all but guaranteed to be innocent. By contrast, if you play any kind of video in a Windows environment (and I can only speak for myself and the 100+ Windows installations I've dealt with), you expect the occasional frame hiccup, the vsync issues, etc., or at the very least you are completely unsurprised when they happen, or when the motion of the video fails to be silky-smooth. What I am looking for is video playback which mimics the performance of dedicated hardware like DVD player or a PS3/360. If this cannot be achieved, just what is the point?

Now I'd like to put all this into perspective. A PS3 could do all of this if only the platform were more open, and it's currently $250 new. I'm told that any netbook with the AMD c-50 CPU in it has enough power to play Bluray movies, and those can be had for under $300 easily. (The validity of this assertion has not been tested, and the point may be moot since I would question whether seamless output could ever be had from a Windows platform.) What I'm saying is that even though I'm looking for a more or less perfect portable media solution, I certainly do not expect to need to pay gobs of cash for it. I'm not looking for any bells or whistles. If it can handle the above criteria without issue and as simply as possible, it wins.

Thanks for reading in any event!

[Baldrick]

WHY would it work better with a netbook or tablet? They are still using windows or linux(Yes, you will get same problems with video in it too....vsync, tearing, etc). They are not designed for best video output as blu-ray/dvd players.


And I recommend http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26 . But I have given up finding the best portable media solution...

[epsilonalpha]

Netbook with madvr, though finding netbook which is powerful enough for madvr would be kind of problem itself.

[Asterra]

WHY would it work better with a netbook or tablet?

Never said I believed it would. I was merely putting out feelers for options, because of the frustrations I outlined in my post (particularly the PS3's shortcomings). I would still very much like to believe there could be a portable solution out there which fits my criteria, but if you yourself have particularly been looking for such a thing without success, that pretty much ends that.

[Asterra]

Netbook with madvr, though finding netbook which is powerful enough for madvr would be kind of problem itself.

A little off-topic, but I had issues with madvr and had to switch back to VMR-9 (renderless). Specifically, I have tearing at the bottom of every video I play, and this can only be solved by MPC-HC's various vsync options, specifically including "alternative vsync". Without those on, I get the tearing. And using madvr, I can't enable any of the vsync options.

Considering that the point behind madvr's enhanced requirements seems to have been to ensure a more solid playback, let's just say I was not impressed.

[jagabo]

Your "seemless" option is a fantasy. You will find nothing that plays all video types without an occasional problem. I don't know why you need 4:4:4 chroma -- almost all your sources are 4:2:0. RGB is useful for the UI.

Your best bet is a standalone media player: http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

Pretty much all better ones play MKV files. Many play DVD and Blu-ray ISO files without menus, some with.

[neomaine]

I was going to say the same as jagabo. Grab a WDTV Live (Streaming is latest version) put whatever you want to watch on a USB thumb drive (32gb would fit most BD movies) or an external hard drive.

- Copy movie(s) to thumb hard drive.
- Pack up drive and WDTV.
- Go to party.
- Plug in drive to WDTV.
- Plug in WDTV to HDTV.
- Party on.

[TBoneit]

Or get the Western Digital Live Hub with the 1Tb internal drive. Less things to carry. Plus it can also take two USB drives, I've used 2Tb externals with no problems. That gave me 5Tb local storage on it. The remote is nicer than the other models from WD.

It also plays video over the network from my NAS drives.

You can load video onto it from USB or over the network which is how I do it.

[epsilonalpha]

Netbook with madvr, though finding netbook which is powerful enough for madvr would be kind of problem itself.

A little off-topic, but I had issues with madvr and had to switch back to VMR-9 (renderless). Specifically, I have tearing at the bottom of every video I play, and this can only be solved by MPC-HC's various vsync options, specifically including "alternative vsync". Without those on, I get the tearing. And using madvr, I can't enable any of the vsync options.

Considering that the point behind madvr's enhanced requirements seems to have been to ensure a more solid playback, let's just say I was not impressed.

That's usually because of driver problem, what's your GPU? when it work, madvr is golden (I never had it not work).

[Asterra]

Your "seemless" option is a fantasy. You will find nothing that plays all video types without an occasional problem.

Eh. I suppose "occasional problem" is relative. If, for example, I limited my videos to whatever the PS3 can play without any conversion, then I would consider that to be seamless. Surely a media player doesn't suffer more issues than a PS3.

I don't know why you need 4:4:4 chroma -- almost all your sources are 4:2:0. RGB is useful for the UI.

Some of my sources (PC- or gaming console-originated videos that I create myself) will be 4:4:4. Plus, on a lesser note, it's a personal thing. It's like a litmus test. If the maker of the hardware decided to be pointlessly cheap in one way (such as a TV manufacturer subsampling chroma on their "PC-compatible" displays), then why should I trust them with regard to the other aspects of their product?

Your best bet is a standalone media player: http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

Pretty much all better ones play MKV files. Many play DVD and Blu-ray ISO files without menus, some with.

Two words: Holy crap. That's a lot of media players. I may have my work cut out for me. Although I suppose it'll be easy to narrow it down, since it looks like almost none (or perhaps none) of them are able to play Bluray menus without a hitch.

[Asterra]

Specifically, I have tearing at the bottom of every video I play, and this can only be solved by MPC-HC's various vsync options, specifically including "alternative vsync". Without those on, I get the tearing. And using madvr, I can't enable any of the vsync options.

That's usually because of driver problem, what's your GPU? when it work, madvr is golden (I never had it not work).

A single ATI Radeon 6870. Whether it's the drivers or not, changing them to any of a half dozen prior revisions did nothing to fix the problem, and it's true that this specific issue isn't seen on any of my friends' PCs (although it is a common issue with plenty of discussion). The only true solution, beyond what MPC-HC enables, is to abandon this card, which I was close to doing, until Battlefield 3 ended up being packaged with spyware, at which point I no longer cared. ;p

[TBoneit]

Your "seemless" option is a fantasy. You will find nothing that plays all video types without an occasional problem.

Eh. I suppose "occasional problem" is relative. If, for example, I limited my videos to whatever the PS3 can play without any conversion, then I would consider that to be seamless. Surely a media player doesn't suffer more issues than a PS3.

I don't know why you need 4:4:4 chroma -- almost all your sources are 4:2:0. RGB is useful for the UI.

Some of my sources (PC- or gaming console-originated videos that I create myself) will be 4:4:4. Plus, on a lesser note, it's a personal thing. It's like a litmus test. If the maker of the hardware decided to be pointlessly cheap in one way (such as a TV manufacturer subsampling chroma on their "PC-compatible" displays), then why should I trust them with regard to the other aspects of their product?

Your best bet is a standalone media player: http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

Pretty much all better ones play MKV files. Many play DVD and Blu-ray ISO files without menus, some with.

Two words: Holy crap. That's a lot of media players. I may have my work cut out for me. Although I suppose it'll be easy to narrow it down, since it looks like almost none (or perhaps none) of them are able to play Bluray menus without a hitch.

Since 4:4:4 is your holy grail, your litmus test and finding something that works easily and without needing constant attention is a must. Then I suggest getting a Gaming laptop that can support what you want.

I would not expect any stand alone device to support what you want. The fact that many of them play most video with no problems.....................

They all have some problem. MY LG BluRay player plays MKVs off of my NAS drives. It just navigates too slow for me so I use the WD Live Hub. Much snappier and it also does Netflix just like the LG.

I convert BluRay to MKV for my media player of just play the raw Video from it. It also plays My HD Captures. However I'm pretty sure no BluRay menus. Not needed for me of course.

[jagabo]

WDTV Live supports RGB output but it doesn't play uncompressed RGB, any codecs that work in RGB, or any YUV 4:4:4 codecs that I know of. No Blu-ray menu support either. And it has a lot of quirks.

[TBoneit]

WDTV Live supports RGB output but it doesn't play uncompressed RGB, any codecs that work in RGB, or any YUV 4:4:4 codecs that I know of. No Blu-ray menu support either. And it has a lot of quirks.

Are you talking Live, Live Plus or Live Hub?

It plays most everything I feed it and that works for me. What media player will do what the OP wants? Any?

Going back to the original post We see
"
1) Most of my Bluray movies are in semi-permanent storage, or difficult to locate in their unorganized piles. Nevertheless, I also keep them on hard drives, which is far more convenient.. until it's time to bring one to the parents' house so everyone can watch it.
2) A great deal of the videos in my collection are in MKV format. Pretty much the only thing that can play MKV files is a computer of some sort. Converting them / preparing them for the PS3 is a huge hassle which often fails utterly, for reasons which are never pinned down.
3) A great deal of the DVDs in my collection are PAL."

For those a live hub with the internal 1Tb would seem to fit.

[jagabo]

WDTV Live supports RGB output but it doesn't play uncompressed RGB, any codecs that work in RGB, or any YUV 4:4:4 codecs that I know of. No Blu-ray menu support either. And it has a lot of quirks.

Are you talking Live, Live Plus or Live Hub?

I have the WDTV Live. Not the original WDTV, the Live Plus, or the Live Hub.

It plays most everything I feed it and that works for me.

Try uncomrpessed RGB, YUY2, and YV12 in AVI. HuffYUV, Lagarith, DV, MJPEG. Of those, uncompressed RGB, HuffYUV, Lagarith, and MJPEG are the ones capable of maintaining 4:4:4 color.

[TBoneit]

WDTV Live supports RGB output but it doesn't play uncompressed RGB, any codecs that work in RGB, or any YUV 4:4:4 codecs that I know of. No Blu-ray menu support either. And it has a lot of quirks.

Are you talking Live, Live Plus or Live Hub?

I have the WDTV Live. Not the original WDTV, the Live Plus, or the Live Hub.

It plays most everything I feed it and that works for me.

Try uncomrpessed RGB, YUY2, and YV12 in AVI. HuffYUV, Lagarith, DV, MJPEG. Of those, uncompressed RGB, HuffYUV, Lagarith, and MJPEG are the ones capable of maintaining 4:4:4 color.

I'll not disagree with you.
My only real point was the Live Hub has internal storage plays MKVs and is easily portable. Main unit, power brick, and remote. Better remote than the older models BTW. Since one the OPs points was easy to take somewhere and use......

How many inexpensive HDTV sets, What I can afford anyway, can really show off the difference in video using those high quality settings such as 4:4:4 color?

Much of what I watch is probably not top quality to start with. As nice a job as the HD PVR does it can not be capturing as good a quality as I feed it. But it looks good to me so that is what matters.

I only have 7 BluRay movies and they do look good however the Cinemax broadcasts of the same movie are nearly as good.

I have a DVD Recorder with Hard Drive and recording with it from a HD channel doesn't look that bad. Neither do Store bought DVDs. I guess my TV set or eyes are not discriminating enough.

Bottom lining it I suspect that there are no media players that will meet the OPS needs and since the one thing that can always play anything is not seamless enough for him a computer won't do either. Catch 22.

Occam's Razor could be applied in a way as being choose the easiest method. Media players need periodic replacement for new features and computers need updating when used as a media player.

Cheers

[jagabo]

How many inexpensive HDTV sets, What I can afford anyway, can really show off the difference in video using those high quality settings such as 4:4:4 color?

Pretty much any HDTV with pixel-for-pixel mapping can show the difference between 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:1:1, and 4:2:0 color if you get up close and are displaying the right material.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/294144-Viewing-tests-and-sample-files?p=1792760&vie...=1#post1792760

(Be sure you monitor is set up wiht pixel-for-pixel mapping if you want to see the differences in those images.)

Much of what I watch is probably not top quality to start with.

I watch a lot of stuff from all around the world. A lot of it is low resolution and low quality. I don't mind.

I have a DVD Recorder with Hard Drive and recording with it from a HD channel doesn't look that bad. Neither do Store bought DVDs. I guess my TV set or eyes are not discriminating enough.

I watch HD channels whenever the same show is on both HD and SD. But I switched my NetFlix account back to DVD/streaming only to save a few bucks. If the movie is good it doesn't really matter if it's HD or SD. Yes, I can see the difference, it's just not that important.

Bottom lining it I suspect that there are no media players that will meet the OPS needs

I agree the OPs requirements are unrealistic and there are no players that will meet them all.

[handyguy]

I like to do it with my laptop, got a 30' hdmi cable on Amazon for under $10. TV & laptop 'talk' to each other so no settings to change. Can then play anything on my TV that way. No limits with hulu not being able to play on computer. You can get Boxee free & put that on your laptop too.