Help buying hardware for TV?

[pascal01]

Hello,

Here is my problem and hopefully I can finally be done with it lol. I want to buy piece of hardware to play my collection of movies on my TV, but I have a wide arrange of formats, so is there anyway that can someone point me to the right piece of hardware that can support the most video formats available? And here is my other issue, I need to be able to add soft subtitles to the movies in question. I bought a Roku XS, but it is not doing the job, and I dont wanna waste more money on something that is not going to work property.

I know that the best option would be to connect a computer directly to my TV, but lets just say that this is out of the question. Is there anything out there that does what I am asking? Load a movie into the USB with some subtitles file in it, connect it to the device and bam is done. Let just say something like VLC in a little box that is basically what I need. lol

Please any help will be appreciated, I am tired of searching, trying to stream, using useless hardware, converting video files for the right media streaming application.

[sanlyn]

You don't say what formats your collection uses. But let's be reasonable: no one makes an outboard connect-to-tv DVD or BD device that plays everything a PC can play. You also stated that connecting your PC to your TV would be "the best way", but it isn't. One thing you can do to enable your PC to play bigger-n-better is to get a bigger-n-better PC monitor and load your PC with every player and codec you can get your hands on.

AFAIK the best performance and widest "legal" DVD/BD player for multiple formats and various conmnection schemes is from Oppo: http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-103/ . It's possible you might find something better (spend more, get a little more). It's likely that you'll find a whole lot of stuff that offers less (spend less, get the usual junk).

[pascal01]

OK, let me clarify a little more then. More standard formats like avi, mov, mpeg, mkv, wmv, mp4 with the ability to add soft subtitles srt, sub, etc easily, connect my usb to the device and done. I'm not interested in streaming, wifi connectivity, unnecessary features. I know I can easily buy a newer TV, but I am just looking for maybe a bluray player that does what Im asking without hustle and good video format support at least the best possible, and relatively cheaper than buying a little laptop that could do the work.

[jagabo]

http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

[jman98]

Roku is not really meant to be a "plays everything media player" kind of solution. We've talked about that here before. However, look into in installing the Plex app on your Roku and a PC that you will use as a media server.
http://www.plexapp.com/
Plex is hardly perfect, but it will make your Roku a lot more useful and it costs nothing.

BluRay, DVD and TV players all have limitations. A streaming media player like one of the Western Digital models can probably meet your needs. You don't have to stream to their players. You can just plug in a USB device and play from that.

[pascal01]

Yeah, I kind of learned Roku is not what I expected, and I did installed Plex, but I am not looking for streaming video from my PC because that is another issue with how everything is set up in my house that is why I'm looking for some device that can handle what I am asking directly to my TV. Roku also is not recognizing my USB very well and it only supports MKV and the subtitles are giving me issues. I do not want to convert my avi movies that I already have to mkv either because it is very time consuming. My request is more like if anyone can point me to a specific device that you know first or second hand that it will do the trick. I've seen those Western Digital media centers, but I can't find anything about playing soft subtitles from external files like downloading German subtitles from Opensubtitles and being able to play them easily on my device. I really do not mind spending the money (e.g $150), but I just wanna know for sure that is gonna work. I already tried hard coding subtitles many times and I just end up with some really huge file, really shitty quality, and a lot of time wasted.

[jagabo]

The Western Digital players play external SRT subs fine. I don't know about German characters (like eszett) in particular though.

[usually_quiet]

OK, let me clarify a little more then. More standard formats like avi, mov, mpeg, mkv, wmv, mp4 with the ability to add soft subtitles srt, sub, etc easily, connect my usb to the device and done. I'm not interested in streaming, wifi connectivity, unnecessary features. I know I can easily buy a newer TV, but I am just looking for maybe a bluray player that does what Im asking without hustle and good video format support at least the best possible, and relatively cheaper than buying a little laptop that could do the work.

LG makes Blu-Ray players that play quite a few different types of media files from a USB stick or USB hard drive, but probably not .mov. One of the better dedicated media players could be a little more versatile.

However, all Blu-Ray players made since February first of this year have to be Cinavia compliant as a condition of the AACS license, so you may have problems using a Blu-Ray player for Blu-Ray rips in any form.