What Player?

[mthwrd]

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie, so be gentle. I have a laptop and like to use it to play movies. I also have an Optoma EP716 P video projector, which I like to plug into the laptop to watch the movies on. Now, some of these movies are downloaded from the internet, and I usually use one of the following media players to play them on: GOM Player or VLC Media Player, whichever can cope with the format. The problem is that I have to watch the movies through headphones, and I want something with some reasonable quality sound that can be played out loud.

So I'm looking to upgrade.

I want as close as possible to an all-in-one system. I want a machine that can play DVD's, CD's and MP4 files in a multiplicity of formats. I want it to be USB compatible, so that I can plug in a hard-drive through a USB and play more or less whatever, inc. the movies and TV shows torrented from the net. Is there such a system? Or is that system basically just a computer?

Even better, would be something that is DLNA compatible as I have a SmartStor NSx600 Series RAID system, which I still need drivers for, but if there is a system which does all of the above and is DLNA certified, then that would be best.

I hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for any replies.

All the best,

Matt

[jman98]

Do you care about region free playback or not? You'll basically need a BluRay player for MP4 support. MP4 is supported to a very small extent on some DVD (not BluRay) players, but such support usually means "Divx/Xvid in an MP4 container" and MP4 on the internet usually means something quite different. It's getting harder and harder to find region free players of any kind. In BluRay, a very small number of BluRay players can be made region free for DVD playback (but NOT for BluRay playback) by entering a code. Oppo and Momitsu/Hitecker are the only BluRay players that can be made region free, but both require a hard mod to be done either by you or the seller.

USB support is easy to find, but on DVD players it tends to require that the file system on the supported device be FAT32. BluRay players sometimes support NTFS via USB.

You may be happiest with a media player of some kind such as the Western Digital WD TV Plus if you intend to play a lot of downloaded files. I have a media player, a DVD player and a BluRay player and I use them all for different things. Media players in general (and in my very limited experience) aren't great at playing back DVDs. DVD/BluRay players have limitations in support for downloaded files that media players don't have.

I don't know about DLNA support. I wouldn't hold my breath on that right now.

[mthwrd]

jman98, Thanks for the reply. Great stuff. Appreciate it. Looked at a Philips BDP5100 today. It's a BluRay player and it's DLNA. It might be the one. Will check out the Western Digital WD TV Plus as well. Anyway, thanks a million for the reply.