Do you stream your media or play it locally on a physical device?

[yoda313]

So do you stream your media to your main listening/viewing room? Or do you use physical media (either discs or harddrives - or gasp - TAPES!).

I mainly use physical media. I do have a western digital tv player but I haven't used it much. I do like that it is smooth interference free playback with no buffering issues that can happen with wifi - at least on G speeds - i don't have any n devices so I dont' know how much the extra bandwidth helps.

How about you?

[jagabo]

Gigabit ethernet. PC to HTPC (1080p60).

[nic2k4]

You gotta be green now a day, if you're streaming you'd have to turn on a PC and a playback device. Playing locally, only one low power device is required.

[SatStorm]

Some times I stream from PC to Popcorn hour but mostly I use physical media.

[usually_quiet]

I don't have a home network and I don't download video or capture it using a PC, so streaming isn't possible, nor would it save me any work. I only use physical media, discs and once in a while VHS tapes.

[usta]

Streaming only sometimes: I use Freecom Network Media Player to stream from PC to TV. However, most of the time I prefer to watch things locally.

[JjMon]

(2) Western Digital media player with 1 central PC serving media (NFS).

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I chose that I stream it, but actually I use a combination depending on the location.
It's streamed to the home theatre and office, but the living/game room is where the 'jukebox' PC resides.

[gadgetguy]

I assume you mean to watch on my TV. I don't stream anything to my TV. Only DVD, OTA, or an occasional VHS display on my TV(s).

[yoda313]

I assume you mean to watch on my TV. I don't stream anything to my TV. Only DVD, OTA, or an occasional VHS display on my TV(s).

Well I said MEDIA in the poll. My intention was to not limit strictly to video. Since there are streaming devices designed specifically just for music files I didn't want to limit the spectrum of the poll.

[PuzZLeR]

The ability to network releases lots of content otherwise stranded on the PC in terms of compliance. But I could care less. I still don't yet consider networking content as the central nervous system to me. I see it only as a bonus playback feature for content that is already compliant with stand-alones. Networking is also a pain at times.

The stand-alone unit is still the least common denominator in terms of compatibility and stability. If it plays on stand-alone units, then it will play pretty much anywhere else.

So I won't encode/accept anything unless it's DvD compliant, or BD compliant if H.264 (SD and HD) or DivX (with their wide certification).

So I choose the stand-alone option first and foremost.

[Constant Gardener]

I have a Slimp3 http://www.slimdevices.com attached to the living-room stereo. It's networked to a PC with a capture card in the basement. Great for podcasts and timeshifting - the cassette deck has been gathering dust for nearly seven years.

[solarfox]

For video, it's physical media only. Mostly DVDs, although I do still have a healthy collection of LaserDiscs, and a few items on VHS or CED which were only released in those formats. (The latter items I'm in the process of transferring, especially the CEDs, since they're probably the least reliable and durable of all the old-school formats.)

For music, I generally prefer physical media -- CDs and vinyl LPs, mostly -- for home listening, although I do have a hard drive-based MP3 player for on-the-go use.

[robjv1]

I was the Goodwill recently and was rummaging through some of the Vinyl LPs and saw several CED discs (Close Encounters of the Third Kind and I believe one of the Star Trek films) and was amazed because I had never heard of them. Where was the video quality for these discs? Were they comparable to VHS?

[solarfox]

The video quality was roughly comparable to VHS, yes, although that's probably not saying much considering the average quality of VHS itself at that point in time. CED came out in mid-1981, and was discontinued in 1984 (although RCA did continue to make discs until mid-1986), so it's not surprising that you might not have come across it before unless (like me) you're old enough to remember it first-hand.

What keeps me interested in the system is that there is a fair amount of material out there that appears to have never been released in any other format. It seems that one of the ways RCA tried to gin up interest in the system and one-up the competing LaserDisc format was to exclusively release a number of concert videos of bands and musicians which RCA's record division had under contract. They also released some "interactive" discs later in the system's life; there were some choose-your-own-adventure-style story games, a horse-racing game, and a disc consisting of loads of NASA footage and stills from Space Shuttle missions 5, 6, and 7. These, too, appear to have been unique to the CED system; unfortunately, you need a late-model 400-series player to use them, and these came out only a few months before the whole system was canceled, so they're really hard to come by.

If you're interested in knowing more, there's a site called CEDmagic devoted to this strange little format.

[G)-(OST]

My vote: I use disc/hard drive playback.