Recommended Media Centre?

[tommy2010]

Hi Video Enthusiasts,

I hoping that someone could point me in the right direction as far as getting an affordable media center. I am looking for something that can play my HD movies either in the MKV container or AVCHD from an external harddrive. The Popcorn Hour C-200 looks appealing but I have a few concerns. First of all it's my understanding that it can only navigate AVCHD folders, I'm assuming that this means that it will only allow me to locate the m2ts files within the structure and let me play them. But, unfortunately this also means that I won't be able to switch streams playing it this way. However, it does support MKV but then there is some talk about it not supporting single file MKVs, what does that mean exactly? Furthermore it doesn't seem to support DTS-HD and True-HD or is that old news? Finally, I was thinking of using my 1.5 Terabyte NTFS formatted external drive does the Popcorn hour support drives of this size?

I apologize for bombarding you guys with so many questions but I would be very grateful if you could point me in the right direction, perhaps something that it's even better than popcorn hour. Currently, I've been playing an AVCHD structure from the external drive using the PS3 which is not bad with all the streams intact and chapters but the FAT32 file size limitation is a bit annoying hence I'm looking for something better.

Thanks again in advance for your help.

Warm regards to all,
Tom

http://www.tdimension.ca

[yoda313]

Check out the wdtv media player. Does m2ts files and mkv and avi and a host of others. Plus it does ntfs harddrives. The newer plus models have internet connectivity.

[RabidDog]

Most of the media players will support drives up to 2tb even if they don't admit it. What you do have to be wary of is the fact that some require the drive to be formatted by the machine itself. This can be very awkward if you have a large drive already full of media. Bite the bullet and get a new drive, that way, you can have a physically separated backup. The wdtv live is a good machine and so is the ACRYAN playon. These two both have a vibrant user community which is worth its weight in gold, other boxes may be cheaper but the unofficial firmwares from the users are excellent. You can even get a crocodile skin for the ACryan!
Any player that uses FAT32 in this day and age should stamped on with the jackboot of progress and told to "GET WITH THE PROGRAM".
You need to be able to connect a 10tb NAS with these things not 8gb memory sticks.

For sanitys sake, steer clear of the no-name Chinese carp floating about..(this is NOT food advice)

[jagabo]

Popcorn Hour C-200... does support MKV but then there is some talk about it not supporting single file MKVs, what does that mean exactly?

I don't know much about the Popcorn Hour, but that may refer to subtitle support. Maybe it will not play subtitles muxed into the MKV file, but requires external subtitle files. So you would have to have MyMovie.MKV and MyMovie.SRT. Or MyMovie.MKV, MyMovie.SUB, and MyMovie.IDX.

Did a little googling... according to the third post in this thread:

http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_63363.htm

The Popcorn Hour does play subtitles embedded in the MKV file.

[jet757f]

Here is my experience from someone who is new to the media center concept.

I also tried using the PS3 as a media center but found it way too time consuming plus the FAT 32 limitation doesnt work for me.

So here I am again trying to find a decent media center to backup my DVD collection to a hard drive and use the media center.
I have done a lot of reading on these. The forum over at AVS also has a lot of information on individual players.

The first one I tried was the LG BD570. I hooked up my hard drive loaded with DVD ISO files and it would not read the files.
So there goes that idea. The nice thing about it is that it has Pandora, Netflix, YouTube etc on it. ALso a blu-ray player.

So I got the Asus O!Play and hooked up the same external hard drive with DVD ISO movie on it and it works great!!
I have not tried to backup a blu-ray movie yet. So this might work.

I also got the PopCorn Hour A-110 and found it to be very confusing to use for me. I did get it to recognize my external hard drive and play the movie but Im not that happy about the ease of use. I will probably sell it.

I did read about the Dune series of players and they do seem like the best for this but a lot more expensive.

I still have the issue on how to backup TV series episodes also but Im sure there is a way.