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Sancho

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#119424 31-May-2013 13:58
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Hey all, I am looking for a media player with IMDB/simliar support. I used to use an old original xbox with XBMC on it and it was awesome, did everything I ever needed it to. But then came 1080p/720p movies and the poor old xbox just didnt haven the power. 

So I moved to a WDTV Live, does a great job all except the fact there is no clue what each move is about when scrolling through a list of 198 divx's! The old xbox would scrape IMDB and layout the info for each movie, perfect! So, is there another player that can do this easily and do it well? I know the WDTV can 'sort of' do it through a few applications and a whole lot of mucking about. I just need a good simple solution. I don't have the time to invest in an HTPC, been there-done that, it was great and couldn't be beaten for quality but I just don't have the time or patience to much about with settings, boot times etc etc etc.

I have been told a Boxee Box will do this but have not seen one in real life, just know there is a tonne of knowledge here so thought I'd ask first, get on the right track and then dig a little deeper from there. 

My setup is a wired network with a dedicated 6TB nasbox on the network full of media. The WDTV live streams from there. If it had a semi decent IMDB or other method of getting the movie info/ratings/summary it would be perfect.

Any recommendations greatly appreciated :)





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reven
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  #828803 31-May-2013 14:01
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personal recommendation, wait for the ouya due out next month. will run xbmc, will handle HD videos. its cheap at around $150 nzd delivered.

boxee box isnt that great, way more targeted at american market (with their cable boxes, and online services).



trig42
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  #828806 31-May-2013 14:03
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Do you have your movies on a PC somewhere that can be networked back to your TV?

If so you could grab a device that has Plex Support (Roku).

I saw yesterday that some clever people have worked out a way to get Plex running on an AppleTV unjailbroken.

ubergeeknz
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Vocus

  #828807 31-May-2013 14:08
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Just run XBMC on your choice of something newer, even an rPi will do if you want to keep cost down.



Sancho

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  #828808 31-May-2013 14:08
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reven: personal recommendation, wait for the ouya due out next month. will run xbmc, will handle HD videos. its cheap at around $150 nzd delivered.

boxee box isnt that great, way more targeted at american market (with their cable boxes, and online services).



Ohh, that looks interesting! 




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Sancho

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  #828809 31-May-2013 14:10
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ubergeeknz: Just run XBMC on your choice of something newer, even an rPi will do if you want to keep cost down.


RPI? Google comes up with Republican Party of India... guessing that's not what you meant.





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ubergeeknz
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  #828810 31-May-2013 14:14
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Raspberry Pi :)

 
 
 

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reven
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  #828813 31-May-2013 14:20
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raspberry pi is a pretty good device. but once you buy a case, power supply, sd card, remote it costs about $75-$90. personally I would just spend the $150 on a ouya which is waaaaayyyyyyyy more powerful. menus on raspberrypi can be slowish, 5 seconds to load your movie library, and menu resolution (not video) has been reduced to improve speed.

i have 3 raspberrypis around the house running raspbmc, and they're great little devices. but when the ouya comes out, ill be replacing them.

jayd
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  #828892 31-May-2013 16:40
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Hi, The WD Live can do thumbnails and movie art, no need for any 3rd party software. Just go to setup/system/click on Media library and select Media Library Manager for network share. Then just add your network shared drive. Simple as that.


Sancho

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  #829094 31-May-2013 23:51
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jayd: Hi, The WD Live can do thumbnails and movie art, no need for any 3rd party software. Just go to setup/system/click on Media library and select Media Library Manager for network share. Then just add your network shared drive. Simple as that.



Mine is this version, doesnt seem to have that option in the menu unfortunately :(

http://www.geek.com/chips/wd-tv-live-plus-hd-media-player-makes-netflix-viewing-simple-1262369/




Camera accessories? www.camera-shop.co.nz | Studio Lighting? www.studio-lighting.co.nz | Photos? www.markbennett.co.nz


Sancho

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  #829167 1-Jun-2013 12:43
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Sorry for the dble post but can't seem to edit the above reply...

My WDTV live has the option of turning on/off the media library but I can't see any other options anywhere.

From the manual:

"Media Library
Media Library scans and consolidates the media contents of a USB drive into a
database through which you can easily locate media files. This feature is on by
default.
The following conditions will prevent the Media Library from processing your media.
?
The USB device has read-only protection.
?
There is not enough hard drive space on the USB device. Your media player
needs some space to cache information, so that searches and scans are faster"


Looks like it's only any good for USB drives unfortunately.




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jayd
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  #829305 1-Jun-2013 19:15
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Sorry for late reply, I haven't tried the model WDTV that you have, maybe it doesn't support Network Hard drive shares. I have the latest WDTV live, and it has an option in the Setup menu to add a network share to media library.
It wasn't until I added my NAS as a shared drive that I was able to see the thumbnails and movie descriptions.
Most of the movies I had scraped the content info automatically, however the online database is quite picky when it comes to the name of the movie. I had to manually remove all my movie year dates just so the database could recognise the movie name. Bit of a hassle, but i've now got all the thumbnails showing.
The latest WDTV Live which is what I have, can definitely do thumbnails and movie descriptions, so maybe that could be an option if you want to stay with WD. 
 
 

 
 
 

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Sancho

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  #829309 1-Jun-2013 19:19
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jayd: Sorry for late reply, I haven't tried the model WDTV that you have, maybe it doesn't support Network Hard drive shares. I have the latest WDTV live, and it has an option in the Setup menu to add a network share to media library.
It wasn't until I added my NAS as a shared drive that I was able to see the thumbnails and movie descriptions.
Most of the movies I had scraped the content info automatically, however the online database is quite picky when it comes to the name of the movie. I had to manually remove all my movie year dates just so the database could recognise the movie name. Bit of a hassle, but i've now got all the thumbnails showing.
The latest WDTV Live which is what I have, can definitely do thumbnails and movie descriptions, so maybe that could be an option if you want to stay with WD. 
 
 



Thanks, would you mind posting a link to your one so I make sure I get the right model if thats the way I choose to go..




Camera accessories? www.camera-shop.co.nz | Studio Lighting? www.studio-lighting.co.nz | Photos? www.markbennett.co.nz


jayd
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  #829334 1-Jun-2013 19:41
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http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330

Heres the link, You can pick them up for couple hundred or less.

kiwijunglist
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  #829337 1-Jun-2013 19:50
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^ that WDTV (?Gen2) that you have has similar library metadata support (imdb, thetvdb, etc) as the WDTV Live Gen3 (that someone else suggested). I wouldn't recommend swapping as you will have the same problem. The advantage of the Gen3 is that it has wifi, the advantage of the Gen2 is that it that you can run custom firmware, so if anything it can have nicer looking media library, so you would be taking a step backwards.

What you need to do is download a library manager on your PC, and have the PC create WDTV compatible metadata files on the NAS HDDs.




HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.


Sancho

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  #829347 1-Jun-2013 20:03
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kiwijunglist: ^ that WDTV (?Gen2) that you have has similar library metadata support (imdb, thetvdb, etc) as the WDTV Live Gen3 (that someone else suggested). I wouldn't recommend swapping as you will have the same problem. The advantage of the Gen3 is that it has wifi, the advantage of the Gen2 is that it that you can run custom firmware, so if anything it can have nicer looking media library, so you would be taking a step backwards.

What you need to do is download a library manager on your PC, and have the PC create WDTV compatible metadata files on the NAS HDDs.


Makes sense. I did try that with ThumbGen and didn't have huge success, and it looked fairly complicated getting it working from  forum I found. If custom firmware can do it though them I'm certainly open to that!




Camera accessories? www.camera-shop.co.nz | Studio Lighting? www.studio-lighting.co.nz | Photos? www.markbennett.co.nz


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