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WirelessNZ

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#9790 13-Oct-2006 08:36
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I just bought a UPnP compliant hard drive in my home network and I am filling it up with of media files (MP3 music and MPEG4 movies) - and I just been reading up about what it can work with and I decided to add a DMA to my Home theatre / Hi-Fi set up.

Essentially, I want to buy a UPnP AV compliant Digital Media Adapter (DMA) to replace my noicy computer in my living room - which is plugged into my TV & Hi-fi at the moment. The computer is an eye sore and I want it out of the living room. But in its place I want a quiet, elgant box which can do the media play back part of what the computer was doing up to now.

I considered a Windows Media Centre - but I am warming towards the idea of a elegant set top box which can access my pre-existing digital content from devices in the home network - mainly the Maxtor NAS hard drive.

Can anyone make some suggestions and reccomend something around the $300 to $600 price range.

My list of requirements are pretty simple:

- THe DMA must look elgant and accessible via Remote. It must be able to play music without having to turn on the TV to Browse to a 'folder' to find the music
- It must have a Ethernet port (or Wi-fi) and be UPnP AV compliant - so it can play streaming media coming out of my Maxter Shared Network Attatched Storage II (which is basically a network connected external hard drive full of media files)
- It does not need to have its own storage as I have a Terabyte of storage in the Maxtor
- It must be able to capture incoming analog video (connected via RCA) or digital (Firewire?) and save it to the Network shared hard drive above. The incoming video might be stuff I record off TV / Sky to watch later, or output from camera / camcorders.
- It must be able to drive my Bose Hi-fi with crisp music with no fan noice or distracting background noices
- It should Preferebly have a DV output to drive my Plasma TV (though I got adaptors if this is not possible)

If someone can help me, I would be really grateful.

Tim





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freitasm
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  #48535 13-Oct-2006 09:02
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The Roku SoundBridge series perhaps? They have here in New Zealand, and they do look nice...






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murrayim
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  #48547 13-Oct-2006 11:45
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Soundbridge takes care of the sound...but not the video...

I'd be in favour of getting a small factor  pc... something like a shuttle...and building my own...
fanless video card... lower power cpus...



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#48549 13-Oct-2006 11:54
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Another option is the D-Link DSM 320. But beware that video streaming over wireless LAN is bad - regardless of hardware being used.





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WirelessNZ

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  #48550 13-Oct-2006 11:58
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Yeah - I was thinking that when I looked at the Soundbridge - but it looks very elgant and it would not look out of place sitting side by side next to the Bose unit

I dont want to go back to a having a small form factor PC or laptop in the longe (though I was tempted when I looked at the Apple Mac - Mini). I sit in front of a computer all day - and I dont want to unwind in front of one!

There are some alternatives from Linksys and Netgear - but they are ugly to look at and needs a TV on even to find a track on a network.

Tim



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  #48593 13-Oct-2006 17:14
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Hauppauge MediaMVP's are also very good. You can also use these as a frontend for GB-PVR if you want to build a backend server running GB-PVR and then use the MVP's plugged into your TV to control it.

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#48646 14-Oct-2006 06:16
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Hello

see the D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player review

This teamed up with the tversity web server (free) works well.

As Mauricio (Freitas) said works best on wired lan as the wireless works but streaming video can be slower on wireless.

Tversty has great support forums.  The DSM320 and pron DSM520 (dvd player) can be picked up on trade me cheaply.

This does nearly all movie types and plays mp3 etc.  We have one and works really well.

The only other device is the old modded xboxes.




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  #48689 15-Oct-2006 09:08
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murrayim: Soundbridge takes care of the sound...but not the video...

I'd be in favour of getting a small factor pc... something like a shuttle...and building my own...
fanless video card... lower power cpus...




I use a Shuttle based PVR with an Athlon 2000+ in it. It's very quiet - on all the time sitting next to the TV. I don't stream video per se but play video stored on a server to the TV connected over 802.11a as an attached drive. According to the wireless adapter I am getting about 35-40Mbs connection most of the time. Certainly there are no issues playing MPEG2 or MPEG4 files over this link - smooth playback.

I would recommend this solution over a dedicated media player only because it's much more flexible.




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