I've been using this machine for years now and it's doing the job but I'm guessing that there are better toys out there now. Who has moved on to similar machines which they are finding to be much better?

I still find that I have pixelation issues with various movies too.

Mike

mparadis wrote:

I've been using this machine for years now and it's doing the job but I'm guessing that there are better toys out there now. Who has moved on to similar machines which they are finding to be much better?

I still find that I have pixelation issues with various movies too.

Mike

Hi Mike,
I have had an eagle eye out for a replacement. Not because I don't like my Roku - the opposite is, in fact, true. I am just convinced, the power supply will be taking a nose dive in my near future.

I just purchased a TVIX 4100SH. Beautiful machine, all the bells and whistles, new codecs etc. The only problem is the user interface.

I cannot find a truly user friendly product with an appropriate wife-acceptance factor. The Roku combined with the FANTASTIC MPlay (user created and supported) add-on, make this *still* and undeatable solution.

I truly wish you luck in your search. If you find something great, come back and tell us about it.

BETTER YET - find some undiscoverable way to convince Roku to get back on the bandwagon and support (or replace) my favorite media player.

Hi there,

>my Roku - the opposite is, in fact, true. I am just convinced, the power >supply will be taking a nose dive in my near future.

Yes, I've read a lot of messages about dying power supplies. I've not looked at mine but am thinking that it cannot be that difficult to replace with something else. The Roku most likely uses pretty standard voltages, 5, 12 very likely. You gave me an idea though, to check the outputs now, while it's working fine.

>I cannot find a truly user friendly product with an appropriate >wife-acceptance factor. The Roku combined with the FANTASTIC MPlay >(user created and supported) add-on, make this *still* and undeatable >solution.

I use mine in exactly the same manner and you're very right about wife acceptance factors. I've always wanted to make mplay my default screen when the machine boots up.

>BETTER YET - find some undiscoverable way to convince Roku to get >back on the bandwagon and support (or replace) my favorite media >player.

They won't, we were all just beta testers to give them input, ideas, feedback. It seems to me at least that the machine was a good idea, but that it was mostly used for input by engineers for other ideas with no long term intent to support it's customer base.

Sad really, they still would have gotten a lot of buyers, if not more, had they been honest and said these were their intentions, to develop, based on input, etc. Oh well, morals, ain't none in business.

Mike

I sold mine a while back and I am making do with a Mac Mini and FrontRow. It is not perfect, but I am generally satisfied. As others have said, I am surprised that Roku+Mplay still stands out as one of the best media centers after all of this time.

I do not think you will see better devices until the whole DRM and delivery of video on the web is worked out. Even then everything is bound to be proprietary so it will probably lock out general CE devices like the PhotoBridge.

I still use mine. In fact, I just had the power supplies in BOTH repaired by Pyramid Audio.

I've tried a myriad of products. I've got a PS3 sitting beside the Roku, but for playback of video streamed from my storage servers, still nothing comes close to Mplay and the Roku.

I'm in the market now for a really big NAS (like 2+TB). Problem is, seems most the product out there doesn't support NFS streaming, and I really want that as the Roku's SMB is so poor in comparison to NFS. Plus all the NAS's seem to be going the way of DNLA. I guess that might be great if the PS3's DNLA client was good, but it's not. So much capability in that box but Sony (like Roku) is pissing it's capabilities down the toilet right now.

Has anyone tried XBMC?

AmazinglySmooth wrote:

Has anyone tried XBMC?

I haven't personally, because HD output is still in status "Experimental, unfinished, unstable, buggy and/or limited". Plus, don't you have to modify the hardware in order for it to work?

There's several threads here about XBMC though.

I set up XBMC with little effort. Depending on the hardware revision you can just use software and some 3rd party hardware (no soldering required).

It works ok, but I really don't have time to test it out; so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

dgburns, my Power Supply just died again 5 months after getting it repaired (by Roku) so I was considering a move to PS3, though I will probably get my Rev A unit fixed by Pyramid to use in another room.

I'm curious what is better about Roku/Mplay over PS3 for streaming video? Is the quality better? The interface? I'm looking to stream non-HD MPEG2 files saved from my TV tuner card (.mpg). Do you foresee issues?

Thanks for any info.

Steve

In regards to the PS3 for playing mpg's. It plays the sd ones great for me. For the HD ones, streaming is a problem for mpeg2 hd files. Audio is fine, but video has a green flicker every once in a while. I am told that streaming worked for the hd mpeg files a few firmware versions ago, but was messed up with one of the firmware updates. An interesting note, that hd ones do play fine if you burn them to dvd using tsremux to put them in the correct folder structure the same file plays perfectly. I did this with an hbo recording of big love and the picture was incredible. It may be a firmware update or two to get streaming working again. If you wanted to post a sample file somewhere I would be happy to test it for you. I was using the HDMI output from the ps3 to a 1080 projector and the image was even better than the roku which I think is one of the best.

Darin

dgburns wrote:

I still use mine. In fact, I just had the power supplies in BOTH repaired by Pyramid Audio.

I've tried a myriad of products. I've got a PS3 sitting beside the Roku, but for playback of video streamed from my storage servers, still nothing comes close to Mplay and the Roku.

I'm in the market now for a really big NAS (like 2+TB). Problem is, seems most the product out there doesn't support NFS streaming, and I really want that as the Roku's SMB is so poor in comparison to NFS. Plus all the NAS's seem to be going the way of DNLA. I guess that might be great if the PS3's DNLA client was good, but it's not. So much capability in that box but Sony (like Roku) is pissing it's capabilities down the toilet right now.

Have you tried any of the infrant nas products? They support nfs. I haven't ever tried it because I haven't ever had a problem with smb, but I know that people do all the time. You might check out the infrant forums..

Darin

dj7675 wrote:

Have you tried any of the infrant nas products?

They are on my list to investigate.
Thanks!

I have 2 different units and they have worked for me very well. No issues at all and they continue to improve the products with new firmware...They are raid5 so if 1 disk fails, no data is lost when you replace a disk.

Darin

dgburns wrote:

dj7675 wrote:

Have you tried any of the infrant nas products?

They are on my list to investigate.
Thanks!

Top notch in my book. I own 3. 750MB, 1TB, and 1.5TB. Absolutly love them. Additionally, they act as a slimserver so my MP3s serve up nicely in slimroku.

Rumor (well more than that actually) has it the next release has spicific PS3 UPNP support.

Good luck guys!
Camino

MoJo wrote:

dgburns, my Power Supply just died again 5 months after getting it repaired (by Roku) so I was considering a move to PS3, though I will probably get my Rev A unit fixed by Pyramid to use in another room.

I'm curious what is better about Roku/Mplay over PS3 for streaming video? Is the quality better? The interface? I'm looking to stream non-HD MPEG2 files saved from my TV tuner card (.mpg). Do you foresee issues?

Thanks for any info.

Steve

PS3 doesn't "really" support streaming from a network share like the Roku/MPlay combo. What DOES work (sorta afaic) is streaming from a UPnP server. Personally, I think even a couple years later UPnP/DNLA still just isn't "there". PS3 refuses to play any MPEG-2 .ts files via LAN, and re-encoding to AVC sucks due to generational loss of video quality, plus the PS3 doesn't support AC3 audio in an MP4 container.

Theoretically you SHOULD be able to put HD MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio into a VOB container and it would play, but no joy here. SD stuff plays just fine though.