HD media players

[soundofrockets]

What HD player are most members using ? i have the original WD HD media player but it suddenly stopped working. the power light is on, video is on but no sound. i have it connected to the UMC1 via the HDMI cable.. any suggestions to trouble shoot or just get newer hardware.. and which one...tx

[fitzwaddle]

So far I'm getting by with my Blu-ray player - Sony BDP-S380 - it has front and rear USB ports, so I plugged a 1 TB USB drive into it, and play HD media off it. Not bad for about a hundred dollar player. Granted, the UI is nothing fancy, just a list - wouldn't mind having something a little fancier, a la XBMC with IMDB info, etc. - but not a high priority right now.

[cburbs]

When we upgraded the TV in the bedroom and I didn't want a DVD Player in there so I was looking at the apple tv and the WD TV Live plus. Oh it needed netflix so that is why I was looking at those two items. I ended up with the WD live plus and like what it has to offer. It is hackable as well.

[JazzySmooth]

I've got a original WD MP and a Live version. I feel the interface while simple, is a bit cumbersome when you have a lot of movies or music to browse through. But they're cheap, they play pretty much any file format, and for the most part they're troublefree. I've heard good things about the Dune and Popcorn Hour products, however they cost considerably more.

As far as your sound issue, have you tried hooking up the optical or RCA jacks to see if they work? I assume you've reset the system via the menu? Only other thing I could suggest is to flash (or reflash) the firmware - looks like 1.03 was the last official one they had (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/WDTV/)

[PhenomeNhan]

I've been using the WDTV live with pretty good success. It started out being very spotty with HD videos (m2ts and iso). With several updates, things start to pan out and it is pretty solid now. This is with streaming from my network. I've only hooked up a hard drive to play HD videos once, and it worked well (even in the early days). Right now I have a 3 TB drive hooked up that I'm using for music storage with my Squeezebox players. It works well that way, but not fast enough on startup (still trying to figure it out).

Fitzwaddle, which HD files are you using with the Sony? I can't get my Sony TV or Blu-ray players to see any of the m2ts files over my network. They are able to navigate to the correct directory, but no files are showing?

[HopefulFred]

I've been happy with my Boxee, in general. It'll play anything, best I can tell. I'm having some kind of HDMI issue with mine lately as well, though. I can't tell if the port is loose, the cable is bad, or something in the handshake is goofy. I never had problems with it connected through my AVR, but now with it connected to my TV I get occasional video dropouts, and occasional red crap in my image...

In any case, it handles Netflix reasonably, and Vudu, but no Amazon VOD or Hulu. The browser is improved from the first firmware, but still not great. Also, there's been a fair amount of stir on the forums about the way it handles (or fails to handle) HD audio in recent firmware updates. Since mine is currently plugged directly into the TV, I haven't really followed those issues. On the other hand, the interface is very usable and nice, and continues to get faster as they update.

[soundofrockets]

thanks for the responses. i think the first order of business would be to check the hdmi cable for any audio issue maybe i will use some optical or rca cables. those dune players are sure expensive.

[fitzwaddle]

boxee seems cool - I love XBMC - but the form factor is crapola to me.