Rocking the Roku and loving it. Also check out Apple TV and firecore + XMBC hub. Ditch cable over a year ago and will never go back.
WDTV/ Roku Streamers
- Thread starter piggvomit_sl
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Joeboo
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I really wish I could ditch cable/satellite, as I pretty much don't watch any actual series when they are shown initially anyways(DVR or torrent afterwards), but as a huge sports fan, I just can't do it.
Something crazy like 34 or the 36 college bowl games were on ESPN or its affiliates, even the national title game is on ESPN, and I refuse to download sports after the fact, or watch some low-res stream from a foreign website.
If I could somehow just subscribe to ESPN/Fox sports, I'd ditch everything else easily.
Something crazy like 34 or the 36 college bowl games were on ESPN or its affiliates, even the national title game is on ESPN, and I refuse to download sports after the fact, or watch some low-res stream from a foreign website.
If I could somehow just subscribe to ESPN/Fox sports, I'd ditch everything else easily.
spronk
FPS noob
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Unless your house has a lot better wireless speeds than mine, nope. 1080p is 4000-15000 kbps (variable bitstream depending on content compression), I don't get above 5000 kbps (5 mbs) ever on my wirelessN network. Any media player trying to stream 1080p wirelessly will stutter a lot, I don't think there are any that "buffer" 1080p streams to provide smooth playback. The good news is you can attach a 1tb unpowered USB drive to the boxee and just copy over 1080p MKV rips 15-20 mins before you watch it, either shuffling the drive around PCs or just copying over the wireless network.
espn.com does provide espn3 i think if your cable provider supports it, but yeah you won't catch all the sports. You can get a DirecTV sports package that ditches a lot of channels and you get a ton of sports channels, dunno if any cable providers do that.
Void
Experiencer
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I almost built myself an HTPC a couple of years ago, but decided to try the Boxee instead. At this point I don't think I'd ever look back, as the Boxee cost less than a pc would have been and it does everything that I could want it to do. I'm sure some day there will be a bigger and better iteration of the Boxee or a competitor, but until then the only thing that would be substantially easier to do with a pc is surfing the web on my TV, which I rarely do. And if I know I'm going to be doing it a lot, I just stream the video from my phone and use the phone to navigate (which is still a lot easier than the Boxee interface). For browsing I do repeatedly (like Direwolf20 Minecraft videos) on my TV, just setting a bookmark at the main page saves 80% of the time I'd have normally spent navigating there, so that's not much of a limiting factor either. Still, if you were going to do a ton of browsing on your TV, then an HTPC probably would be the better choice.
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
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Yeah, it's a rip. On my cable & internet provider(Time Warner), you don't get online access to ESPN3 unless you actually subscribe to a cable TV package that includes ESPN as well as subscribing to their Internet package. So basically, you drop the cable channels and ESPN3 disappears from beign accessable via their internet service.
Bunch of BS, but I'm sure it's ESPNs doing more than Time Warners
So what's the best option (not HTPC) for streaming 1080p mkv's from a network share to a TV (and not have to do on the fly encoding)?
Void
Experiencer
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My answer would be Boxee. I use it all day long for exactly what you are asking for (well, mainly 720p because I can't see a difference, but if it is freeleech I get 1080p all the time too), and it works perfectly. I use wired though, and people say wireless can't keep up with 1080p, so that might factor into your decision.
I've never used a WD or a Roku either, so I am admittedly biased. However, as I've said many times in the past, I love my Boxee so much that if it broke right now I'd go out and buy another one the same day.
EDIT: Oh, and to reiterate what someone mentioned above, when you download something and realize too late that some faggot didn't unrar it because they were too lazy to unrar the scene release they simply copied, but you're stuck keeping those files intact for awhile because you have to seed for X days or until X ratio...instead of making a copy to unrar, Boxee will stream that 1080p motherfucker right from the rar files, easy as pie. To me, that alone is worth whatever extra cost it has over the other devices.
I've never used a WD or a Roku either, so I am admittedly biased. However, as I've said many times in the past, I love my Boxee so much that if it broke right now I'd go out and buy another one the same day.
EDIT: Oh, and to reiterate what someone mentioned above, when you download something and realize too late that some faggot didn't unrar it because they were too lazy to unrar the scene release they simply copied, but you're stuck keeping those files intact for awhile because you have to seed for X days or until X ratio...instead of making a copy to unrar, Boxee will stream that 1080p motherfucker right from the rar files, easy as pie. To me, that alone is worth whatever extra cost it has over the other devices.
Zodiac
Lord Nagafen Raider
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Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
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Refurb wireless Roku for $50(half MSRP) for the next 12 hours or so
http://1saleaday.com/main/?CID=168142&AFID=178621
http://1saleaday.com/main/?CID=168142&AFID=178621
I decided on a Boxee box. Hopefully it has all the potential of the hype. I honestly am worried about the remote control- I hate remotes that u have to stand 5 inches away from to control it.
I may try the Boxee, then. My house is wired with cat6, so no worries streaming 1080p. I have Apple Tv's all over the house, so I've been downloading mkv's from newsgroups and converting them to mp4's that I can stream through iTunes. It takes so damn long to convert the huge 1080p files that it has made me look for something that doesn't require doing that.
Grimmlokk
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Can't you like, root the iTVs and install XMBC or whatever to make it play that shit? I thought that was the idea anyways.
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What? You mean hold the remote really close to the Boxee? It's bluetooth, don't worry about that. Or you mean hold the remote really close to you? Why do you think that would be necessary?
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AppleTV 1 and 2 are jailbreakable. 3 isn't (yet). If you buy one these days, I think you're getting a 3.
I hated the Boxxee technology, it was just way too slow. PLEX is the same thing basically but my PC runs it in the background.
ToeMissile
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Void
Experiencer
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I have never used PLEX, but I believe it is the interface where it shows cover art, descriptions, etc. right?
I don't know how fast it is with a PC, and the Boxee certainly isn't fast in that regard, but if I've just downloaded something and want to watch it right now, I never wait for a scan to pick it up because I already know what it is, I just navigate directly to the file share (I choose "Files" instead of "Shows" for example) and select the directory and then the episode. If it is something I downloaded more than an hour ago, it will show up the way it is supposed to so it isn't a problem.
Unless I'm mistaking what PLEX does?