Been thinking more about this, is there a thin client device that has a good sized display (a la Squeezebox) that could serve video through the TV, and audio with the TV switched off?

I guess I'm after a video enabled SqueezeBox

I haven't heard of anything that will do what you're looking for. The video streamers can play audio without the TV being turned on, but you'd likely have a hard time doing any navigation other than track skipping and seeking.

The Squeezebox and Squeeze Center (the server software) are by far the best music streaming solution around. It's still got a lot of shine being applied by its developers, but nothing else can really match its feature set at any price.

I'd probably suggest going with two devices if you need something now. It's possible that Logitch will one day release a device that combined its Squeezebox music player with a video streamer, but it's definitely not a sure bet.

For music, as mentioned, the Squeezebox series of products is the top choice. And for video, everything points to Popcorn Hour being miles ahead of anything else.

How about a Popcorn Hour device ?

EDIT: ah.. simulposting again!

-ml

Does anyone here have first-hand experience with Popcorn Hour? Checking their forums, it seems there are still a fair bit of issues (heat, skipping etc.).

There isn't one, and I don't know why not -- presumably such things are unexpectedly carcinogenic to rats, or irremediably attractive to meteoroids, or inexplicably outlawed by a little-known clause of the Geneva Convention. I can't think of any more sane reason why there still aren't any after it's been so obvious for so many years that this is exactly what's needed. Nobody wants a separate audio device and video device. (Nobody wants to muck about with two remote controls, let alone endless others because suddenly everything else's inputs need switching between two devices.) Nobody wants to turn the telly on to listen to music. Nobody wants a winchester and fan in the sitting room.

Peter

I've never even heard of Popcorn hour, certainly looks very interesting. Thanks guys.

An AppleTV might solve your problem. With the TV on, it can stream video from a Mac (and with third-party add-ons, can do DVD images and other non-Apple video formats). With the TV off, it has a perfectly reasonable SP/DIF optical output which can drive your stereo. You can control it remotely from an iPhone/iPod Touch with Apple's "Remote" application, which is very well done, or you can stream to it from a Mac or PC laptop using Apple's "AirTunes".

Hmm, they'd be handy round here then.



Exactly



No, I want an Uzi

I'm a little Mac averse, plus I don't have an iPhone or iPod. I already work with several flavours of Windows as well as RedHat and CentOS, another OS would probably tip me over the edge. A Win/Linux version of it with a big (SB like) VFD (maybe external USB connected?) could do the job though.

That was my first thought, but he specifically said it should be something with its own display. I understand his desire for this; no sense in burning text into one's plasma TV just to play some MP3s.

Personally, I solve this problem with two separate devices: A Rio Receiver for the music and a Mac Mini for the video files. But I understand the desire to have one box that does it all.

Right, but the suggestion was to use an Ipod Touch as the Apple TV's display, turning it into a sort of Sonos or Squeezebox Duet proposition. Which isn't quite the same thing, but might actually not be too bad. The Apple TV still has a winchester, though (but not a fan?) and in fact doesn't have any outputs compatible with my TV -- but I do count that as my TV's fault rather than Apple's, as, despite being sold as "HD ready", the only input on which it'll actually do any better than standard def is a VGA connector.

Peter

Yeah, I could do likewise (SB + HTPC), but there'll be several locations with a TV in the new house, it'd be nice to have a single device in each location for tidiness and energy efficiency. Plus the advantages of less remotes, less GUIs to teach the wife etc....

Does the Mac Mini have a built in amp?

It all sounds like overkill for my requirements though doesn't it?

Nope, just the usual headphone jack.

I suppose it depends how troubled you are with the current underkill... a Squeezebox Duet seems to cost £240 and just does audio, an Apple TV plus an Ipod Touch adds up to £370 and does audio and video. I suppose that's not really a huge markup for the extra functionality. The same amount of gear from Sonos would be £500 and only do audio.

Things like the Linksys Media Extender and the Pinnacle Showcentre are cheaper, but they're the cheapo displayless things we're trying to avoid in the first place.

Peter

I'm surprised the PS3 hasn't been mentioned. I bought one mostly for Blu-Ray support, but the media streaming functions have really matured. It now has native playback of Divx and xvid as well as WMV and H.264. The quality is really good over HDMI and I have been using it quite a bit.

I understand that a PS3 is a lot more expensive than an AppleTV, but Blu-Ray support is nice to have. No hacking needed for divx is also a plus.

In fact, for £570 you can get a Mac Mini and an Ipod Touch and have, at least the hardware for, everything you need at the "head end": CD, DVD, A/V network streaming including TV. You'd need some kind of UPnP A/V v2 "Tuner"/"EPG" server elsewhere, plus a client in the Mac Mini, to move the Tivo's winchester and fan out of the sitting room and into your home cloud, but none of that's rocket science. (UPnP A/V v2 lets you expose and control EPG and PVR facilities over the network.) Then you really could leave your TV and hifi permanently stuck on one input, and have a single remote. (Oh, unless you're also a gamer, I suppose.)

Peter

Good point about the Playstation 3. I wouldn't recommend an Xbox for a media player, fan too noisy, but I've heard the PS3's are fairly quiet.

Hey that reminds me of a PS3 question I had. Sorry to veer off topic, but: I'm considering getting one this holiday season, both for Blu-ray and for Little Big Planet, and sticking it in the slot in the AV rack that used to be occupied by the DVD player.

My question: Can it play DVDs as well as Blu-rays?

Yes

Tony, you should also be aware that the PS3 does not have an IR receiver. This makes it unable to work with a universal remote out of the box. I bought this Nyko BluWave dongle. My Harmony 720 has codes for it and it works great. The only drawback is the IR remote can't power-on the PS3.

Thanks for that reminder. So the dongle you linked is an add-on IR receiver, then?

Not powering down/up with IR is actually fine for me, since I need to walk up to the thing to put the movie in there anyway.

Yeah, it's just a little dongle that plugs into one of the front usb ports to add IR capability.

The PS3 can also be powered on by the wireless game controllers if you don't feel like getting up.

You can use the PS3 BD Bluetooth remote or a PSP thats linked to the PS3 for Remote Play as well to control it + power on/off.

Also note that the PS3 currently can't be made DVD region free (or BluRay region free for that matter). That could be an issue if you've imported any DVDs.

I'm a little Mac averse (at the moment, until I scrape enough together for a Mac Pro), but I wouldn't really make that a concern when considering the AppleTV. I set my parents up with one and they love it, and they only have one Windows machine.

I think the AppleTV is a great product, and handles music and video playback excellently. I've also installed those third party apps someone mentioned, and now I can bring them video files in almost any format and it'll play them.


??? IMO, there's not even a remote chance of that happening with an AppleTV.

By default, when you play music it'll show the album art on the left and track info on the right. Approximately every 15-20 seconds it flips the two. Then, after about a minute or two, it goes to the "screensaver" which is your photo collection scrolling up the screen (incidentally, this is one of the best features of the device). I think you can turn that screensaver off, but it would still do the flip. I don't see any way that it would cause burn-in. Besides, burn-in isn't the issue it used to be, even on plasmas, and even if it were, 20 seconds of a static image wouldn't be enough to do anything.

In my personal experience (GF just got a brand new plasma), burn-in is just as big an issue on plasmas as it used to be on CRT projectors. It happens, it happens quickly, and you have to be careful with it. She had black bar burn-in within days of getting her TV.



No, but a few minutes of the same image, repeated over a long period of time (doesn't matter if it's consecutive minutes or not) can be. Flipping the image left and right at 20 second intervals just means you're burning two separate images at 50 percent of the time, instead of one image at 100 percent time.

I agree that putting on a scrolling photo screen saver after a couple of minutes goes a long way to take care of the issue. But if someone plays a lot of MP3s, leaves the TV on, and keeps canceling the screen saver by hitting the "skip track" button, it could become an issue.

Just another reason not to buy a Plasma TV. I should be surprised it hasn't been completely killed off yet, but the other promised TV technologies just haven't come forth. My choice would still always be LCD over Plasma though.

The AppleTV needs to be hacked to play a wide assortment of video. It would also need to be hacked to handle Ogg and Flac if that's something you care about. Streaming from iTunes and navigating your music library, regardless of how pretty it may look, isn't going to hold a candle to the options with a Squeezebox.

My suggestion is still to go with SB. Even use the new Squeezebox Boom in some rooms which can act as a speaker set for your video player. Put a universal remote in each room. The SB gear can be controlled by any universal remote, even the cheapy OneForAll variety. If you edit your IR files on the server it can actually be made to listen to any remote at all.

I got an LCD TV precisely because I didn't want to deal with burn-in. Also, the plasmas I saw (including GF's plasma) all have an issue where they do dithering to increase the number of displayed shades of color. The dithering is particularly noticable in the shadows in dark scenes.

Plasmas are also usually significantly more expensive than LCDs for a given size and resolution.

HOWEVER... The plasmas I've seen all had fantastic brightness and contrast, usually overshadowing any nearby LCDs in the showroom. And that's what people like when buying TV's: Deep blacks and blinding whites. I'm not surprised the plasmas are selling well.

Is this something that is being worked on? I've got a few Region 2 DVDs laying about that I haven't watched in a while. I was hoping that a region free hack would have been released by now. I suppose I should just rip them and then just stream them to the Apple TV or PS3....

Or rip them and burn them back to DVD.

If you truly only care about audio, then you can just get an Apple Airport Express (<$100) and stream to it from any laptop you've got around the house. If you want video as well, an AppleTV does the job, and you don't strictly need an iPhone/iPod Touch. Those are just a pleasant addition. For audio, iTunes (PC or Mac) will happily stream to an AppleTV or Airport Express over your network.

Hey, I'm enjoying my pretty walled garden...