[petrolheed]

My htpc setup does not agree with the wife, so i`m thinking along the lines of a network media player. My current NAS is not very good so I was considering a media player/nas all in one, last time I looked at these and there were only a couple on the market and they werent very good, but now theres millions of the things out there and I don`t know where to start.

I`m after :
NAS
Built in bittorent client
easy to use for the missus
must be fairly cheap.
If there are any out there that can view iplayer that would be handy too.

Any suggestions, or any sites where I can narrow down my choices? The info on here is good but quite hard to compare between different one.

Cheers.

[next010]

You might want to take a look at the Qnap NMP-1000, available here but not exactly cheap.

It combines an actual proper NAS with a media player, same chip thats in the Popcornhour A-110.

The AC Ryan PlayOn HD can take an internal HD and has a BT client.

If theres nothing really wrong with your current NAS I'd just buy a WDTV Live and play media from it with that.

A Logitech Harmony universal remote - even if only used for auto switch inputs/powering everything on/off goes a long way towards making this stuff wife friendly.

[Stelph]

Originally Posted by petrolheed

My htpc setup does not agree with the wife, so i`m thinking along the lines of a network media player. My current NAS is not very good so I was considering a media player/nas all in one, last time I looked at these and there were only a couple on the market and they werent very good, but now theres millions of the things out there and I don`t know where to start.

I`m after :
NAS
Built in bittorent client
easy to use for the missus
must be fairly cheap.
If there are any out there that can view iplayer that would be handy too.

Any suggestions, or any sites where I can narrow down my choices? The info on here is good but quite hard to compare between different one.

Cheers.

You could try XBMC or Boxee on something like an Acer Revo (i.e Atom ION) running Linux?

Your requirements:
NAS
Folders, Hard drive can be shared and USB HDD can be added to increase the size of the HDD

Built in bittorent client
Boxee has a bittorrent client built in:
Boxee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

or as its Linux and a full PC you could run uTorrent and set it up to download at night so the PC isnt tied up, the PC only uses 20-30W so its not going to cost you all that much

easy to use for the missus
Do you have an iPhone or an ipod touch? If so, use this:
XBMC iPhone Remote
or this
Boxee Blog » boxee iPhone remote app available on the App Store

Otherwise get an IR remote, XBMC and Boxee have the advantage of being a lot easier and intuative to use and modify than most NMT players like the Popcorn Hour

must be fairly cheap.
The cheapest revo can be had for £150, or get the dual core version (for a bit more grunt) for under £170 delivered here:

Acer Revo 3600 Atom 330 Dual Core 1gb 160gb Linux Shop UK : Ballicom.co.uk : Buy Acer Revo 3600 Atom 330 Dual Core 1gb...

If there are any out there that can view iplayer that would be handy too.
Boxee has an iPlayer viewer built in and XBMC can have one added by Plugin, tho note that the Revo does struggle a bit with flash playback as its all CPU based and not accelerated by the GPU, tho the next version of flash due out n Q1 2010 will fix this issue

http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...rs-thread.html

[Stelph]

Alternativly get a 2nd hand AppleTV and load XBMC or Boxee onto it (whichever you prefer),

XBMC for Mac on Apple TV - XBMC

Benefits over what was described above:
1) Easier to set up (just use a USB stick)
2) Also keeps the AppleTV software so you can get Movies/TV shows on demand over the internet if you wanted
3) Cheaper (2nd hand ATV's can be bought for aroun £110)

Downsides
1) Less easy to modify/tinker with
2) Dont think you can set up UTorrent to run in the background
3) able to playback 720p but not 1080p, tho that is being fixed soon

Hope this helps!

[petrolheed]

Thanks for the replys so far, My current nas only supports smb so a lot of nmps wont work with it. it supports usb so i could use that. I dont want a pc based one, after all the sleep problems/crashing and ir remote problems with my current decent specced htpc, gigabyte ga-72, 4gb, decent cp,. i just want a cheap, simple player. I seen the hisense on the register, is there a hack out there to view iplayer on it maybe? IR all the way, I have an iphone but then my mrs wouldnt be able to use it when i`m out. if theres no harmony support I could map the buttons, i`ve got an 885.

[Stelph]

I'm not sure if an nmt is able to run the iplayer tbh, the CPU in them isn't quick enough. What are you thinking of using to watch tv? the reason I ask is if you are thinking of getting freesat then it has been announced that they are releasing iplayer over freesat beta in November so might be worth considering


As to a non pc nas, media player ect then the popcorn hour does all that, tho the menus aren't as intuative

[next010]

The WDTV Live will play media from SMB sources and is cheap with good codec support & lastly has a nice GUI but not as fancy as XBMC still I would recommend it over other NMT players.

If you dont mind your PC being on you can get the BBC iPlayer by using the playon media server it transcodes the video making it playable as a DLNA media server that the WDTV Live can connect to.

[petrolheed]

wdtv doesn`t seem to handle bittorrrent. How does the popcorn hour a110 deal with torrents? can you search via the remote or do you need to point it to the torrents via a pc?

[Stelph]

You can do it from the popcorn hour, heres a review of the A100 where the guy uses the torrent client:

Review: Popcorn Hour A-100, Part 2: Video, Audio and Torrent » mattapps.com

So i assume its the same for the A110

[petrolheed]

Thanks for all the input, I`ve been doing some googling and have narrowed it down to the popcorn hour a110 or the ac ryan playon! HD PV73100. I`ll take the 1tb drive from my htpc and put it in the nmp, put the 500gb out my crappynas into the htpc, sell the crappynas empty, probably sell the htpc if the nmp is good for downloading torrents as for everything else i use my laptops.
Out of the a110 and the playon which is best for bittorrent and iplayer?

[petrolheed]

Well, the playon HD was the flakiest thing i've ever bought, crashed several times every time I tried to use it, so i`ve sent it back. I`ve put klimaxing koala on my htpc and now i`m playing with xbmc and boxee and it`s brilliant, impressed with linux so far, sleep and ir remote are working as they should which was always a bit hit or miss with windows. if I can get xbmc not to crash when paused for too long i`m on to a winner, thanks for all the input.