Recommend me a streamer?

BigAardvaark

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Hi,

Lurker in this section for a bit but still a bit confused.... Please recommend me a streamer based on the following requirements;

Will stream Bluray ISO files from Synology NAS
Will bitstream their HD audio content
Internet Radio
Nice to have - high bitrate FLAC support

Must have the best picture quality, ie, same as the physical disc if this is possible?

Hope this exists in something that isn't too techie to get up and running, I want something I can just point at the folders on the NAS and it will play. Not too bothered if Bluray menus don't work, as long as main movie does. Have hard wired gigabit ethernet, wifi not needed.

Thanks!
 
The sticking point is ISO format files. A lot of players don't handle them well.

My suggestion would probably be a Mede8er. The 600 model will do you fine if you're streaming externally, however it won't give you your full bluray menu which you've stated you're not bothered about.

If you're not bothered about the menus and all the other stuff, if you remux them into .mkv files, which wouldn't take too long per disc, then it would give you a lot more options such as a device which runs XBMC without having to have too high a spec.
 
Ta for that, I did briefly look at the current Mede8er range but saw they'd been around since 2012 and might be a bit "old" now? But thinking about it, that's probably a sign that all the bugs are ironed out!

Been a while since I did any converting of movies other than through handbrake for iPad, etc. I really just want to stick with ISO purely for time reasons.
 
The only issue I see people mentioning with the mede8er is navigating a large library can be a bit slower than the likes of XBMC with a decent chipset in the streamer.

You are right about the bugs, when released there were quite a few but over time they've worked hard developing it, to make it one of the better out the box streamers there is.
Only other option with your ISO's would really be a Dune, which are older than the mede8er and need an external jukebox to give a nice UI or a Popcorn Hour A400/410 which is a bit more expensive.

I'm an XBMC junkie so I don't have that much experience of them.

Just a note, remuxing is not converting. To remux a file should only take about as long as it would to copy it as opposed to the hours it can take to encode it. When remuxing you can also remove any extra languages, unused subs etc that have been left in the ISO.
I can understand however if you have a large library (I have over 1000 titles) that even the thought of that can be daunting.
 
I have just got a Mede8er 600, I only play films on it via stream or USB stick so far its been superb. navigation could be slightly better but playback is Spot on
 
I would recommend the himedia q5 4k it's got Xbmc can easily handle all blu- Ray ISO with full HD sound plus high bit rate flac files and just been updated for Dolby atmos sound its is really a very good player and fast I've had a mead8er 600 and it's showing its age now .
 
The age of the Mede8er is the only thing putting me off so far. And that himedia thing is SILVER!!! How very 2002.... Would stick out like a sore thumb in my rack! And don't Android boxes have issues with framerates? 29.97 and 23.98 FPS? I need something that plays BD equally as well as a BD player does. Won't be happy with it otherwise. I think I'm going to hold fire until I hear more about the PCH VTEN and it's TrueHD audio issue, if it turns out to be a lemon I will probably go with the Mede8er.
 
The age of the Mede8er is the only thing putting me off so far. And that himedia thing is SILVER!!! How very 2002.... Would stick out like a sore thumb in my rack! And don't Android boxes have issues with framerates? 29.97 and 23.98 FPS? I need something that plays BD equally as well as a BD player does. Won't be happy with it otherwise. I think I'm going to hold fire until I hear more about the PCH VTEN and it's TrueHD audio issue, if it turns out to be a lemon I will probably go with the Mede8er.


Ye oppo do a silver bd 105s they call a limited edition and charge you a £1000 the himedia is small it would get lost in your rack if your near Nottingham /Sheffield you can have a demo of mead8er 600 / himedia/ cubox I pro plenty to choose
 
In the end I went with a Raspberry Pi 2 B, started with OSMC then went with OpenELEC purely on the fact I like their forum better! Running a release candidate of Kodi Isengard and this does all I wanted and then some. FLIRC to keep everything on my Harmony as I don't like the way CEC works in my setup so that's switched off. £29 for the Pi, £20 for the FLIRC, £5 case, £8 Micro-SD.

VeryHappyVaark.
 
I didn't think it did HD audio at the moment.

I have both a NUC as my main one and then a Pi 2 as my backup running Openelec with Kodi 14 the latter machine only doing SD sound so would be interested if you have managed to solve it with 15?
 
It decodes the HD codecs before sending them out at 7.1 (or whatever you choose.1) as PCM. So you don't get the "DTS-MA" light up on your amp but it is for all intents and purposes the same. It's been able to do this with DD+ for a while, new in Isengard (still beta/RC) is DTS-MA too. A tad counter-intuitive to get it to do it but do it it does.
 

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