XBMC vs Mede8er MED600X3D

Ice_Black

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I have a MED500X since Jan 2010 and I feel outdated now but It is very good media player and never had problem with it.

I am considering should buy newer media player Mede8er MED600X3D or I could build my own XBMC player.

Can XBMC do everything what MED600X3D can do? Which is better when it come to performance and reliable (stable)?
 
Depends what you want. XBMC is more configurable and has a nicer interface. Most of my media is 1:1 rips from blu rays or DVDs, no encoding and I've found that the Mede8er has coped with these absolutely fine. What I like most about the Mede8er is that I'm confident that I can leave it in the hands of my family and they will be able to play what they want without issue. I've never felt that way about HTPCs.


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technically a htpc with xbmc correctly configured >>>>>>>>>>>> to any media player out there.
practically you just need to be ready to spend quite some time to tweak it, for maintenance and spend more money than you would for a good media player.
 
How xbmc can be the the best if it needs constant maintenance.
I like a player to be in the shelf and forget about it, but when i need to use it, be ready to at least play a ISO without worries about it.

If i use my car to go to work 5 days a week, i expect to be usable the 5 days, without aditional tweaking or maintenance.
Like mac vs windows, i just prefer mac because windows requires more OS maintenance, after few years it ruins the all usable experience.

@Ice black
i built my own pc, just the power supply (fabless) was the price of the MED600x3D, you will want a quiet PC in your main room, the total setup at the time was about 600£, i could save a little but i wanted to last few years without worring it

get xbmc, install it on laptop, plug the hdmi to the tv and use any xbmc app to control it, you will never no without testing it, and maybe this way is enough for you.
 
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I use xbmc exclusively and never have to mess with it. (once set up to my liking)
It searches and indexes my new TV and movies on boot. Only tweaking I did was install new mods and skins.

A bit like buying a new car and adding furry dice and some new rims!.



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I use xbmc exclusively and never have to mess with it. (once set up to my liking)
It searches and indexes my new TV and movies on boot. Only tweaking I did was install new mods and skins.

A bit like buying a new car and adding furry dice and some new rims!.



Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

IE
How do you watch the last 7 minutes of HUGO cabret in xbmc using ISO format.
 
I actually set up XBMC (Frodo) on a newly formatted Windows 8 machine at the start of this week. To be fair it was reasonably easy to get up and running with my film collection ( I didn't explore any of the other options ) and didn't seem to have any problems playing any of the media that I tried out within a 3 hours period (though I never watched a whole film). I did have 3 crashes whilst using it and for that reason my Mede8ers will remain the device of choice for use by the family.
 
How xbmc can be the the best if it needs constant maintenance.
I like a player to be in the shelf and forget about it, but when i need to use it, be ready to at least play a ISO without worries about it.

If i use my car to go to work 5 days a week, i expect to be usable the 5 days, without aditional tweaking or maintenance.
Like mac vs windows, i just prefer mac because windows requires more OS maintenance, after few years it ruins the all usable experience.

@Ice black
i built my own pc, just the power supply (fabless) was the price of the MED600x3D, you will want a quiet PC in your main room, the total setup at the time was about 600£, i could save a little but i wanted to last few years without worring it

get xbmc, install it on laptop, plug the hdmi to the tv and use any xbmc app to control it, you will never no without testing it, and maybe this way is enough for you.

xbmc is the best regarding PQ. There's no arguing about that, as long as you spend some time to set up MPC HC + madVR + reclock + lavfilters + ffdshow + avsynth + whateveryouwanttoaddhere :D

In one hand you have the best possible PQ and the best UI ever (HTPC + XBMC), in the other hand you have the easy of use/install and a cheap/good quality product (media player, put here the brand you like...).

I've seen many people using xbmc coming back to media players. The other way round ? not so much...(even if I'm really thinking about it now that I spent quite some time to experiment with Frodo)
 
I come from a long time background of using HTPCs we haven't watched a film directly from optical media for almost 5 years. I've tried most front-ends / players over the years and whilst things have improved from the days of not even being able to get HD audio the one thing that you couldn't acuse a HTPC based on Windows of is reliability or stability.

That's why our household has migrated to streamers as first choice. It isn't because they are inherently better in terms of playback quality or user interface because they're not. But we have come to value ease of use and reliability over some of the flashier stuff that an HTPC can do. I will still keep the HTPC and continue to dable but when the family want to watch a film it will be the Mede8er that gets fired up.
 
Interesting thread.

Having used all these products HTPC - both PC and Mac variants and countless media boxes, WD/ Dune/ PCH/ Med8er I think I am in a reasonable postion to comment.

When I had a HTPC I used XBMC as a front end and TBH it looked amazing, was extremely slick, anybody that saw it was wowed and could not believe how good it was, the problem was not the front end but the issues I had with actually playing films, issues where countless to name but they ranged from lip sync problems, video jerky, DTS-HD sound dropouts etc etc and the killer for me matching the 23.976 framerate of a blue-ray re-encode/ film.

I felt with the HTPC that I was always having to tinker with it, although many films where okay too often I would get one that would cause me issues and that really ****** me off.

I moved onto media boxes in an attempt to find a plug and play solution that just worked.

As listed above I have had a number of these types of devices but the only models that I would recommend is Dune and Med8er, both of which I own now. They are are eminently capable of playing any format for both sound/ video including Blueray 3D (providing you get the correct model) and seem to do this without any issue, which for me is perfect as I can sit back relax and just press the button and watch the damn film without having to be on tenderhooks waiting for something to go wrong which is how it was with the HTPC.

You can argue about video quality and that the HTPC is capable of the best image but to be honest I project onto a 92" screen and what I see IMO could not be improved by that much.

Whilst I like the look of the video wall/ pretty fornt ends both of which you can have on either Dune or Med8er I now just have a simple file system that is basic to look at but very quick and easy to navigate as for me the most important part is playing the film, both players (Dune HD smart H1 and Med8er 800X 3d) play 24hz material flawlessly as you would see in a cinema and that is the biggie.
 
If you don't want to mess around too much you could get something like a NUC and install a version of XBMC in minutes from Openelec who create builds based on Linux (don't worry you don't need to know how Linux works). They install and thats it - up and running in ten minutes.
 
The main problem with most if not all PC related hardware is their inability to play 23.976 (most Blueray) material without some sort of skipping however infrequent this is.

For me on the HTPC having the image stutter every 41 seconds drove me nuts and I just had to find a solution, the media box was it, these play the file the same way as a blueray player without any hiccup whatsoever so until this changes I will be staying with my trusty old payers.
 

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