Media Player that supports "DTS MA"

[maineman]

Hey maineman, do you have 10TB somewhere else to back up to?

Well yes and no.
I have a 2 TB hdd with a ton of standard dvd conversions installed in my Argosy.
It has a combination of over a thousand .avi and .mkv's and each flick/tv series disc is converted down to approx 1 GB per flick/disc.
This offers me great viewing on a 42" HDTV.
Anyway, this 2 TB hdd is cloned.

I also have 4 x 2 TB hdds with BD flicks, main movie mode, not compressed nor converted.
I have 1 x 2 TB hdd as a bkup of my favorites.
The other 6 TB are not backed up.

So I'd have to go back to the original discs and re-rip...
On the other hand, it wouldn't take much effort, but I'd still have to pop in the disc and repeat this process every 30-40 minutes ad nauseum

Honestly, some are not likely to be watched again...at least by me.
Still it's nice to have a good sized library that's completely managable with a remote, all the while my arse is selfishly parked in the "comfy chair".

I also have my system hdd cloned. I do it about once a week and as needed.
In this day and age, I can't imagine anyone not backing up their os and critical data, especially with the dirt cheap price of hdds.

[GregiBoy]

Totally agree with you Marty!!!

With my collection (~10Tb) it would never get done if it all crashed. I've been doing this for ages and it is amazing how it builds up and some stuff, I probably never get again eg: I recorded a TV Documentary on the Vietnam war which was great but I have never been able to get it on disk and it was not available from all the "NAUGHTY" sources either.

4Gb total = Approx 0.60c of disk space to keep it backed up. Cheap insurance!!

Hey maineman, do you have 10TB somewhere else to back up to?

I can't imagine losing all that stuff with a bad hard drive and having to re-rip it all.

I have 4TB's in a NAS configured as a 2TB Raid 1, becuase I can't face re-ripping all that stuff if things go awry.

[GregiBoy]

I'll get started on my "ORGANISE YOUR LIBRARY" rant later on but to just give you an example, I try to get all my libary files to have an attached thumbnail which is displayed on the media player navigation screen. I'll go into the folder structure later....

Here it is:-

[kelson]

Feel free to post any questions. I am learning a technology brand new to me.
From what i gather from your last reply is that you have 10 tb worth of movies on your hdd's that you can play on your player? Correct? Do media players read anytype of file that DVDFab Blu ray copies to the hdd's? I am still a little confused by all the different file options and what exactly I'll need to do once my hardware shows up?

Seriously, if you are interested in media players you should take a trip over to the Media Servers & Content Streamers Forum on AV Science Forum. There are a lot of people over there who have and discuss most of the current players with threads on individual players. We also discuss large server arrays and how to build them (lots of guys there with 20+ TB arrays). And, of course, we discuss ripping and ripping tools. You will get a much better view of the landscape and the pros, cons and tips for just about any player worth having. Oh, and the current gold-standard player is the Dune -- has been for quite some time.

At the very least, take a look at iboum.com if you want a detailed overview of just about all the media players available world-wide. iboum posts semi-regularly on AVS Forum. All are invited.

[midnightmaraude]

After some thought and research it looks like the Himedia 900B is the way to go if you're looking to stream BD ISO's. Allows for an internal 3TB hard drive and has a external SATA port along with 2 3.0ubs ports. That storage capability along with the streaming function seems dynamite.

[kelson]

After some thought and research it looks like the Himedia 900B is the way to go if you're looking to stream BD ISO's. Allows for an internal 3TB hard drive and has a external SATA port along with 2 3.0ubs ports. That storage capability along with the streaming function seems dynamite.

That is a new player and there is quite a lot of interest in it because of the 3D streaming ability. You might want to pay a visit here. The lone US reseller, "Leo", is a contributing member of the thread.

[GregiBoy]

Considering getting one myself but they are not released in Australia until late next week so I do not know $$.

[maineman]

Finally got a chance to kick the tires on my new AIOS HD Media Center and take it for a quick spin.
I'm very impressed so far.
Loaded with features, very decent specs, particularly for $99.99 US, plus free shipping from Amazon.

Handles my BD mkv conversions smoothly and consistently, no issues with subtitles or HD audio which I had seen with my Argosy.

Anyway, thanks to Marty for posting a link for this little gem and to everyone else who posted and contributed to this thread.

@unclebubbies
So did you get your AIOS fired up yet?

@Greg....now I get to do thumbnails...

[GregiBoy]

How's the navigation?

[GregiBoy]

PS: Will be posting my modified Thumbgen templates for Movies and TV series shortly. DiabloZoe wants them too.

I have zipped them all up but as I have hacked Thumbgen so that it utilises a common library of images for audio & video formats that I have tarted up, I now have to write instructions on how to install it.

First of all, I have to remember how I did it!!! "Old Farts Disease" kicking in again?

[maineman]

Hahaha,
Remember, you're always welcome to my stash of dementia meds...

The navigation is a big improvement over the Argosy.
First thing I noticed is that it is much, much faster. In a matter of 1-2 seconds it speeds up to the point where I get dizzy and blow by the title I wanted...lol.

Like I said, it is feature rich and I'm just starting with it so the learning curve is pretty steep for this old fart.
Seems fairly intuitive though.

The remote is loaded as well, but the button lay-out seems a bit random or better yet, maybe more like a 6-year-old did it.

Thanks for the offer of the Thumbgen templates...

[GregiBoy]

Here's a couple of examples of thumbnails that I am producing semi-automatically.....

[maineman]

Nice...they look great!

[unclebubbies]

Maineman,
I received the AIOS on Friday and hooked it up on Sat. A couple of problems right away for me. The main one being that the Seagate expansion drive that i purchased will not power up all the time and the Aios won't read it. I did play with the power cord on the Seagate and finally got it to work. But once the hdd is disconnected and plugged in again...same problem. So I'm returning the hdd and looking for some other model that hopefully will work with this media player. The one time the Aios did read the drive it was awesome. Any suggestions for hdd's? Another problem I had was with the wireless adaptor. It reads my network but won't take my password and connect to the internet. It tells me "test failed". Aios does not have very good customer support either. Especially for a novice like me who is brand new to this kind of tech stuff. I emailed them and am waiting for a response. The bigger issue for me of course is getting a hdd that works using the usb port without any fudging around for the player to read it's connected. Any advise would be appreciated!

[maineman]

That's really too bad about the seagate, especially in light of recent hdd prices.

I posted this back on 10/27


I'm a fan of media servers as opposed to what are strictly external hdds.
My first plunge into media servers was this 4-bay
.

No issues having it recognized by my Argosy, AIOS and my win7 rig.
Easy to do whatever I need to...

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but for now, I'd wait a bit for hdds to settle into a more reasonable price range.

These samsungs have been my most recent favorite for performance and reliability.



Usually get 'em from newegg for about $75 (including shipping), but sometimes for $60.
Right now they're going for $219.99 + $7.28 shipping...

I was planning to bkup my 10 TB of media.
Right now?...I don't think so