Films on holiday
- Thread starter yottie
- Start date
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Western Digital TV (WDTV)
Android MX TV Box
Roku
All the above are media player boxes available for £80 or less. All can access content from a USB stick, USB-connected hard drive or a NAS drive. The NAS is OTT for holiday use but useful to know about for using these media players at home. For holiday use I'd take a couple of 64Gb USB flash drives. At under £20 a piece they're cheaper than the option of a laptop HDD in a caddy and being solid state there's a better chance of them surviving in transit.
Of the three options above I'd go with the Android MX TV Box. These are available for under £60 off Ebay. They run a slimmed down version of a very slick home cinema PC program called XBMC. The Android app version has a fully featured front-end interface. What's missing is some of the customisability you might run on a £500+ HTPC system. Compared to the Roku and the WDTV though it's streets ahead. Simple stuff like the user interface and being able to choose movies from thumbnail views is such a big step up from the basic text lists on the other boxes.
I've never used the Roku but I know all three output on HDMI, and I can confirm having used WDTV, MX and a Seagate GoFlex that all of those also output on composite with stereo audio for compatibility with the CRT TVs you may still find available in holiday accommodation.
I have recently installed a couple of the MX TV Boxes for clients. One was a replacement for a the HTPC software on what was a £2500 HTPC system installed 5 years ago. Both clients are over the moon.
If you want you can download the PC version of XBMC for yourself to play with. It's free for personal use. http://xbmc.org/download/
Android MX TV Box
Roku
All the above are media player boxes available for £80 or less. All can access content from a USB stick, USB-connected hard drive or a NAS drive. The NAS is OTT for holiday use but useful to know about for using these media players at home. For holiday use I'd take a couple of 64Gb USB flash drives. At under £20 a piece they're cheaper than the option of a laptop HDD in a caddy and being solid state there's a better chance of them surviving in transit.
Of the three options above I'd go with the Android MX TV Box. These are available for under £60 off Ebay. They run a slimmed down version of a very slick home cinema PC program called XBMC. The Android app version has a fully featured front-end interface. What's missing is some of the customisability you might run on a £500+ HTPC system. Compared to the Roku and the WDTV though it's streets ahead. Simple stuff like the user interface and being able to choose movies from thumbnail views is such a big step up from the basic text lists on the other boxes.
I've never used the Roku but I know all three output on HDMI, and I can confirm having used WDTV, MX and a Seagate GoFlex that all of those also output on composite with stereo audio for compatibility with the CRT TVs you may still find available in holiday accommodation.
I have recently installed a couple of the MX TV Boxes for clients. One was a replacement for a the HTPC software on what was a £2500 HTPC system installed 5 years ago. Both clients are over the moon.
If you want you can download the PC version of XBMC for yourself to play with. It's free for personal use. http://xbmc.org/download/
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Thanks for all that info. If I go for the MX TV Box is it guaranteed to work on any TV, this will be in an hotel room in an Italian Ski resort (the TVs look recent according to the pix they show !) I just wonder how they connect ??
Already address that in the previous post...
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