Internet TV

[ericmark]

For Christmas we got a Sony BDP-S370 Blu-ray player and it connected to the internet and allowed us to watch BBC iplayer and a host of other things. Plus would connect to the Lan hard drive and allow me to watch the films on the hard drive.

After about 3 weeks however the LAN part of the player failed and when we returned it to Tesco they no longer had any for sale.

They gave us a different make which did not have the internet system and not really interested in Blu-ray only want the internet bit. So it was returned. However when I tried to find a replacement it seems the £100 price bracket does not seem to include that feature in other makes.

However other than down load loads of instruction manuals it is hard to find out exactly what other makes do. Any pointers to units which will allow me to watch internet and hard drive films?

 

[EFCLee1]

Yes - a PC

Hook up a dual core with at least 4 Gig of ram, basic 512Mb graphics card an that should suffice to play anything

I have my PC next to my av rack in my living room and also connected 5.1 to my PC pics are on here

 

[digdilem]

Apples and oranges, but the Humax Freesat box does iplayer too.

 

[ericmark]

I know the Technisat HDFS Freesat Decoder Tesco £134.97 will also do the job but likely some time in future we will get Sky+HD so the Blu-ray is better option.

As to PC tried that and it does not work as well. Since one can't record many of the programs on PC only allowed to keep for so many days. However with the blu-ray player we can record it onto our Hard drive/DVD recorder and transfer to DVD and keep for ever and a day.

Yes agreed the PC does allow some access that the blu-ray will not but any thing recordable with PC will be stored onto the LAN hard drive and can be watched with blu-ray player anyway so using a PC connected to TV is really an expensive and pointless exercise. I am at the moment until I get replacement blu-ray using my lap top with TV.

Since the first Sony BDP-S370 Blu-ray player failed just thought worth asking about other makes before buying another Sony BDP-S370 Blu-ray player. However up to now it seems it is the only reasonable priced option as others I have seen with same TV net ability seem to be double the price.

 

[Monkeh]

As to PC tried that and it does not work as well. Since one can't record many of the programs on PC only allowed to keep for so many days.

That's a limitation of whatever broken software you were using.

 

[ericmark]

Using the BBC software on PC. I think we should not be able to record from Blu-ray to stand alone hard drive but it does which is very handy.

I suppose could use Linux which seems to bypass many of the restrictions imposed but a PC at £300+ compared with Blu-ray at under £100 there is no contest blu-ray wins hands down.

 

[Monkeh]

I suppose could use Linux which seems to bypass many of the restrictions imposed but a PC at £300+ compared with Blu-ray at under £100 there is no contest blu-ray wins hands down.

Depends what you use it for. Said PC can have many more abilities: Large amounts of storage, the ability to play any format you wish (embedded devices have pathetic support for video and audio formats), and over the network too, quietness (most of these fancy Blu-ray players are quite noisy), wide range of TV reception options (DVB-{T,T2,S,S2,C}, others)..

And seeing as you haven't found another all-singing, all-dancing Blu-ray player for under a ton..

 

[digdilem]

(embedded devices have pathetic support for video and audio formats),

Actually - some are *much* better than others in that regard, with regular firmware updates that continue support for new formats. The Popcorn Hour is a great example of this - has so far played everything I've thrown at it.