Generally speaking,
SmartQ has stuck to what it's best at -- mediocre portable media players -- without deviating an inch. Finally, someone at the company conjured up enough courage to take a risk, and we think the outcome is pretty decent. The simply titled and not-at-all-confusing HDTV Player is the firm's very first
set-top-box, which aims to play back a litany of high-definition files on one's HDTV. As predicted, the box offers up an HDMI 1.3 port for getting all that lovely 720p+ content onto your screen, and there's also a pair of USB 2.0 ports for connecting external HDDs and the like. Beyond that, details are astonishingly sparse, but we get the feeling it'll be quite some time (read: forever) before this thing floats far from the shores of Asia.
[Via
MP4Nation]
posted Mar 17th 2009 8:41PM
With the right container/compression support (AVI/DivX, MP4/H.264, MKV/H.264, AAC), and the right price-point ($49.99 no wireless/no storage, $79.99 no wireless/80GB storage, $99.99 wireless/no storage, $149.99 wireless/80GB storage), this thing could find a niche. Not enough technology, or too expensive, and it'll be DoA.
agreed. sadly they always price these things at like $250 and price themselves out or they make it ugly, make an ugly unusable user interface, don't provide support to add things people desire.
Honestly what i find amazing is that neither microsoft or apple hasn't just made a decent device with greater mass appeal. Microsoft already has a 360 in tons of houses but it's it's cumbersome to use for the average person and then there's apple with all it's marketing and design savy and apple tv already. They But they've never decided to make it all that people desire.
Well Apple has the Apple TV...but like typical Apple, it costs twice as much as it should, and you play what Steve Jobs wants you to play.
Microsoft would be a good candidate, especially since they could afford to subsidize the cost a bit. Just make a device similar in look (both physical and the interface) to the 360, but geared more towards a set-top box. Price that thing at $99.00 and watch it fly off of the shelves.
I just bought a Lacie Lacinema Classic 1TB for $220 on Amazon. It should arrive tomorrow and I'm looking forward to cramming all downloaded movies to it in .AVI format. This way I won't be bugged to burn DVD's over Grandmas for Sunday dinner and spend my Sunday converting and burning.
Two words: Popcorn Hour. I currently own the Western Digital WDTV, but have recently decided to pick up an A-110. The WDTV is great, and I've high hopes that the PH--with the ability to install an onboard hard drive and decode DTS--will be even more fun.
The first company to release a media streamer device which does these, gets my money:
- Streams a wide variety of formats, including mkv, h.264, PLUS streaming blu-ray rips.
- Can pass-through Tru-HD and DTS-HD MA to a compatible receiver *WITHOUT* extracting the AC3 or DTS cores (It's either the whole thing, or I'm not interested)
- Does not fail/have problems. (I've read too many problems with the popcorn A-110 to even consider it an option)
I want a set-top box that can play HDTV's!
You just summarized the demands of 150,000,000 of your fellow citizens. You get a cookie, a BIG cookie!
How are these things typically as far as playing different formats go? Can they play just about anything? Or will i be converting vids to mp4 a la xbox360...
does it play rmvb?
http://www.consumer.philips.com/consumer/en/us/consumer/cc/_productid_DVP5992_37_US_CONSUMER/DVD-player-with-USB+DVP5992-37
it has a USB port and play xvid files. if u have an external hard drive just convert it to FAT32 and it plays all of your .avi moves.(not hard to do)