PrimeDTV further saturates HD media streamer segment with PHD-HM5
By Darren Murph 
posted November 17th 2009 10:01AM
posted November 17th 2009 10:01AM
Look, we're all for competition, but it's about time for some of these guys to stop copying and start innovating. As if your noggin' wasn't already spinning enough as you attempt to whittle down your laundry list of HD media streamers, in flies PrimeDTV with yet another hopeful. The PHD-HM5 looks to be fairly standard in terms of features, with HDMI / component outputs, a lengthy list of supported formats, an Ethernet socket and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. You won't find WiFi or any internal hard drive, and you'll have to live with the fact that this thing is akin to some lackluster AV component from the early 90s. Oh, and then there's the chore of actually finding one for sale (not to mention an MSRP), which should probably be just enough to push you towards Popcorn Hour.
Just get a PS3, its that easy
PS3 as a media center FTW.
@Darren Murph: Why does a HD streamer have to have an internal hard drive? That's why they call them streamers! I have a 1TB NAS that has all my movies so I can stream them to my PS3. That same NAS also serves my Western Digital HD streamer in the bedroom. It also can serve movies to my laptop and desktop computers. Why do I need multiple hard drives to duplicate all my data?!
The only reason anyone I want anything other than a PS3 is for MKV playback.
You can get freeware to convert MKV to PS3 compliant M2TS in minutes.
The PS3 makes for a great media center hub, but compared to other media players offerings from Western Digital and Popcorn Hour, the format support is rather limited.
PS3 does not support:
.MOV
.MOV H264
.OGG
.OGV
.FLAC
.FLV (downloaded file)
and a whole laundry list.
With the PS3 If its not MPEG or WMV then your out of luck.
http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/video/filetypes.html
Yawn.
::waits for updated AppleTV::
Do any of these stupid things work with Hulu? That seems to be the one thing nobody wants to do or talk about.
If your running MediaMall's PlayOn on one of your networked PC's it will. In fact any DLNA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance ) compatible device will work. I can watch HULU on my PS3, XBOX 360, XBOX w/ XBMC, and Wii.
An XBox 360 equipped with PlayOn sounds much nicer.
now that ion will be supported by hardware accelerated flash.... an acer revo seems like a better option
Finally, a stream that has the ability to pass-through DTS HD MA and Dolby TrueHD.
You mean like the popcornhour a-110 that has been out for over a year now? Yeah finally...