Hi all, me and the misses just bough a nice shiny brand new HD tv (Samsung UE46 F8000) Next thing on the list is a htpc ...or so i thought, until someone give me a link of a popcorn hour media player. My tv does play mkv etc...but subtitles are sometimes a big hustle (the misses want to look movies without clicking 50 times ) anyone has experience with both a htpc and a media player? What are the pros and cons? http://www.popcornhour.eu/nl/index.php?page=a400 You can get a popcorn player for 250/300 euro a htpc prob costs more,what is the benefit of it ? Thx
The joy of the Popcorn hour (and other decent media streamers) is that it will play *most* files reasonably well, with relatively minimal hassle and configuration. Typically media streamers use SOC designs to reduce cost, power consumption etc. The best ones will usually handle most subtitles fine, although they won't always support advanced font usage, animated fonts etc. The joy of a HTPC is flexibility; providing your hardware is sufficient, it can be updated to suit new codecs and features relatively easily, and will have the widest compatibility and configurability, all you need to do is update the software. If you get a relatively modern PC, and use OpenELEC as your OS (it's a free, extremely lightweight XBMC Linux build designed for HTPCs intended for use as appliances, rather than as PC), you practically have something that runs very similarly to a media streamer in terms of setup speed etc, but has all the power of a PC behind it. OpenElec boots extremely quickly on a modern PC with a semi-decent USB stick, don't even need to buy a HDD or SSD if you don't want to for this, so again you're back to just needing storage medium/files HTPCs can also be setup to use remotes/wireless keyboards etc. I tried media streamers, but my personal needs weren't quite fulfilled. I now run an OpenELEC XBMC HTPC in both my Lounge and Bedroom, using a combination of wireless media keyboard/pads and the XBMC android remote control for control. Works really well, and can be setup extremely quickly, especially once you know what you're doing! OpenElec also makes it very easy to act as a media NAS, as it can be installed to have active SAMBA sharing on all directly connected HDDs from the word go. In other words, the HDDs are shared automatically across your home network under your HTPC's IP address. I leave the lounge HTPC on permanently acting as a NAS and access it with everything else including the Bedroom HTPC. The other benefit is that the SAMBA shares can be setup as a network hard drive under Windows, so you can copy rips etc directly to and from the HDDs on the HTPC from another networked machine. Don't believe the Popcorn hours will do that. Only real benefit of the popcorn hour is extra simplicity/out the box, and lower power usage.
A streaming device is absolutely no match for a HTPC. I don't know much about openELEC. Don't know how is handles tv. I prefer Windows 7 because it has windows media center built in. I have a Ceton Infinity 4 tv tuner and Ceton has an app with any phone that you can control the tuner with. It is excellent. I use a 2 gb hard drive for tv shows and a 4 tb drive for Blu ray movies. Every htpc is going to have a learning curve and a few quirks,but its totally worth it. Don't buy into the XMBC hype either, It looks nice but a huge PITA to get everything working. It doesn't support the Ceton infinity tv cards either. I have found that Jriver is simply the best. Easy to use and it automatically sets up all your stuff with out you needing to be a programmer. The XMBC guys will tell you ,its not that bad..It's not that good,and there are many things about it that aren't user friendly. Trust me,I tried them all. If you want to spend a lot of time getting XMBC right,go for it. But if you want it simple and easy to use,go with Jriver. JMO..
