Hello everyone ! this place looks so different! it looks great! im making my little wish list for the holidays and i would like to invest in one of those devices that are available that allow you to watch your movies - WITHOUT HAVING TO CONVERT to DVD / Burn to DVD. (sigh) - i feel like im the only one still doing this these days.... if im thinking along the correct lines then i guess i would be looking at one of these ..... • Popcorn Hour • Roku • WD TV Live -or- WD TV Live Plus • Boxee The thing is i dont know where to start! what i want, is to be able to set up the device and transfer a file (movie) over to it whenever i want to and enjoy it on my TV. no converting / burning. nothing. just load and play. whats confusing me is that while looking at the sites for those products above - i see so much mentioned about streaming from netflix and hulu and all this other stuff, BUT im not sure if thats what im interested in. i dont want to subscribe to anything and have another bill at the end of the month. i was hoping to hear from the community here as to which of these you all are using and are happy with. any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated, as always.
Well the best you can do is look for reviews there is always someone willing to give great detail about what they've experienced. I can tell you that Roku is definitely not the way to go as its only designed to carry netflix. A lot your choice depends on your knowledge of networking and computers. As I read reviews and learned from other people there three ways that are usually used with these devices. 1. Hard Drive- (HDD) If you've used a dvr( a device that saves the programs you watch) then this is basically how your device is going to work. I believe the WD TV Live and the Popcorn Hour have this type of setup. They both can hook up to a TV. Now I'm not quite familiar with how you transfer the files but as long as you can do that your in there. 2. USB/HDD- This works with most devices. You connect a thumb drive or external hdd to your the device and watch the movie this way. I believe this to be the popular choice as you only have to transfer to the device once. WDTV is sort like an external hdd so this is the best bet. 3. Network- This is my favorite method. This takes a little more knowledge dealing with networks but once you set it up its great. You don't have to transfer any files and you can stream videos directly from your computer. Both popcorn hour and WDTV can be setup to work this way. I'm familiar with Boxee and I actually thinks its the best bet. It can play all the video files( it took a little bit of navigation to get the mkv files to play but they did work) and it had the hulu plugin as well as other plugins like CNN. Biggest gain of course is that you might be able to run it with your computer its all depends upon having everything you need to run it. Its all with preference I prefer dedicating a computer for saving my video files and another device for watching it. Hope this helps.
If you are talking about avi's, all you need is a dvd player which is DIVX compatible.(most of them are these days) Just burn 5 or 6 avis as data onto a dvd disc...works for me.
