What is really better than an Apple TV 1 ??? I mean REALLY
Sorry for the long post/background...
I have had a few hard drive based media players in the past and we used Windows Media Center on a desktop recording from the cable box and outputting to our main TV for a few years before cable PVRs were all the rage. Last year I discovered XBMC.
I did a bit of reading and found out that Apple TVs could be jail broken and used for XBMC. We got a good deal on an Apple TV 3 and after looking into it a bit further found out that that version was not "jailbreakable"! We did play around with it and were able to explore and play some of our media on a hard drive with the assistance of PLEX. Browsing cover Art versus title was great. The remote was good except when having to enter words.
After doing a bit more reading I found a couple of Apple TV 1s on **** that already had the Broadcom Crystal HD cards installed (which allow you to playback 1080p video). I bought those. With the HD video cards installed we loose wireless ability but the house is wired suffciently. We run either Crystalbuntu or OpenElec. XBMC seems to work fine really. Occasional lock ups and dead streams of course. MASHUP was are "go to" until it went belly up. Love the ability to play media off a USB stick or hard drive. It plays whatever you through at it and has plenty of options for video and audio decoding.
I read recently that OpenElec was no longer going to be supporting Apple TV 1 and I see Crystalbuntu's developer is creating OMC and his own hardware. So, in my mind he'll stop supporting the Apple TV 1 very soon to. Also XBMC/Kodi announced they won't support the Broadcom Crystal HD card going forward (I think there is a work around for now however).
It appears the Apple TV 1 is becoming a dinosaur and I was looking at perhaps selling my boxes while there is still value to be had in them, and upgrading to something new. Minix Neo X8-H Plus perhaps, or a lower end MINIX.
I guess my main question (if you skipped all the reading above) is What XBMC TV box will play all my media via network share or USB, and run XBMC smoothly. I don't want a full fledged desktop since it's always on and power consumption is a minor issue. Price is a bit of a factor since we need to cover 2 or 3 or 4 TVs . NUCs were eliminated due to price. I might consider also trying to use Plexbmc to handle the local media.
I'll appreciate any and all responses/advice.
Thanks,
TheHammer
I have had a few hard drive based media players in the past and we used Windows Media Center on a desktop recording from the cable box and outputting to our main TV for a few years before cable PVRs were all the rage. Last year I discovered XBMC.
I did a bit of reading and found out that Apple TVs could be jail broken and used for XBMC. We got a good deal on an Apple TV 3 and after looking into it a bit further found out that that version was not "jailbreakable"! We did play around with it and were able to explore and play some of our media on a hard drive with the assistance of PLEX. Browsing cover Art versus title was great. The remote was good except when having to enter words.
After doing a bit more reading I found a couple of Apple TV 1s on **** that already had the Broadcom Crystal HD cards installed (which allow you to playback 1080p video). I bought those. With the HD video cards installed we loose wireless ability but the house is wired suffciently. We run either Crystalbuntu or OpenElec. XBMC seems to work fine really. Occasional lock ups and dead streams of course. MASHUP was are "go to" until it went belly up. Love the ability to play media off a USB stick or hard drive. It plays whatever you through at it and has plenty of options for video and audio decoding.
I read recently that OpenElec was no longer going to be supporting Apple TV 1 and I see Crystalbuntu's developer is creating OMC and his own hardware. So, in my mind he'll stop supporting the Apple TV 1 very soon to. Also XBMC/Kodi announced they won't support the Broadcom Crystal HD card going forward (I think there is a work around for now however).
It appears the Apple TV 1 is becoming a dinosaur and I was looking at perhaps selling my boxes while there is still value to be had in them, and upgrading to something new. Minix Neo X8-H Plus perhaps, or a lower end MINIX.
I guess my main question (if you skipped all the reading above) is What XBMC TV box will play all my media via network share or USB, and run XBMC smoothly. I don't want a full fledged desktop since it's always on and power consumption is a minor issue. Price is a bit of a factor since we need to cover 2 or 3 or 4 TVs . NUCs were eliminated due to price. I might consider also trying to use Plexbmc to handle the local media.
I'll appreciate any and all responses/advice.
Thanks,
TheHammer
Comment