What is the best media player under $100?

[vegascowboy]

I am thinking about getting a new one and i was wondering what people think is the best (fast and most format playing player) on the market

 

[sholling]

It depends on what you want it to do. The best internet streamer is probably the Roku 2 XD/XS but they aren't good network media players.

Netgear's NeoTV 550 plays most popular formats including MKV and Blu-Ray ISO and supports DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD pass-through. It also plays 24bit/192khz 5.1 channel FLACs and supports gapless playback. But it does not do any Netflix like streaming. Review

The latest Western Digital TV Live plays most video and audio formats but does not support DTS-HD MA or 24bit FLACs. But it does have Netflix (Netflix subscription required) and a couple of others. It's sort of the Swiss Army Knife of media players in that it does a whole lot of things but there are specialized tools available that do a few of them better.

All of the above can be found for less than $100, all support 1080P, and all will work with a Harmony remote. I use the combination of the Roku 2 XS and a NeoTV 550 for as close as I've found to an ultimate experience. Those are the ones that I'm most familier with but CES is coming up and who knows what will be announced there.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I recently bought Netgear's NeoTV 550 based on recommendation of sholling and honestly it does exactly what I need - it plays any format you throw it at it.
Including DTS-HD MA

The interface is not that mind blowing, but it gets the job done

I paid $99 for my at netgear

 

[vegascowboy]

I have one right now but I want netflicks to work.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I have one right now but I want netflicks to work.

I wound surely get Boxee Box then if I were you

 

[psbfan9]

You could get a blu ray player. I have a Sony BDP S570 with built in wifi and use it to stream Pandora, Slacker, and others. It has Netflix, Vudu (?) and Hulu plus streaming capability as well.
It can play SACD's which is nice. I think it's a good all around player for my needs.

 

[BMXTRIX]

As said, it really depends on exactly what you want. These cheap media players all tend to be... cheap. If you have a bunch of files you want played back, you have to figure out how to network over to them, which can be difficult, and often their GUI is pretty basic list style - maybe prettied up a bit.

I wanted reliable BD ISO playback with full menu support and HD audio, so I spent a bit more and got a Dune product. It was good enough that I bought a second unit, but it lacks (basically) all the streaming services. Since I don't do much streaming, it hasn't bugged me, but I will likely add in a Panasonic BD player to add in some streaming services.

My biggest headache/issue is that these really fall into pretty serious hardware requirements to get quality and from 50 bucks to a few hundred bucks they are all underpowered for what people are asking them to do, and many lack the proper support to continue to work well over time. I'm hoping that we will see something serious come out at a fair price ($1000 or less) which supports external database lookups, cover art, full BD support, HD audio, good music support, and the full suite of streaming services, and does it all with some serious speed and a great GUI.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

As said, it really depends on exactly what you want. These cheap media players all tend to be... cheap. If you have a bunch of files you want played back, you have to figure out how to network over to them, which can be difficult, and often their GUI is pretty basic list style - maybe prettied up a bit.

I wanted reliable BD ISO playback with full menu support and HD audio, so I spent a bit more and got a Dune product. It was good enough that I bought a second unit, but it lacks (basically) all the streaming services. Since I don't do much streaming, it hasn't bugged me, but I will likely add in a Panasonic BD player to add in some streaming services.

My biggest headache/issue is that these really fall into pretty serious hardware requirements to get quality and from 50 bucks to a few hundred bucks they are all underpowered for what people are asking them to do, and many lack the proper support to continue to work well over time. I'm hoping that we will see something serious come out at a fair price ($1000 or less) which supports external database lookups, cover art, full BD support, HD audio, good music support, and the full suite of streaming services, and does it all with some serious speed and a great GUI.

Just to confirm Netgear 550 fully supports DVD and BD ISO's and their menus including BD live and HD audio codecs

According to Anandtech so does Boxee Box which is a complete surprise to me personally after years of struggling with PC based Boxee software totally lacking these features.

In hindsight I would get Boxee box since it has great support for streaming services and (at least according to anandtech) BD iso/hd audio bitstreaming

To be perfectly fair Netgear does better job with HD Flacs, but I'm not big fan of it's basic interface even after adding cover and fan art and tag files (which did improve things a bit)


Just noticed that Boxee Box has annoying and loud tiny fan - this is a big thumbs down. my netgear is dead silent

 

[ahblaza]

BMX,
I'm really new to computer audio and anxious to get involved. I have been browsing this site Home | AudioStream it seems very informative and up to date with the evolving aspects of computer generated audio. Am I in the ballpark or do I need to be looking elsewhere? Thanks
Jeff

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

BMX,
I'm really new to computer audio and anxious to get involved. I have been browsing this site Home | AudioStream it seems very informative and up to date with the evolving aspects of computer generated audio. Am I in the ballpark or do I need to be looking elsewhere? Thanks
Jeff

Looks like they an offspring of Stereophile, which other than measurements doesn't must much value in my book.... They write about big improvements and audio nuances in $3000 speaker cables.... nuff said...

 

[BMXTRIX]

Just to confirm Netgear 550 fully supports DVD and BD ISO's and their menus including BD live and HD audio codecs

According to Anandtech so does Boxee Box which is a complete surprise to me personally after years of struggling with PC based Boxee software totally lacking these features.

In hindsight I would get Boxee box since it has great support for streaming services and (at least according to anandtech) BD iso/hd audio bitstreaming

To be perfectly fair Netgear does better job with HD Flacs, but I'm not big fan of it's basic interface even after adding cover and fan art and tag files (which did improve things a bit)


Just noticed that Boxee Box has annoying and loud tiny fan - this is a big thumbs down. my netgear is dead silent

Yeah, I bought both my Dunes after some pretty serious reading of the complaints across the board by a lot of people regarding reliability and playback quality. One thing is that I have distributed video over component, so I have to have component video outputs on all my stuff.

I currently have about 300 BD ISOs and another 300 or so DVD ISOs along with over 2,000 TV episodes in MKV format. So, I really want a strong GUI that I do not have to MANUALLY update! This is easier said than done from what I have found.

Mostly what I find is that the products out there are based on the same chip sets and those chip sets are slow. XBMC seems like it could be amazing, but it doesn't support BD ISOs natively, and even with a local BD playback program, it is a headache to get things going.

I have a very strong vision of what the 'perfect' media player is, and so far it is not out there.

Edit: After taking a look at some reviews and some reading, I may pick up one of the Netgear 550 models from eBay for 80 bucks to see how it compares to my Dune for playback off my network.

 

[BMXTRIX]

BMX,
I'm really new to computer audio and anxious to get involved. I have been browsing this site Home | AudioStream it seems very informative and up to date with the evolving aspects of computer generated audio. Am I in the ballpark or do I need to be looking elsewhere? Thanks
Jeff

That site isn't a bad starting point, but the lack of some solid forums that I could see make for some issues. Also, there is a big world of difference between audio playback devices and audio/video playback devices. With me, I am more of a video nut than a audio nut. So, I don't follow the specifics of quality audio streamers compared to video streamers. I would think HD audio playback devices which can support a number of CODECs would generally be decent if a good audio card and digital audio output is included.

There is also a good deal of difference between playing music back by going to your computer and setting it all up there, and playing it back from the PC (manually) and piping it into your system vs. the discussion here about using a networked interface appliance which you can direct to a hard drive on your network to look at your A/V files and does all the work internal to the box.

I'm just not as familiar with what you are talking about and it very well deserves it's own thread if you have questions which need to be answered.

 

[raynist]

It depends on what you want it to do. The best internet streamer is probably the Roku 2 XD/XS but they aren't good network media players.

Netgear's NeoTV 550 plays most popular formats including MKV and Blu-Ray ISO and supports DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD pass-through. It also plays 24bit/192khz 5.1 channel FLACs and supports gapless playback. But it does not do any Netflix like streaming. Review

The latest Western Digital TV Live plays most video and audio formats but does not support DTS-HD MA or 24bit FLACs. But it does have Netflix (Netflix subscription required) and a couple of others. It's sort of the Swiss Army Knife of media players in that it does a whole lot of things but there are specialized tools available that do a few of them better.

All of the above can be found for less than $100, all support 1080P, and all will work with a Harmony remote. I use the combination of the Roku 2 XS and a NeoTV 550 for as close as I've found to an ultimate experience. Those are the ones that I'm most familier with but CES is coming up and who knows what will be announced there.

I am almost positive that my wd live plays my ripped blu ray mkv's Dts-ma.

 

[gazzah]

Another option to consider might be the AppleTV. If you have a lot of content ripped in iTunes, it would make a great media player. It has HDMI and optical toslink outputs (but no analog output). If you have an iPod or iPad, you can use either the Airplay function or Remote app to control the unit, even with the TV off.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Another option to consider might be the AppleTV. If you have a lot of content ripped in iTunes, it would make a great media player. It has HDMI and optical toslink outputs (but no analog output). If you have an iPod or iPad, you can use either the Airplay function or Remote app to control the unit, even with the TV off.

The AppleTV generally sucks.

It is incredibly proprietary to Apple and you have to be using a networked hard drive that can serve iTunes or a PC on all the time which is running iTunes, because the AppleTV can't just be pointed at a directory on your network to find your iTunes collection and work with it. Likewise, if you are using it for videos, it only accepts very specific and extremely limited video formats. None of which are those traditionally made, especially for HD video content.

As is typical with Apple, it looks good, it sounds pretty good, but it is a closed environment if you want to take your collection and the quality to a new level. Just no flexibility at all. After NOT using my AppleTV for a couple of years I switched to a real media player and my family uses it almost every single day.

 

[sholling]

I am almost positive that my wd live plays my ripped blu ray mkv's Dts-ma.

They don't claim to but it's easy enough to find out. Just fire up a movie and see if DTS Master Audio shows up on your receiver's display.

 

[Cygnus]

The AppleTV generally sucks.

It is incredibly proprietary to Apple and you have to be using a networked hard drive that can serve iTunes or a PC on all the time which is running iTunes, because the AppleTV can't just be pointed at a directory on your network to find your iTunes collection and work with it. Likewise, if you are using it for videos, it only accepts very specific and extremely limited video formats. None of which are those traditionally made, especially for HD video content.

As is typical with Apple, it looks good, it sounds pretty good, but it is a closed environment if you want to take your collection and the quality to a new level. Just no flexibility at all. After NOT using my AppleTV for a couple of years I switched to a real media player and my family uses it almost every single day.

I love my AppleTV, but I do agree that it is somewhat limited. It can play Dolby Digital soundtracks and 720P video (Which, yeah, that sucks..) But if you encode your files correctly, run iTunes all the time (which I do) it's incredibly easy to use and rarely has hiccups.