Flac in your theater?

[MidnightSensi]

I'm looking for a good, simple, way to play Flac files in my theater.

My dream would be something like:
A box with a HDMI output to connect to my receiver, and then USB inputs on the back for me to connect drives with my media on it. Then I could use my display to decide what I want to listen to.

Any ideas? What are you guys using?

 

[Seth=L]

Western Digital WDAVN00BN on sale now at Newegg. It plays FLAC and also plays .MKV files (same as Blu-ray format) allowing you to rip your Blu's to HDD and play them back on a simplified system. Naturally it can be used with a host of USB based HDDs and will play back countless varieties of audio/video formats.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136452&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives+-+External-_-Western+Digital-_-22136452

I believe it's a refurb, but still, $50 and you get all that functionality, it's pretty cool.

 

[MidnightSensi]

Haha, that thing looks absolutely dope. That's exactly what I want. I'ma order that!

I'm so tired of 'syncing' my AppleTV (not to mention downconverting my FLACs to mp3 to do that)

 

[its phillip]

One of my friends really likes his WD TV thing, and that's a nice cheap price. About your apple tv though - can't it play alac? You could just transcode from flac to alac, and not have to spend any more money, although i've never used an apple tv and don't know what formats it supports so i'm not sure.

 

[MidnightSensi]

One of my friends really likes his WD TV thing, and that's a nice cheap price. About your apple tv though - can't it play alac? You could just transcode from flac to alac, and not have to spend any more money, although i've never used an apple tv and don't know what formats it supports so i'm not sure.

I heard AppleTV downconverts everything to 320 mp3. Like, it will read alac, but then it will play it 320 when it gets transferred to the AppleTV.

AppleTV has been ticking me off lately, problems syncing, lack of file support.

Anyways, I went to Best Buy today and just bought one of these things. Worst came to worse I could return it.

Took a few minutes to setup. Plug it in to power and hdmi, connect a drive. That's it. Listening to a Flac right now. Very slick, very simple - exactly what I wanted. Supports DivX and stuff too!

Cheers again Sheep!

 

[adwilk]

I absolutely love the WDTV. I got the "live" version for streaming and other functionality though.

 

[RaT]

So FLAC is the way to go over the other loseless methods. After researching it, I am now aware that there are many ways to do FLAC. Is there a post here that explains how someone such as myself would start doing this? I currently use Windows Media over Apples iTunes because it seems problem free over any version of iTunes I have on my Windows 7 machine. Basically I will use my WD TV live to interface with and go from there with networks or attached hard drive. Thanks to all...

 

[MidnightSensi]

So FLAC is the way to go over the other loseless methods. After researching it, I am now aware that there are many ways to do FLAC. Is there a post here that explains how someone such as myself would start doing this? I currently use Windows Media over Apples iTunes because it seems problem free over any version of iTunes I have on my Windows 7 machine. Basically I will use my WD TV live to interface with and go from there with networks or attached hard drive. Thanks to all...

What are you trying to do, listen to Flac in your home theater over WD TV Live?

There are a ton of ways, but I use foobar2000 to rip and manage. It is a little geeky, but don't let that intimidate you, it is actually extremely easy to use once you get the hang of it. I find it more intuitive than iTunes anyways.

Then you can put the flac files on a drive and connect them to your WD TV. And that's it.

 

[RaT]

What are you trying to do, listen to Flac in your home theater over WD TV Live?

There are a ton of ways, but I use foobar2000 to rip and manage. It is a little geeky, but don't let that intimidate you, it is actually extremely easy to use once you get the hang of it. I find it more intuitive than iTunes anyways.

Then you can put the flac files on a drive and connect them to your WD TV. And that's it.

Sort of yeah. I have two Sonus Faber fronts and a Velodyne sub, a 2.1 system, that's my home theater and my home music system. It works well.