seanhutch Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 Ok, my mom wants a cheap streamer for local media like I use for all my media on my home server. Which would be better for a person that knows nothing about tech stuff after I set it up for her: 1. Apple TV 2 jailbroken with xbmc 2. Roku XDS with local streaming channel If anyone here has had any experience with either box, please share your experience with it. Thanks in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giga Veteran Posted March 27, 2011 Veteran Share Posted March 27, 2011 If your main priority is local streaming, the Apple TV (2G) is your best bet. XBMC on it will provide a much more intuitive UI because it sorts your media into an organized library with metadata and artwork. If you have a receiver that supports it, it can also passthrough 5.1 DTS and AC3 audio for decoding. http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?f=137&order=desc I used to use XBMC with network SMB shares and it worked well enough on an 802.11n network. I've since moved on to using Plex now though because I prefer its interface (it matches Apple's UI) and the Plex Media Server. http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/forum/76-apple-tv-2nd-gen/ The main drawback with Plex is that it does on the fly transcoding of your media from your server which is pretty resource intensive. XBMC on the other hand decodes H.264 straight from the Apple TV. Audio on XBMC will either be downmixed to AAC stereo or you can passthrough to a receiver. Plex can only downmix to stereo. They've made progress in this area though in their iOS app: http://elan.plexapp.com/2011/03/14/coming-attractions-part-5/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seanhutch Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 Thanks for the info! I am not really worried about cpu workload, I will be running it off a pretty beefy pc. Does the Plex server run on windows? And also, how is it with xvid/avi's? and I would also like to stream .mkv's as well (720p) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giga Veteran Posted March 27, 2011 Veteran Share Posted March 27, 2011 (edited) It runs on Windows: http://www.plexapp.com/pc.php There's also a WebUI. Here's a nice overview of what the media streamer does: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/PlexNine_PMS_Overview And the interface: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/PlexNine_PMS_MediaManager I run both SD and 720P Xvid/AVI and H.264/MKV content and it works pretty well for me. I'm running the media server on a Mac though so I don't have much experience with it on Windows. I would give both XBMC and Plex a shot and see which you prefer. Be aware that both require a jailbreak though. 4.3 on the Apple TV is currently tethered only right now. 4.2.1 is untethered. Edited March 27, 2011 by giga Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Veteran Posted March 27, 2011 Veteran Share Posted March 27, 2011 *stashes link* That looks promising! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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