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Who Shall Control My Media? Part 3 - Media Players

• Date : June 18, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : Android ,Fire tv ,Mythtv ,Plex ,Roku ,Shield ,Sony tv

Media players are a interesting topic.  Over the past couple of years, we’ve tried a variety of them.  The first one was back in 2007 and was the D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520 that got its media from a UPNP Media server.  It was designed to fit into a home entertainment unit, the typical ~19 inches wide and looked a lot like a DVD player or VCR.  At the time it was great.  There was no metadata, though, just a list of files. Select one and it usually played just fine.  It was a good product and nothing else even came close to it.

Who shall control my media? Part 2 - Infrastructure

• Date : February 28, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : Handbrake ,Mythtv ,Nas ,Netgear nas ,Roku ,Upnp

The infrastructure I’ve had our media setup on has changed quite a bit over the years, too.  When I first started streaming stuff, I was using UPNP servers to serve a D-Link streamer.  It worked pretty well for the first generation of this type of product.  I used DiVX to encode our DVD collection, and things weren’t bad.  I then migrated to MythTV and things were significantly better.  It could handle more video containers, more codecs, and it could handle our recordings.  We used nothing bug Myth until about 3 years ago, when I got a deal on a Sony streaming box.  The Sony device was clunky and not fun to use, but it did let us stream Netflix.  It was quickly replaced with a Roku 3 that I picked up at Costco when it was on sale.  That was the beginning of the end for MythTV.

Who shall control my media? Part 1

• Date : February 27, 2016
• Categories :
• Tags : Chromecast ,Emby ,Fire stick ,Kindle fire ,Kodi ,Mythtv ,Plex ,Roku ,Shield

Over the last couple of years, the entire media landscape has changed. We were quite happy with MythTV, but its pretty limited in its scope, it can only handle TV, Recorded TV, Videos, Music and Pictures that are on its local drives. Now, add in the fact that we’ve had a Roku now for a while, as well as played with the Fire TV stick and set top box, and things get more messy. I’ve been exploring and trying out a bunch of different options, and have started to settle in on one.

Amazon Fire Stick vs Roku 3

• Date : April 16, 2015
• Categories :
• Tags : Amazon ,Fire stick ,Roku

So back in December, Amazon was running a promo for Prime members to purchase the new Fire TV Stick for 50% off, making it just about $21 after tax.  I couldn’t pass up that offer.  After using it for a little while now, I figured I would give a review of it.

Oh, Comcast how I wish I could quit you

• Date : June 24, 2014
• Categories :
• Tags : Comcast ,Mythtv ,Rants 2 ,Rescue bots ,Roku

No, really, I wish I could quit you.  Unfortunately, cable service is effectively a monopoly in most places.  You’re the only company that can provide half way decent Internet speeds, and the only company that allows me to use a cable card for my MythTV setup.

Why, oh, why do you make it so painfully frustrating whenever you call in for any sort of issue?  Your customer service people aren’t really trained to handle much more than telling people to reboot their cable boxes.  And don’t even think about asking a question that isn’t answered by the script that they’re reading from.