Let’s talk toys. Specifically media players, or media streamers or whatever you wanna call it. Small boxed that you connect to your TV or projector to play your digitalized movies. I started that project about 3 years trying to find a good solution to it. And I’m still not happy! The closes to “satisfied” that I’ve come is actually Popcorns A110 which is so low tech and “just the facts”-scaled down you can get. But the fewer “cool features” you have the less things can go wrong!
I’ve tried having a PC but in the end with their fans and harddrives it just makes too much noise to have it at the TV. So I’ved tried it with the PS3 and that kinda worked but doesn’t play all the stuff I have and some stuff bugs out. Lately I’ve tried two “Xtreamer” products. First I tried their “Pro” which was suppose to be media player and network storage all in one, so I could have 2 2tb harddrives in the same machine where I store the movies, awesome to combine them. But their idea of “network storage” didn’t exactly jive with my idea of it so after playing with it over the weekend I exchanged it for their “media player only” product “Sidewinder 2”. So far it looks awesome and it plays everything I’ve thrown at it…. BUT!!! they have a major error in their software. Either that or they have a weird since of “interface”! Because their “Back” button is really an “Up” button. For example, I have shortcuts that points directly to my Movies directory on my server. And I have a shortcut pointing to my TV directory. When I go into the shortcuts menu and click “TV” I come to the TV directory fine. Now when I click “Back” I, and I believe the rest of the world, would expect to get back to the shortcuts menu. But instead I’m take to the parents directory of “TV” which is just wrong and I have to go back to the home screen to go into the shortcut menu to go to the movies catalog again. It’s messed up and you’d think a very small thing but it’s actually a big deal when browsing around!
This all just means I’m left wondering … “how hard can it be!? Why don’t I get together with Ricki and Jimmi and design one ourselves and just make three copies of it for ourselves and leave everyone else wanting one”…
This is what you’d in sweden call an “i-lands problem”, a small insignificant problem that someone in Africa would say “I wish I didn’t have bigger problems than that”. But it still annoys me!
stoff
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