Video Player hardware question...

[5-90]

OK, I'm not sure how to start Googling something like this, so I thought I'd see if anyone here had run across something like this:

What I'd like to try to find is a video player - similar to a DVD player - that can be connected to the televisor. However, I want for it to accept removable memory devices, rather than optical media (thumb drives, SD cards, or something like that.)

It would be the next step past a DVD changer - I could rip an entire series to data, put it all on a sufficiently large storage device, plug it in, then watch whatever I want to watch without having to get up and change DVDs. Scramble the eps, put a whole series on a hi-cap storage card, and stuff like that.

As I said - odd. But, the idea of being able to rip, say, the first four seasons of House onto an SD card and play it at random has some appeal. I'd have more options with random access digital data than I would with optical media, methinks.

I'd also like to find something similar to a portable DVD player - but with the same idea: plug in SD cards with movie/video rips on them. Elimination of moving parts, reduced power requirements, true random access - great for travelling (I travel by train when I don't drive - even if I could get past the I-D-ten-Ts running "security" at the terminal gates, the cabin being pressurised to only 8,000MSL would cause me an awful lot of pain... Too many old fractures - my "pain threshhold" for barometric pressure is 29.70"Hg - even driving over mountains hurts. Airliners would be worse.)

But, I digress. It just seems like an awfully good idea - and if no-one has any idea where to help me start looking, I may pass the idea along to Creative Labs (I like their multimedia solutions) to see if they can't get started on it. Shouldn't be too difficult for them...

 

[XJLI]

the portable part is hard, well, harder i guess. you want a HTPC- a home theather pc.

http://www.engadget.com/tag/htpc/

people use first gen xboxs, PCs with media based linux OSs, windows media center or OSX to power it. the smaller form factor "purpose built" machines are less powerful, but theyre much more portable, stylish, and do the job.

 

[5-90]

It's a thought, but building a machine may be a bit much for what I'm trying to do. I'll keep it on the table (the advantage there would be the ability to throw on several hundred hours of media...)

Kinda hoping that something that has a remote is out there - or a portable unit that I can put on my desk and hook up to the televisor with a longish cable would also be workable.

 

[XJLI]

you see the edge2 thing?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/edge-hd2-mini-pc-is-an-htpc-that-hides-behind-your-tv/

no remote it seems though, which sucks the big one.

my eventual plan is to get myself a mac mini (probably an older one, dont need the processing power of a brand new one) and use it as a media center...

wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, iphone remote as a remote control, etc. then i can also use it to browse the internet, facebook, what have you on my tv. you also get netflix, hulu, youtube.... you can check out other boxes like roku and boxee, but those are more like replacements for cable/sat. some of those boxes do have provisions for external media iirc.

 

[5-90]

you see the edge2 thing?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/edge-hd2-mini-pc-is-an-htpc-that-hides-behind-your-tv/

no remote it seems though, which sucks the big one.

my eventual plan is to get myself a mac mini (probably an older one, dont need the processing power of a brand new one) and use it as a media center...

wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, iphone remote as a remote control, etc. then i can also use it to browse the internet, facebook, what have you on my tv. you also get netflix, hulu, youtube.... you can check out other boxes like roku and boxee, but those are more like replacements for cable/sat. some of those boxes do have provisions for external media iirc.

Promising. HDMI tho - my TVs aren't that new. I'd need RF out or Component Video out (I think I have an S-video jack on the back, but I wouldn't swear to it...)

 

[XJLI]

RF out??? good luck. and by component are you talking RGB video or yellow video and stereo audio connections?

 

[ECKSJAY]

Sounds like an Android tablet with HDMI would do the job.

 

[XJLI]

damn why didnt i think of that.

 

[xcm]

media center with a large, LARGE hard drive... movies are getting LARGE now with 720p or 1080i. inception in 1080i is over 13gb..... good luck with a tablet.

 

[RichP]

boxee.tv

 

[5-90]

RF out??? good luck. and by component are you talking RGB video or yellow video and stereo audio connections?

Yellow video and stereo audio - if I'd meant RGB, I'd have said so (I do understand the difference - although RGB is getting more common these days than it was before. The last time I was dealing with RGB, it was on computers.)

 

[5-90]

So far, it's looking like I either purpose-build a box (that I wouldn't use half of the capability of for this) or buy something off-the-shelf (that I wouldn't use two-thirds of) - just so I can play video and/or audio.

I have no need for a tablet computer - I have a perfectly good portable, and it has a keyboard (the tablet usually does not.)

I see no need to build a dedicated box - and it would cost more than what I want to do anyhow.

I don't want a "smartphone" to do this - I don't want to combine devices, and a "smartphone" would cost more than one should have spend for this (or I can get locked into a contract that I neither want nor need.)

There's no particular reason why this can't be done as a simple portable device - kinda like an overgrown Creative Zen mp3 player - but, apparently, no-one's done that yet. Untapped market segment?

 

[ECKSJAY]

So far, it's looking like I either purpose-build a box (that I wouldn't use half of the capability of for this) or buy something off-the-shelf (that I wouldn't use two-thirds of) - just so I can play video and/or audio.

I have no need for a tablet computer - I have a perfectly good portable, and it has a keyboard (the tablet usually does not.)

I see no need to build a dedicated box - and it would cost more than what I want to do anyhow.

I don't want a "smartphone" to do this - I don't want to combine devices, and a "smartphone" would cost more than one should have spend for this (or I can get locked into a contract that I neither want nor need.)

There's no particular reason why this can't be done as a simple portable device - kinda like an overgrown Creative Zen mp3 player - but, apparently, no-one's done that yet. Untapped market segment?

As usual, you're overthinking this. I don't think it's an untapped market segment...I think it's just that people smarter than you have already done the research. :scottm:

You ask for something, receive answers, reject the simple solutions, and choose to be complicated. Congratulations on wasting everyone's time.

 

[xcm]

There's no particular reason why this can't be done as a simple portable device - kinda like an overgrown Creative Zen mp3 player - but, apparently, no-one's done that yet. Untapped market segment?

you mean like the video iphone? dude youe YEARS behind... they have a special plug that goes into the headphone jack, but on the other end...... 3 rca jacks.

Its great for travel.... if the hotel has tv's with the rca jacks.... however, it needs to use apple's format... which means lots of conversions.... etc.... in the end, it kinda enslaves you, just to view some videos.

 

[5-90]

As usual, you're overthinking this. I don't think it's an untapped market segment...I think it's just that people smarter than you have already done the research. :scottm:

You ask for something, receive answers, reject the simple solutions, and choose to be complicated. Congratulations on wasting everyone's time.

Nah - it's just that the solutions being presented are more than are really needed. Why build a whole computer to play videos? Why buy a whole fully-functional computer to play videos?

The job can be done much simpler with much less hardware, much less software, and much less expense - I was just looking for a lead on it. I was thinking of something more along the lines of an overdriven mp3 player about the size of a portable DVD player, and something that could be readily made portable.

Is it really a waste of time? Everybody else got thinking, solutions were presented (even if they were overly complex,) and I've gotten ideas now - what I'm trying to find probably does not exist yet, but the solutions that have been presented to date (and are so far apparently extant) are just not what I'm looking for.

I did explain what I was trying to find in the beginning, it's just that the solutions presented weren't fitting in with my requirements.

 

[ECKSJAY]

Nah - it's just that the solutions being presented are more than are really needed. Why build a whole computer to play videos? Why buy a whole fully-functional computer to play videos?

The job can be done much simpler with much less hardware, much less software, and much less expense - I was just looking for a lead on it. I was thinking of something more along the lines of an overdriven mp3 player about the size of a portable DVD player, and something that could be readily made portable.

Is it really a waste of time? Everybody else got thinking, solutions were presented (even if they were overly complex,) and I've gotten ideas now - what I'm trying to find probably does not exist yet, but the solutions that have been presented to date (and are so far apparently extant) are just not what I'm looking for.

I did explain what I was trying to find in the beginning, it's just that the solutions presented weren't fitting in with my requirements.

This is a perfect example of why I love the internet armchair experts: They claim to 'need info' on something, but pretend to be vastly superior than those who give them said answers. This is nothing but a straw man tactic by an attention whore. Give it up, Kelley, nobody will ever have the answer you're looking for because it simply doesn't exist in your world.

 

[5-90]

This is a perfect example of why I love the internet armchair experts: They claim to 'need info' on something, but pretend to be vastly superior than those who give them said answers. This is nothing but a straw man tactic by an attention whore. Give it up, Kelley, nobody will ever have the answer you're looking for because it simply doesn't exist in your world.

Phil - if it doesn't exist, and no-one's heard of it, that's all they had to say!

I gave fairly specific requirements for what I was looking for. If all I'd gotten was twenty-odd versions of "I'd not seen that anywhere," that would have been perfectly acceptable to me.

I just didn't know how to go about starting to look for it offhand, so I thought I'd ask around first - see if I could get any threads to pull on. Since there don't seem to be any, I'm starting at Square One for this - fine. I just wanted to see if I couldn't jump ahead a square or two - getting a brand name, or something similar. Narrow the field a bit, y'know?

I just don't see why I should have to buy or build a whole system to do something that doesn't require buying or building a whole system (from a technical point of view,) so I wanted to see if I could save time, effort, and dosh. I simply wanted to know if a (hopefully portable) simple solution to a fairly specific problem was currently extant. Apparently, it either doesn't exist or it isn't very common. That was all that had to be said (I'm familiar with tablet PCs, Home Theatre PCs, and the like - they just don't fit in with my requirements. I was exploring other options.)

 

[menos]

Why not just use an iPod touch? Its not a smartphone so you don't have that overhead. ($) It can have RCA out. It can store a ton of movies/videos if you compress them correctly.

If you want a slightly larger screen go with something like a Nook Color + a 32GB microSD card. Though I don't know if the Nook Color has any way to get video out. Of course to get the full performance out of it you would need to run cyanogenmod.

Either of those solutions can be had for ~$250 and wouldn't tie you into any contracts.

If you want something to hook to your tv and leave, look into the WDTV Live Plus. $90 from Amazon. It can do rca out, plus it has two usb ports so you can hook up what ever portable media you would want to it.

 

[XJLI]

any tablet with RCA outs... like others have said, the tech is there, we're sorry it does "too much" for you.

my phone can do everything you want and more.

 

[the_weirdo]

Are you looking for something like this: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330

It is a small box that connects to your TV. Attach an external storage device via USB and it will play and media, music, movie, or picture format on the TV. I have one and we copy all our DVDs to external storage and play through the WD TV Live box.

Edit: Seagate and I believe Apple make similar devices.