The 30 quid media streaming face off

[Liokault]

bingybongy said:

Pothole said:

bingybongy said:

Liokault said:

I know it doesn't help you, but got a Chromecast yesterday.

Cant make it work

Bugger!

I struggled until I realised I hadn't connected the Chromecast to the wireless first

I followed the instructions. It worked straight away.

I didn't read them. It worked when I did though.

Apparently it's totally in comparable with a BT hone hub 2. Now I have to hope that BT will up grade my router.

[drfrank]

Wow, how to make a 37 yr old feel old !
Seriously, it sounds like a foreign language !
I'm moving into a new house and want the place all wifid and the rest.
I have an iMac do I need Apple TV as well ?
Can my wireless speakers use spotify etc when using ipad etc ?
If I wanted to come in and 'sort' the house out who do I contact ? IT guy or audio guy ?
(Or gal)
Thanks

[anonymous-user]

I recently purchased a Roku streaming stick.

I use it to stream netflix, iplayer etc and my own media from my server which is running Plex server.

Was cheap (£36 at tesco) has its own remote which is handy, works pretty much faultlessly etc. I use it on the TV in the kitchen.

[FlossyThePig]

schmunk said:

a7x88 said:

Roku 3?

Edited by a7x88 on Tuesday 17th March 15:46

Or for all the same services, but with a slower processor and only £39, a Roku Streaming Stick.

Works brilliantly for me. I use Rarflix rather than the official Plex client.

Even cheaper? - £10 buys you a Now TV box on which you can install Plex/Rarflix, and it has a load of TV catchup services. Has Spotify, but no Netflix, though.

I have a Roku Streaming Stick which is great. If you get a £10 Now TV box (made by Roku) you can swap the firmware and run it as a Roku box.

The problem I have, is which streaming service to use.

[SystemParanoia]

the new raspberry pi 2 b+ is 900mhz quad core vs the old 700mhz single core

Lightning fast in the menu using XBMC/KODI - the Raspberry pi also works with the TV remote so no need for yet another remote in the house!

with a bit of fiddling you can centralise your media watched /unwatched database between all units on the network too.

if you're using the old PC as the NAS for all of this, then just add a few mega cheap gigabit NIC cards and heavily aggregate the connection to the switch.

bandwidth should not pose a problem at all




how-to

https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/sp...

http://www.linuxhorizon.ro/bonding.html

Edited by SystemParanoia on Tuesday 17th March 20:13

[maxdb]

I'm another one voting for Roku due to it's ease of use. Install Plex on it and your laughing

[jjlynn27]

maxdb said:

I'm another one voting for Roku due to it's ease of use. Install Plex on it and your laughing

This. Unless you enjoy tinkering, Roku 3 is the easy choice. It just works. Only thing that could be improved is addition of user defined dns servers so you can make unblock-us easier to use.

[Timsta]

maxdb said:

I'm another one voting for Roku due to it's ease of use. Install Plex on it and your laughing

Well, almost. I don't use a Roku, but do use a £19 NowTV box which is just a rebranded Roku. It is sometimes sold for only a tenner, so I have a few of them now. One per telly.

http://www.nowtv.com/box

[marctwo]

FlossyThePig said:

If you get a £10 Now TV box (made by Roku) you can swap the firmware and run it as a Roku box.

I didn't think that was possible. Care to share a link on how to do it?

[Digitalize]

drfrank said:

Wow, how to make a 37 yr old feel old !
Seriously, it sounds like a foreign language !
I'm moving into a new house and want the place all wifid and the rest.
I have an iMac do I need Apple TV as well ?
Can my wireless speakers use spotify etc when using ipad etc ?
If I wanted to come in and 'sort' the house out who do I contact ? IT guy or audio guy ?
(Or gal)
Thanks

For you, sticking with Apple may be the easiest bet, due to AirPlay.

Apple TV at any TV, can AirPlay video to it from an iOS device, or use built in apps. Can also stream music to these.

For speakers, many wireless enabled ones will support AirPlay anyway, or get an AirPort Express, similar to an Apple TV and a wifi repeater mixed together, it will extend your network (if you have an Apple router) and play music.

You can either keep the iMac permanently on for content, sync it to your iOS devices or get a NAS or Mac Mini to act like one.

If you don't already, and have more than one Mac, a time capsule router/storage box for auto backups is a good idea.

To be truly future proof (as much as possible) get your houses wiring upgraded to have a Cat6 Ethernet network running inside it, however for a light user this probably wouldn't be necessary.

[drfrank]

Thanks for the info !

[Timsta]

marctwo said:

I didn't think that was possible. Care to share a link on how to do it?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/08/sky-now-tv-plex/

[marctwo]

Timsta said:

marctwo said:

I didn't think that was possible. Care to share a link on how to do it?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/08/sky-now-tv-plex/

That's not replacing the firmware though...

FlossyThePig said:

If you get a £10 Now TV box (made by Roku) you can swap the firmware and run it as a Roku box.

[jjlynn27]

marctwo said:

Timsta said:

marctwo said:

I didn't think that was possible. Care to share a link on how to do it?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/08/sky-now-tv-plex/

That's not replacing the firmware though...

FlossyThePig said:

If you get a £10 Now TV box (made by Roku) you can swap the firmware and run it as a Roku box.

The efforts to replace firmware have been abandoned. Plex will still work as side load but no Netflix etc.

[marctwo]

jjlynn27 said:

The efforts to replace firmware have been abandoned. Plex will still work as side load but no Netflix etc.

That's what I thought.

[ZesPak]

I'm in a similar boat, an a Roku box seems by far the best solution.
The fact that the Apple TV actively tries to shun Plex rules it out for me.
I've got a chromecast but I live in a very crowded area and I had to put a Wifi AP next to the tv to get that to work :/

Roku (wired) seems to tick all the boxes.

[FD3Si]

All sorted...

As great as the one box solution would have been, there was nothing that would do it. I've gone with a ChromeCast for video as my wife and I are both in the Android Ecosystem. Works great, haven't yet mucked about with Plex (as my media server currently runs Serviio on an XP box, will change to Linux and Plex at some point) but Netflix, iPlayer etc all work fantastically well. Only downer is lack of All4 support, but that seems common with everything except the Roku.
The native Android hookup seemed far nicer than the Roku and Fire Stick for ease of use. Very happy with it.

For streaming audio I bought a Raspberry Pi and put Pi MusicBox on it. What can I say, it's blummin' brilliant. So impressed that I've just taken delivery of another two for some other rooms. Does Spotify through a good, useable web interface, Local media, YT audio, SoundCloud, Last.FM and local music over DLNA (amongst others).
Works out so cheap compared to the alternatives. For the kitchen, bathroom, garage and summerhouse the audio is fine. For the lounge I'll invest in a HiFiBerry to sort out the SQ a bit.
I initially bought a Pi2 Model B and it handled it with ease, so I tried a friends' Pi1 B+ and it#'s just as responsive, so I saved a tenner by buying 2 of those for the other slaves. Add on a case for under a fiver, and a fiver for an SD card, along with cables, old amps and power supplies I've already got, and it's under £30 per unit. It's ace, basically.

[ZesPak]

Good to hear, I know I'd never be able to push through "streaming" in our house without it being very easy to use. The Chromecast allowed it to be very easy for the wife and she uses it daily without needing my assistance, which tells me enough.
Once she was hooked to some of the shows, she now uses it on the other TV on the Xbox 360, which also works great but you do need a universal IR remote to control the Xbox, as I'm pretty sure she won't be too happy faffing about with a gaming controller.

Plex and Netflix both work great on the Xbox and on Chromecast, as well as on new Samsung Smart TV's. But non-tech people do seem to be forgetting that setting up something like Plex isn't a small feat. It all works rather easy but it DOES require time and patience and some technical knowledge. I wouldn't want to pay the hour-by-hour invoice for setting up Plex for myself. Don't get me wrong, it's a great tool and I'm a lifetime "premium" subscriber. But you have to want to do it and be able to. If you ever got any linux distro working properly on a machine (even the likes of mint, ubuntu), you probably know what I'm talking about.

I've installed Plex on both a Mint and a Windows 2008 server. The windows installation was, as to be expected, a lot easier to do.

[FD3Si]

Yeah, that's why I've been putting off Plex for a bit TBH! I'm a software developer/apps support/integrations person by trade so it's kind of what I do, but by the same token when I spend all day doing that, I have little/no motivation to spend my spare time doing it. That's what I was a bit concerned about with Pi Musicbox, but there's a downloadable image for it which just works. Burn it to an SD card, add in account details for the services of your choice, point it at a network share, add in some URIs for internet radio, and it's all done. Then just take a copy of the card and clone it foe each new device. I reckon the total time for the first install was less than an hour, and that's including the time to assemble the board, burn the SD card, and plug in the cables.

Serviio was dead easy to set up with an old XP box, and if I'm honest, now Netflix, iPlayer, and Spotify are on the scene I hardly use any local media anyways, it's all streamed stuff really.

Like you, the main issue for me was family acceptance! And to be fair I don't expect my other half to have to use some clunky control set to watch telly or listen to music. I don't want to either. And that's what MusicBox does really well. I showed her the Chromecast and she was into it, and used it properly, and then I just introduce the Pi in the same way. Put a link on her phone, and it's all running

Problem is that now I've got a bit caught up in it, so I'm planning on turning an old Rotel amp into a streaming music player by embedding a Pi and supply in the case...

Edited by FD3Si on Monday 20th July 09:22

[ZesPak]

FD3Si said:

Yeah, that's why I've been putting off Plex for a bit TBH! I'm a software developer/apps support/integrations person by trade so it's kind of what I do, but by the same token when I spend all day doing that, I have little/no motivation to spend my spare time doing it. That's what I was a bit concerned about with Pi Musicbox, but there's a downloadable image for it which just works. Burn it to an SD card, add in accoutn details for the services of your choice, point it at a network share, add in some URIs for internet radio, and it's all done. Then just takea copy of the card and clone it foe each new device. I reckon the total time for the first install was less than an hour, and that's including the time to assemble the board, burn the SD card, and plug in the cables.

I reccon some rose-tinted spectacles were involved as well .