Media Player recomendations (WD TV died)

[giger]

My trusty WD TV media player gave up the ghost a short while ago and I need a replacement. Having had a look around, I can't find much info on the latest media players. I know a lot of people bought the WD TV a few years ago but what have people move don to now?

I need to be able to plug a couple of HDDs in to it and that's about it. Mainly play MKVs, MP4s etc. I have showbox on my tablet so might be useful if I can use it directly on the media player and download straight on to a HDD to save messing about on my tablet and transferring files.

Any recommendations? What are others replacing their WD TVs with?

[giger]

rednotdead said:

I have a WD TV Live going if you want it - it's not worth much but you can have it for a donation to a charity of my choice plus the postage. Let me know.

Works fine, patched to latest firmware, I've replaced it with an Amazon fire.

Hi mate, that's superb, very good of you. I'm not up to speed on the new kodi players etc so let me just see if I am better off getting one of those, otherwise i'll take it!

[giger]

dave_s13 said:

I've got going spare one too.

If you can pick it up from Leeds then you can have it.

Replaced it with a rasberry pi 2. The kit you can get with the preloaded SD card to install kodi and a case. It's a million times better than the WDTV box.

Thanks dave_s13 - I'm not local unfortunately (south of Birmingham). do you think I am better off looking at something with kodi? I can't believe how cheap some of the random boxes are on amazon. In what way is it better than the WD TV???

[giger]

weeboot said:

How far south of Birmingham?
I'm in Worcester, happy to help you build something for Kodi, it's v. simple.

I'm in Solihull, so not too far. Thanks for the offer - might be interested!

[giger]

Thanks for the info - lots to take in.

I was purely using the WDTV as a media player hooked up to my amp to watch films via a HDD. Appreciate that there is a lot more that I can do with it, but I don't have a NAS or media server at this point.

[giger]

Old fashioned plug it in to the laptop (to copy content from laptop, another external HDD or my USB memory stick on to it) - please tell me the error of my ways

[giger]

Apologies folks, I forgot I was going on holiday

Will check back in next week, already feeling old. Need to think of the best forward for how I use my kit

[giger]

Back in the room

Having re-read this thread I am liking the sound of the pi media player. I don't think I need a nas for my movies as they are only watched in the lounge where the home cinema kit is, I don't own any physical music anymore and I am doing something else with photos. Also, as I'm not watching films that often, having them on HDDs hard wired to the media player is fine.

Any advance on the raspberry pi media player package from pi hut?

[giger]

Right folks - I have my pi 3 media centre from pi hut!

Question 1 - what OS/image to install?

Raspbian (recommended)
LibreELEC_RPi2
openELEC_RPi2
OSMC_RPi2

[giger]

Scratch that, installed openelec and all is good!

Next question, pi is hooked up to av amp and then goes out to TV. Can't seem to get the CEC/viera link working to control the pi from my TV remote. I guess the amp isn't handshaking properly with the TV. Any work arounds?

Loving kodi so far!