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Author Topic: Setup Suggestions  (Read 1457 times)

timwtheov

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Setup Suggestions
« on: August 05, 2017, 03:44:06 pm »

I'm kind of looking for suggestions on a setup in my living room with JRiver on a desktop PC in the basement.

Currently, I have a a Mede8er 600X3D in the living room, wired via a Cat6 ethernet cable, and which I use/have used both to pull media from MC via UPnP and also to push media to via JRemote. All of this works, of course, and the video quality of the Mede8er is great; however, its DLNA/UPnP is weak, timing out constantly when pulling from MC (i.e., clicking on a movie's folder requires an external hdd to spin up, and so forth, but the Mede8er will often time out and show not the movie but a blank screen, causing me to have to either start the process over again or turn off/on either the Mede8er or MC's server or both), and seemingly not accepting subtitles when I push to it via JRemote (and I watch a lot of subtitled films). Also, there's no gapless playback with audio, though I suspect none of these boxes have this (or it doesn't work over DLNA/UPnP in MC).

Another problem with the Mede8er is that there are almost no apps with it, except YouTube and a couple of others. I'd like to have Filmstruck, for example (TMC/Criterion's new app), or Amazon, or SlingTV, etc. So: I'd like to find the best solution: a box or something else (I'm open to suggestions) that
--plays my huge media collection of mostly mkv movies (I do have a few mp4s too), including all subtitle resources, and flac/ape/ogg/mp3/mp4/aac audio
--also has a fairly large selection of apps like those mentioned above + web browser, if possible

I've looked at the Roku Ultra, but according to a comment by Hendrik on one of the forums here, it's not too great as a DLNA device. I looked at JRiver's own ID, but it has no apps and no web browser. The NVidia Shield looks kind of promising, but from what I can tell it only uses Kodi or Plex via DLNA/UPnP. I've had a couple of WD boxes, and I hated both because of file limitations. I could just drill another (larger) hole in the floor and run a long HDMI cable + Dr. HDMI, like I have in video/audio room in the basement, but I think I'd be getting pretty close to the 50' limit of optimal functionality (plus I don't really want to drill a bigger hole in the floor).

Am I stuck with getting two devices, like maybe the ID for my media and a Roku for the apps? Keep suffering with the Mede8er? Any thoughts?
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Couch

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Re: Setup Suggestions
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2017, 03:07:55 am »

I'm kind of looking for suggestions on a setup in my living room with JRiver on a desktop PC in the basement.

Currently, I have a a Mede8er 600X3D in the living room, wired via a Cat6 ethernet cable, and which I use/have used both to pull media from MC via UPnP and also to push media to via JRemote. All of this works, of course, and the video quality of the Mede8er is great; however, its DLNA/UPnP is weak, timing out constantly when pulling from MC (i.e., clicking on a movie's folder requires an external hdd to spin up, and so forth, but the Mede8er will often time out and show not the movie but a blank screen, causing me to have to either start the process over again or turn off/on either the Mede8er or MC's server or both), and seemingly not accepting subtitles when I push to it via JRemote (and I watch a lot of subtitled films). Also, there's no gapless playback with audio, though I suspect none of these boxes have this (or it doesn't work over DLNA/UPnP in MC).

Another problem with the Mede8er is that there are almost no apps with it, except YouTube and a couple of others. I'd like to have Filmstruck, for example (TMC/Criterion's new app), or Amazon, or SlingTV, etc. So: I'd like to find the best solution: a box or something else (I'm open to suggestions) that
--plays my huge media collection of mostly mkv movies (I do have a few mp4s too), including all subtitle resources, and flac/ape/ogg/mp3/mp4/aac audio
--also has a fairly large selection of apps like those mentioned above + web browser, if possible

I've looked at the Roku Ultra, but according to a comment by Hendrik on one of the forums here, it's not too great as a DLNA device. I looked at JRiver's own ID, but it has no apps and no web browser. The NVidia Shield looks kind of promising, but from what I can tell it only uses Kodi or Plex via DLNA/UPnP. I've had a couple of WD boxes, and I hated both because of file limitations. I could just drill another (larger) hole in the floor and run a long HDMI cable + Dr. HDMI, like I have in video/audio room in the basement, but I think I'd be getting pretty close to the 50' limit of optimal functionality (plus I don't really want to drill a bigger hole in the floor).

Am I stuck with getting two devices, like maybe the ID for my media and a Roku for the apps? Keep suffering with the Mede8er? Any thoughts?
I use a Roku 3  (connected via WiFi) native network media channel to connect to MC on a PC.

My movies are on a 3TB WDBook connected to a Synology ds214play via usb3. The Synology is connected to the network over cat5e.

The Roku works well 90% of the time. My biggest frustration with the Roku is no audio on mkv files without 2 channel audio.
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