My only previous experience is using a Mediagate MG-35 which I was in love with until it finally died a few years back. I was given a $50 Best Buy gift card and was thinking to buy something similar. Netflix is a plus, but frankly I want the ability to playback videos I have downloaded (either by putting it onto a USB or via streaming). The household is primarily Apple based, we have a Macbook Pro, old G3 Powerbook and an iPhone 5s and the TVs are "dumb" Samsung LCDs if that matters.
well I have had a roku for about a year and a half, I use it with playon and unblockus..
It does everything i want it to do including streaming and hulu and netflix
yes it allows you to stream, even without playon.I dont know about ESPN, but playon allows you to watch what is posted on the "channels" websites. there are private playon scripts that do have live streaming .
Well if most of your house is already Apple based I’d say go with the Apple TV - I’ve had mine for several years and they work really really Great with Airplay and the whole Apple Environment - play everything on your Mac’s and airplay them to the AppleTV, you can also set up a media server and all sorts of other items (as well as what’s on the AppleTV itself). O
The other route (which I had before Apple came along) was WDTV - I’d go with the Live Version - it too has lots of “stuff” on the box but can also access files across the network and connect directly to a USB stick or drive.
Both boxes output HDMI and I still have both (one for my Apple environment which I am slowly moving completely to) and the other for my Linux environment that I am moving from
Unblockus will give you more on either boxes - a big win is the US Netflix access is huge!
PlayOn basically collates videos posted on network websites which is not everything and add you can get to the websites I don't see the point in it. Hulu is much better for watching network TV.
My streaming hardware is a mixture of laptop, Chromecast and PS3
PlayOn is now available in HD. I also use Play later, which allows you to record anything from any PlayOn plug in. Playcast allows you to send video from your computer to your streaming device (Roku in my case). It's basically Chromecast.
Has anyone tried Chromecast? Apparently you can 'cast' video from a tab in the Google Chrome browser, which would seem to be good for content on the computer.
I've got 3, they are very good but to stream from a Chrome tab you need a pretty good PC and wifi connection otherwise the video quality can be poor and the audio can go out of sync.
I use 2 Chromecast dongles in the house. With unblock-us, I set up a static route in the router to get around the google hard coded DNS and they are flawless for Netflix for the kids.
I use XBMC on an ATV2, Raspberry Pi and more recently an Ouya. Out of the 3, I'd go with the Ouya.
The Ouya regular price is $99 but Amazon are always having sales on them and I got mine for $79. Takes literally minutes to get XBMC installed and running and quicker than both the RPi and the ATV.
with XBMC set up sorrectly there is no real need for Netflix, Hulu or a VPN/Smart DNS - I actually use a SmartDNS for streaming/watching content from the UK iPlayer / ITV Player but not a necessity.
I have a CipherTV bar, it comes with about 40 or 50 free tv channels; news, sports, etc.. also has access to all google play apps. my wife is from china and she loaded in several chinese tv apps. I personally don't watch a lot of tv, but I do want to watch news or sports once in while, so I use it more for that regular tv, netflix and to download / watch movies.
It also has a camera and microphone built in for skype; i only skype video'd once but I found it worked good.
The air mouse took a little time to get used to, but I find its fine now.
Im happy enough so far that we cancelled cable. you can order specialty tv channels for it too but I havn't done that yet.
From your experience, which system is better: Kodi or CipherTV? I'm getting very bad reception with a Linksys box and want to change.
Appreciate you help.
I was chatting with one of their CSRs earlier this week, asking the same question as you. It appears that if you take a CipherTV unit outside Alberta and B.C. (i.e. AEBC's licensed service area for IPTV) it will continue to receive those channels that are not geographically restricted.
Does anyone have experience with the RedRhino streaming box? I saw it at a local home show and it appeared to work well especially with the optional keyboard remote. The box is $300 but at the show it was $250 plus $40 for the keyboard remote. I am not tech savvy and this seems expensive but a simple solution to reduce my monthly TV fees.
I can't comment specifically on the RedRhino box, but any streaming box that advertises that you can watch your movies and TV shows with no monthly fees is probably involved in piracy.
The RedRhino box sounds a bit overpriced. It looks like a standard Android TV box. There are a number of Android TV boxes, actually Android boxes with HDMI out for TV, available in the $50-$200 range. The RedRhino people are not necessarily involved in piracy but I've found the claims made for many of these boxes are exaggerated, sometimes excessively so. These boxes will usually support streaming services to varying degrees. Netflix and other streaming TV services usually work well. A lot of the better streaming options are only available in the US so results will vary with location.
You might want to check out the Vmedia thread This is a legitimate TV service that uses IPTV boxes. Not sure if it's what you are looking for.
Android TV Boxes are discussed here and here. Some people like Roku boxes, discussed here.
Both vmedia and ciphertv are providers offering legitimate CRTC licensed content. Not sure about redrhino, but it does not look like they have a CRTC broadcasting license.
I have juggled away with those china clones for a while, witch i end up selling shortly after.
appleTV seamed a bit overpriced at the time here in europe. so i ended up buying the best devices regarding price/quality.
I have a WeTek play with a Cable tuner for live tv.
And a wetek Core for the netflix (1080p)
i could not be more satisfied at the moment, i had a learning curve, the begging was a bit overwhelming but, the help from the support forum is great, they have a huge community there.
If you can manage to get over to the US, an Amazon Fire TV works great. I have a first gen Fire TV and is works very well for Kodi... as well as having native Netflix, Hulu and SlingTV apps that you can access through Kodi. Very fast and playback is great... all for $99 US. It has usb ports that will allow you to use a usb remote with at keyboard. It is fast... kodi runs as almost as well on it as on an i5 laptop.
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