Streaming Media Player with 1080p output for under $200

I have been researching video playback devices for quite some time, looking for one that can stream files over a network as well as play videos at 1080p resolutions. Other important criteria were that it have wireless control, be quiet or fanless, and as inexpensive as possible.

I began evaluating the PlayStation 3; but it lacks the ability to playback h.264 encoded Matroska MKV files. In fact, most media players will be compatible with DivX, XviD, and MPEG-2 videos; but hardly any of them were capable of playing back MKV files or h.264 encoded HD content.

Then came the Popcorn Hour and other Networked Media Tank-based players (HDX1080). They met all the technical criteria; but with $300+ price tags.

Enter the Western Digital WD TV player. For $120+tax CAD, out of the box, it can play 1080p video including MKV files. It has 2 USB ports to connect external hard disks to; but it has no stock network streaming capability. There are HDMI, optical audio, and composite audio/video outputs (so you can connect to an old non-HD set). It is tiny – not much larger than an external hard drive. It is quiet because there are no moving parts, and it has very low power consumption – somewhere well under 40w max, when playing back video.

With this hack from B-RAD, it can use a USB ethernet adapter. I suggest the following WIRED ethernet adapters (there is no working wireless solution that is fast enough at this time):

Get the TrendNet TU2-ET100 (should be ~$28).

Or have FutureShop or BestBuy price match $28.99 for the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter (regularly $49.95)

**Update May 13, 2009: I have tried and tested the wdlxtv hack and it works as advertised. Please note that I have the Apple USB2.0 Ethernet Adapter and I can stream a video file that is a movie (roughly 90min) sized 4.5GB or less. I have tried a movie that was over 6GB in size and the player stuttered in streaming it over CIFS. I suspect you would require an NFS share or that you are better off copying it to a USB drive to obtain a higher transfer bitrate in those cases.

 

Campaign for Democratic Media

I received this message today, from the Campaign for Democratic Media:

STAND UP FOR AN OPEN INTERNET

In an exciting move, the CRTC is seeking to engage the public in an online consultation regarding what Canadians want from their Internet. Your input will help shape the upcoming hearings on Internet traffic management practices.

http://ISPpractices.Econsultation.ca/

More than 11,000 of you submitted your comments by the February deadline. Now the federal telecommunications regulator is putting forth a series of questions that it would like Canadians to answer.

This is a great chance for all of us to let the CRTC know that we need an open Internet that isn’t controlled by big telecoms. We only have a few days left before the consultation is closed. Get in on the conversation:

http://ISPpractices.Econsultation.ca/

Need to know more? Find some background information here: SaveOurNet.ca

Also be sure to check out the raging online discussions happening on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. And stay tuned for a series of open Internet “town hall events” in several cities across Canada.

Bell Canada – Squeezing out the Competition

Firstly, everybody in Canada should be informed that there are competitors to Rogers, Bell, and Telus in the market of Internet Service Provision. These competitors sublease bandwidth from Bell to provide DSL service. In most cases, they provide this connectivity for prices $10 – 30 less per month, than the big 3 ISPs.

I personally use Acanac, and have at least 5 friends who have been using Acanac for years. They have a promotional rate of $18.95/month for DSL if you prepay for your first year. That comes to under $230/year for 5mbps DSL service.

Teksavvy and Micro-Works are other DSL providers with lower prices than Bell and Rogers.

Read the CBC news Articles linked here:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/04/14/bell-unlimited-download.html

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/04/15/bell-no-unlimited.html

When network infrastructure is in place to handle certain amounts of bandwidth, it does not cost the network operator more money to transmit or receive more signals. Additionally, the information itself does not carry a financial burden to the network operator dependent on the volume copied. They have no rights to claim in terms of charging the consumer for any content consumed – that is an issue for copyright holders, not ISPs.

We as consumers are already charged for bandwidth – the rate/speed of throughput possible on the network. This is a reasonable charge because network throughput is limited by network infrastructure. In turn, throughput multiplied by time gives a ‘natural cap’.

For example: 5 mbps x 86,400 seconds in a day = 432,000 megabits maximum transfer (or about 52.7 Gigabytes per day) To additionally impose a total transfer cap of 60 Gigabytes means that if a subscriber has purchased a 5 mbps connection from the ISP, they are effectively getting a little less than 1.154 days worth of use.

In other words, Bell is trying to sell you a 5 mbps connection for $40/month; but you can only actually transfer 1/30th of the data the network is supposed to be capable of delivering. If you buy a 5 mbps connection from Bell, it is actually a 0.1667 mbps connection with a 5mbps burst rate. Their network must be built to only accommodate 1/30th of the network traffic that they have oversold.

Host-to-Storage SAN Connectivity Best Practices

Originally uploaded by a virtual unknown

• A SAN fabric is the analogous equivalent to a LAN and is made up of one or more SAN Switches
• A zone is analogous to a VLAN – every Host to SAN Disk Array connection is placed in its own individual zone, on each SAN fabric – therefore even though a switch is employed, storage ports cannot observe other storage ports and host ports cannot observe other host ports – all connections are logically point-to-point
• An HBA (Host Bust Adapter) is the SAN’s analogous equivalent to a network interface card for a LAN – in fact SANs and HBAs can support TCP/IP traffic; but storage communications use different protocols
• All storage addressing on a SAN is done by Port WWN which is the analogous equivalent to a MAC address
• Two (2) separate SAN fabrics exist to provide redundancy for all connections
• Each SAN Disk Array has at least one (1) connection to each SAN fabric
• Each LUN/virtualized disk is presented out by SAN Disk Array through both fabrics
• A host must have two (2) or more HBA ports per SAN Disk Array that it accesses storage from – if a host accesses storage from two (2) different arrays, then four (4) HBA ports must be available on the host
• At least one (1) host HBA connection to each of two (2) separate SAN fabrics is made from the host to the switch, for each SAN Disk Array that a host accesses storage from
• Multi-path storage drivers must be installed on the host (on some platforms, this is a function built-in to the OS) to provide failover or load-balance capabilities for LUN access through multiple paths – it is this MPIO driver that recognizes redundant paths and presents them to the OS as just a single disk/LUN