Alternative to Roku?

[Brad Johnson]

Helping a friend set up his home theater system. He has a Roku box (2.x) which only supports 5.1 surround via hdmi. The audio output on the Roku box only supports 2 chan stereo which I personally think this is jicky as heck. Any media streaming device in today's market should, at the very least, port an audio signal that a Dolby/DTS receiver can decode.

At any rate his HT head unit is pre-HDMI, limiting my input methods to digital and toslink. Not a prob for everything else as they all have toslink outputs. My question... not being a Roku afficianado (and actually not very enamored of it in general based on the performance of his box) is there a Roku alternative that has better home theater support? I told him about xbox/Playstation alternatives but he didn't seem too hip on it. Other than that, what's out there for video streaming?

Brad

[makattak]

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-TV-streaming-media-player/dp/B00CX5P8FC

Another option, if he's not interested in gaming devices.

Many (probably most) blu-ray players also have streaming. (With a WIDE variation of quality.)

[Calumus]

The Nexus player will do 5.1; but his tv's optical may only output to 2 channel. I that's the case, one of these may help.

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_id=10114&cs_id=1011412&p_id=10251&seq=1&format=2&AID=11051853&PID=6149808&ref=cj&utm_source=cj&utm_medium=11051853&utm_term=VigLink-2470763

[Brad Johnson]

That little gem may be just the ticket. HDMI audio extractor with full digital/optical output capability. Didn't know they made such a thing. Makes sense, though, what with all the older non-HDMI HT systems in use.

They also have a multi-input version that would function nicely as a low-cost, full feature A/V switch which provides single-source audio for a dedicated amp.

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

Many (probably most) blu-ray players also have streaming. (With a WIDE variation of quality.)

We've.discussed that option. You're right.. HUGE range of quality and performance. Major downside, even on the better units, is clunky and painfully slow/laggy interfaces. I have a Samsung bluray player that's supposed to have one of the better Netflix/Youtube apps. I think it stinks on ice.

Brad

[RevDisk]

We've.discussed that option. You're right.. HUGE range of quality and performance. Major downside, even on the better units, is clunky and painfully slow/laggy interfaces. I have a Samsung bluray player that's supposed to have one of the better Netflix/Youtube apps. I think it stinks on ice.

Brad

Same. Ye gods was it awful for Netflix. Don't recall it having an Amazon Prime app. And the YouTube app sucked.

Quite happy with my Roku box. Concur that the audio extractor is what you want.

[BryanP]

We've.discussed that option. You're right.. HUGE range of quality and performance. Major downside, even on the better units, is clunky and painfully slow/laggy interfaces. I have a Samsung bluray player that's supposed to have one of the better Netflix/Youtube apps. I think it stinks on ice.

Brad

Which was one of the reasons I finally gave up and built a dedicated home theater PC. 

[Nick1911]

Which was one of the reasons I finally gave up and built a dedicated home theater PC. 

Roomie does this.  He use to have a customized version of MythTV.  Now he just runs XBMC of an Arch linux box - it works very well but it took some time to setup.

[zahc]

My Fire died after 4 months. 90-day warranty.

[RevDisk]

Roomie does this.  He use to have a customized version of MythTV.  Now he just runs XBMC of an Arch linux box - it works very well but it took some time to setup.

I went with Windows...   

Honestly, I was gonna do a Pi and XBMC, but I ended up just building an entire PC. The newest gen i5's are insanely fast, especially when paired with even a middle of the road SSD. I do wish there was an easy way to integrate Amazon Prime and Netflix into XBMC, then it'd be absolutely perfect.

Found one very awesome app for doing the metadata on my movies. Still checking out apps for TV show metadata.

[BryanP]

I went with Windows...   

Honestly, I was gonna do a Pi and XBMC, but I ended up just building an entire PC. The newest gen i5's are insanely fast, especially when paired with even a middle of the road SSD. I do wish there was an easy way to integrate Amazon Prime and Netflix into XBMC, then it'd be absolutely perfect.

Found one very awesome app for doing the metadata on my movies. Still checking out apps for TV show metadata.

Me too.  I went with a fairly speedy i3 on a micropc that's about the size of a hardback book.  Running Kodi/XBMC for now.  For Netflix / Hulu I have shortcuts on the desktop for people to click.

I'm interested in what they'll do with Media Center on Windows 10.  I've heard it will finally support MKV files natively.  If it works well and has decent integration for netflix/hulu etc... then I won't mind paying for media center.