To Buy or not to but

Hi all,

I have been looking over the past few weeks for a streamer that can play Blu-Ray ISO’s and passthrough Dolby True HD etc.

I was mainly looking at the popcorn Hour A-210 but am now also considering the WD TV series.

I have seen a post where people are haing problems with dolby ture-hd audio and just wanted to see if any one had an answer as to if its possible to passthough HD audio streams.

I ripped about 100 of my blu-rays using DVD Fab and i rip the main movie (no trailers/special features) with only the best audio stream so lack of HD audio support is not really an option for me right now.

Im currently using my pc as a media pc but wanted something smaller and slicker hence looking at options like this.

finally is there any audio/video playback support difference between the WD TV Series?

Thanks in advance

Rob

For blu ray support, the Dune players are better than the WDTV Hub.   I have a Dune Duo and 3 WDTV Hubs in the house, all on the same hard wired network, so I am in a good position to make that judgement. 

The interface on the Hub is much nicer and the Dunes don’t have Netflix, Pandora, You Tube, etc.  While it doesn’t do those, the Dune excels in blu ray support - menus work fine (they don’t on the Hub) and certain models have 7.1 analogs out with built-in HD audio decoding if you need that. All DUnes pass DTS-MA and Dolby True HD via HDMI. I think the Hub passes DTS-MA via HDMI but not Dolby True HD. The Hub will play blu rays, but only the main movie with no menus.

There is a Zappiti interface for the Dune player that is really nice, but it is a little of a hassle getting it working right - I spent a couple of hours this afternoon setting up Zappitti and it is working OK.

So what is the best player? I don’t think one player will do everything unless you go the HTPC route.  I have the Dune and the Hub both in my HT and have the best of both.

The Hub does NOT pass DTS-HD MA.

@robhart84

I Can’t speak to the audio HD question but b/c I am in a very similar situation, with a large number of ripped HD movies (BluRay sourced) you may need to be aware of one major drawback  to the HUB.  In  short the Hub does NOT like using an external USB drive.  You can plug a USB Drive into it and play movies but it will be problematic and fussy so don;t  be surprised if you have to routinely reset and or restart the Hub as well as plugging in and ejecting the USB Drives.

The WD  TV Live device which has no built in storage works like a champ.  I;'ve had one for over a year  and very rarely had any  troubles.  The HUB however has not worked properly more often then it has worked since I got it this past Christmas.  I believe the problem is my use of external USB drives which is how I have my movies archived.  The hub wants complete control and ownership over these so you haven to copy  them to the HUBS internal drive if you don;t want it  fussing every time you want to watch something.

Thanks, Tony, for the correction on the DTS-HD.

Interesting to see that edcarden has problems accessing files on an external USB drive.  I have not had that problem even on 10-12GB M2TS files.

thanks for all your help. the Dune looks like a nice player although in  a review it does say that it has problems playing blu ray iso’s off of a network share.

At the moment im between the Popcorn Hour A-210 and the Dune HD Smart D1. Has anybody else had any experiance with any of these players?