My current setup is TVs around the house with WD TV players connecting wirelessly to my router which has a QNAP 4-bay NAS attached loaded with all of my movies using Twonkymedia. However, in the last few months 2 of my 3 WD TV players have stopped functioning. I was wondering if anyone has a better solution. I looked into Roku and while they stream from the web, they don’t seem to connect via the LAN and such I live remotely with a crappy Internet connection, I’m not interested in streaming, just pulling up the networked digital files.
Anyone come across a different TV player that will accomplish what I need?
Get a bunch of amazon firetvs with firestarter and Kodi. If you live in a “prime now” area it costs $85. This is a pretty speedy little box and (while you don’t care about it) it will do all the streaming stuff too.
I had about 5 wd tv lives at one point. I’m down to 1 in use and 1 as backup. I replaced them with 4 fire tv’s (2 first gen, 2 second gen) and 2 fire tv sticks.
The sticks are ok but the full size fire tv’s are fantastic. Unlike wdtv at least kodi is constantly being developed. Being able to side load APK’s is a nice bonus too
Also, I upgraded from a ton of harmony 550 remotes to the smart control with the hub (Just setup my 4th one) which directly controls fire tv’s just fine which is nice from an integration point of view.
I’m using 3 Chromecasts and Plex, and love it. My experience with a Firestick was not as good as others here; I’d run the same app on it and the Chromecast, e.g. Netflix, and get a lot more stuttering etc. with the Fire Stick. I admittedly did not try to side load Kodi etc. as a sub for Plex - Plex was just so simple on the Chromecast.
Chromecast + Plex. Chromecast needs Internet connection to “boot up” and connect with everything, but once it’s working the video is transmitted through your LAN.
Figured I’d hijack this thread rather than start a separate one, since Kodi is a media player. Their website is currently down, after yesterday posting on their blog that they’ve trademarked the Kodi name and intend to go after pirates that use that name to sell “Kodi boxes” with illegal add-ons or post videos showing how to stream pirated media using Kodi. (The text of that original blog post can be found in this reddit thread.) Coincidence? I think not. Call out the pirates, and they strike back.
Yep, they caused Kodi to be rejected from the Amazon appstore, which really sucks for people running FireTVs. If you search for Kodi you will find tens of thousands of videos showing piracy addons, all with their own little repository that installs god-knows-what inside Kodi, that sometimes-kinda-work but usually break relatively quickly, leaving unsophisticated users who “just wanted internet TV” up the creek. Half the time they didn’t even realize they were pirating.
All Kodi wants is for these unscrupulous people to stop using their name. Let them create and support their own brand. That’s not so unreasonable.
@stusser, what are your thoughts on the Qnap TS-268 for killing two birds with one stone as primary NAS and Kodi based media player for someone who currently has neither?
Is it going to be grunty enough for a decent Kodi experience, particularly if NAS functions suck away some processing power?
They are not even a particularly large premium on other QNAP 2 bay NAS boxes. My gut still says a standalone Kodi box may be more future-proof, but options for that are pretty limited over here. RaspPi3 or an OdroidC2 is certainly an option, but most of the other common platforms are not available, or too costly locally or to bring in. No FireTV, no Shield, etc. Though most of the newer NUCs are readily available, but might stretch the budget when paired with a NAS.
Oh, looks like the TAS268 is Android 4.4.4 and may be stuck there, or at least stuck by QNAP’s whim. That may be a future Kodi problem?
It should work fine, but I haven’t seen any reports of anyone using it for that. Yes, being stuck on kitkat will limit you-- the next version of kodi won’t work on android 4.4.
