HDMI Media Players

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Radical Cadre

Radical Cadre

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
I was wondering if any of you have experience with HDMI media players. What I'm looking for is a device (hopefully small) that I can plug into my television, which allows me to play pirated movies off of a USB drive or a SD card. I've used a PC or a laptop in the past but I have seen these smaller devices floating about. Unfortunately I know very little about them and don't want to get ripped off. What devices have you guys used? And do they support a wide range of file types?
 
Get a Roku. The "circle-ish" looking ones come with a USB slot where you can stick an external hard drive or USB stick into. Then you can use the Roku Media player to play the videos (and audio for music) in your harddrive/usb stick.

Alternatively, get a player that allows for Kodi/Plex to be installed onto it. You can manage your stuff on the computer and watch your stuff on the media player.
 
SSF2T Old User said:
Get a Roku. The "circle-ish" looking ones come with a USB slot where you can stick an external hard drive or USB stick into. Then you can use the Roku Media player to play the videos (and audio for music) in your harddrive/usb stick.

Alternatively, get a player that allows for Kodi/Plex to be installed onto it. You can manage your stuff on the computer and watch your stuff on the media player.
Click to expand...
Android sticks? Anyway, network sharing over LAN is also a way to move media around aswell.
 
Just A Butt said:
most TVs nowadays have a USB port where you can just plug in a drive
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Sadly my television only displays image content from a USB drive.

SSF2T Old User said:
Alternatively, get a player that allows for Kodi/Plex to be installed onto it. You can manage your stuff on the computer and watch your stuff on the media player.
Click to expand...
Am I correct in thinking that this method would require decent wifi to allow the devices to connect to one another? Because poor, rural internet and inferior home wifi is mostly the cause for my desire to run stuff directly from a USB or something similar. That is a cool idea though. I can keep it in my back pocket for when better connection speeds reach my area.
 
Radical Cadre said:
poor, rural internet and inferior home wifi
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If you're looking at buying hardware to solve this problem, really, the best solution is to use some kind of thin client which you can feed content locally, like SSF2T said. "poor, rural internet" and "inferior home wifi" are two separate matters. Upgrade wifi, set your PC up to serve content, then you can use something really cheap to pop that up on the TV. Bonus with this approach is that you can, for example, use your phone as a remote control.

Improve wifi: $100
Chromecast: $40

This is one approach that will work. The idea of working off of physical media is about a decade dated. If you REALLY want to insist on this, I'd have recommended a Raspberry Pi, but they're now in short supply, and that's scarcely more expensive than a Chromecast.
 
before you go spending money on whatever roku sticks or chromecasts, consider upgrading your tv

you can get a pretty nice one for cheap these days, just make sure you get one with the USB thing or whatever
 
Perhaps look into these little ThinkCentre PC's on a second hand market:
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Put some lightweight distro on it, install Kodi, and you have a little multimedia box you can hook up to your TV. And for control you can get one of those small wireless keyboard and touchpad combos.
 
Just A Butt said:
before you go spending money on whatever roku sticks or chromecasts, consider upgrading your tv

you can get a pretty nice one for cheap these days, just make sure you get one with the USB thing or whatever
Click to expand...
I found the perfect large screen television without any of the "smart" junk built into it and most of the televisions I see anymore are full of spyware and intrusive stuff I don't want.

@Slav Power has come in with the winner, I believe. One of those ThinkCentre systems would be perfect; I may even buy a couple because I can think of a bunch of uses for these around the property. It gives me the functionality I desire and complete control, plus deep customization. I am a Slav appreciator now more than ever.
 
Just A Butt said:
what are you watching that spyware would matter?
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Spyware is an affront to my sensibilities.

I think one time Josh called me a "crazy schizo" in reference to the number and types of script blockers, anti-spyware tools, VPNs and other not-schizo software I use. The long and short of it is that I have one device in my home connected to the internet and everything else is air gapped as God intended. And the device that is connected is ready to be crushed, melted and thrown out of a window at a moment's notice.

So that I can watch The X-Files, Star Trek, Seinfeld and The Twilight Zone in peace. And privacy.

k.jpg
 
Radical Cadre said:
I found the perfect large screen television without any of the "smart" junk built into it and most of the televisions I see anymore are full of spyware and intrusive stuff I don't want.

@Slav Power has come in with the winner, I believe. One of those ThinkCentre systems would be perfect; I may even buy a couple because I can think of a bunch of uses for these around the property. It gives me the functionality I desire and complete control, plus deep customization. I am a Slav appreciator now more than ever.
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If all you are going to use on it is Kodi, try LibreELEC.

You should note the CPU in whatever old crap you get, to make sure it supports the level of hardware video decoding you want. For example:

 
Nvidia shield is highly shilled, but I think it has its limits though the AI upscaling is great. Roku ultra is great on the cheap, especially on sale for $70 or so. My LG Oled with an external HDD is pretty GOAT for less legal content, interface isn't perfect but good enough and there's little i miss from the laptop HDMI with mpv/mpc-hc with madvr setup that is kryptonite to normal people. av1, x265, vp9 support too!
 
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Just A Butt said:
most TVs nowadays have a USB port where you can just plug in a drive
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>he doesn't know the rage of putting a movie inside the usb and the movie not being able to read it.

It was a fucking shock when I tried to play an AVI video and it couldn't read.

or even when it reads the audio but not the video or vice versa.
 
>imagine not using the many free tools to convert to a much better format

what's this AVI thing? it sounds ancient
 
Kodi is the way to go. There's a lot of sketchy plugins that add streaming shit to it, but I've never fucked around with it. I just use kodi with my Android TV, or my Odroid N2+. The latter is pretty good future proofing since it can do 4k 60fps. It is pretty expensive though and might need some tinkering to get running. Also lacks Wifi or bluetooth if that's important to you.

If you have to get a newer tv, you can get one that runs Android TV. It'll run Kodi straight from it. Just plug your storage into the TV's usb port and it should just work. Or you can share a directory on your network and stream from there. Its what I do.

The X96 Air is a nice, cheap box that'll run kodi great. Has bluetooth and wifi 5g built in.
https://www.amazon.com/Android-S905X3-Processor-Decoding-Dual-Band/dp/B07YYB7JVG

CoreELEC is a fork of LibreELEC that focuses on the AMLogic ARM chipsets.

There's a topic on the kodi forums that lists what devices are best for any budget. Hasn't been updated in almost 2 years, but still pretty accurate IIRC. https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916
 
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