While you know an MP3 player will play MP3s, and a DVD player will do its thing, the new breed of boxes don’t wear their functionality on their sleeve. Set-top boxes, media boxes – we know they’re boxes, yes, but what’s inside? What are these boxes going to do for you? Some want to make renting movies a cinch, some want to help you stream the movies you already have – and some seem like they want to try to do it all. So take a look below, and see what matters most to you. (And remember to click to expand)
It might feel like comparing apples to oranges to turkey legs, but every device listed on the plate wants to help replace your TV.
Josh Peacock
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 7:50 AMWow so all u need is an xbox or ps3 and your sweet!
Peter Santone
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 7:51 AMThe PS3 + TVersity has been an awesome video box. The one thing that will make it KING compared to the others is .mkv playback. I have to use mkv2vob.
Vincent Lui
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 9:47 AMPeter, use PS3 Media Server to play mkv instead.
matt
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 11:36 AMlast time I tried that, it DID play it, but it transcoded the whole thing on the fly… loss of quality, and needlessly straining your PC, mkv to vob converts it vob without needing to do a transcode, then ps3 media server can send the vob to the ps3, and suddenly knows the same stream that was in the mkv CAN be played natively by the ps3, thus, at no point does transcoding take place.
weird, and I hope they will/have fix it in ps3 media server, because its great otherwise.
Jamie Carl
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 8:50 AMSo apart from games (which I prefer a PC for anyway), my MythTV box puts a big fat YES against every one of those questions.
Oh, I’m sorry. Was this list only for ‘consumers’?
josh
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 9:06 AMthe info for xbox and ps3 is off, it says that only the ps3 has optical out, which if wrong because both the old and new 360′s had optical out and, it says that the wireless is only b/g when the 360 also has n
NacaYoda
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 9:16 AMHow old if this list? 2 years?
PS3′s also come in 320GB format and are upgradable.
They also have the PlayTV addon which coverts it into a DVR and allows live TV watching (dual HD tuners).
Pretty important points I’d have thought.
matt
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 11:40 AMps3 ftw! the only thing I need plugged into my home theatre is a ps3 with play TV.
and yeah, both the ps3 and xbox do optical audio out. I assume that the 360 does spdif audio out through hdmi, the ps3 of course does that and all the HD audio formats (if you got the new one)
does the 360 do multichannel uncompressed LPCM over hdmi?
Bobbobboy
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 12:44 PMThe PS3 is good but why oh why couldn’t they just some more freaking codecs to it to make it better.
Now the homebrew scene for PS3 is underway hopefully we’ll get a Boxee port for PS3.
Steve
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 1:57 PMI’m set by already owning a 360 and PS3. Windows Home Media Centre is the bomb for this type of thing.
I don’t think Apple TV etc will ever catch on in Australia because unlike the US where everyone has unlimited, high-speed plans, we’re almost universally capped. You’ll never get as much from your streaming box as you want, lest you take a dent in your regular usage as well.
bleak
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 2:05 PMI use the 360/WMC/My Movies combo.
Works a treat.
The only thing I cant do is subtitles