Monday, July 9, 2007

Video solution, part 2 - Meet the contenders

As I just mentioned I'm looking for a solution to handle my video and TV. I'm fine with multiple boxes, but would prefer an integrated solution. Without further ado, lets bring out the contenders:
  • HDD recorder with DVD
  • Set-top box with DVB-T HDD
  • Media player / media streamer
  • Home Theatre PC
The HDD recorders with DVD I've looked at were the Sony RDR HXD870 and the yet to be released Samsung DVD-SH853. The main problem with these units is that the GUI is rather bad, they do not support scheduled season recordings and you can't play high-definition content on them. In other words you need to complement a HDD recorder with a media player to fulfil all requirements. The price for a HDD recorder is approximately 4.500 SEK.

There are a couple of set-top boxes available with a harddisk and DVB-T. They suffer from the same drawbacks as the HDD recorders (although some models, e.g. the Topfield 5700 can be hacked to provide a decent GUI with exentions). They also have no DVD-player, but I have one already today so its not a big issue. Prices between 4.000 SEK to 6.500 SEK for the unreleased dreambox 8000.

In the next post in this series, I'll cover the media player options.

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