Got a new TV for the bedroom - pondering DVD solution

Now that the analog broadcasts have been shut down I figured I might as well get a new TV for the bedroom. I wanted a 20-23 inch widescreen TV with a built in DVB-T tuner and HDMI and there weren't that many options available. I ended up getting the Philips 23PFL5522D (clever name there, Philips!) which I'm pretty pleased with so far.

The TV sits up on a shelf and we view it from below which means I have to crank up the brightness quite high to get a good picture. When I stand up and look at it straight the image is far to bright, but it looks good from the bed.

With the TV in place I now need to find a media solution for this one as well. I'm currently thinking about:

• Xbox 360 Arcade as a media extender to my HTPC. As an added bonus I also get a gaming console. The Xbox also has a built-in DVD player. It might be a tad on the noisy side though.
  
• Sansa TakeTV (not available in Sweden yet AFAIK). Nice small form factor, but I need to rip movies before I can watch them. Rather inconvenient.
  
• Small DVD-player (there's not enough room for a full size DVD player). Not sure what's available, I might need to do some research here. This might double as a DVD player for the car. I would like one with HDMI, and I haven't seen this yet.
• Other options? AppleTV or a Mac Mini perhaps? Wait and see?

Video solution, part 3 - Media Players

This is the third post in a series where I'm trying to find a good solution for handling TV and video in my living room. In the last episode I introduced the contenders and covered the HDD recorder category.

Now on to the media players.

This is an interesting category where a ton of development is going on at the moment. If you're interested you can read up on the MPC Club forum. The most interesting option here is probably the TViX M-4100SH which has HDMI, supports resolutions up to 1080p and has a DVB-T tuner add-on. You still have a sucky GUI and a box that is pushed to its limit with HD content. It costs 3.400 SEK for the box, 900 SEK for the tuner and an additional 1.000 SEK for a 160GB HDD = 5.300 SEK. And there's no support for the matroska container, which means you might have to re-mux or re-encode stuff. Oh, and it only supports wireless networking with an external USB dongle (which adds more to the cost) and the stability is less than stellar. Some people have also reported problems with the fan noise being perceived as a problem.

AppleTV is the other interesting candidate in the media player category. For 3.700 SEK you get a box with a 160GB HDD, but no tuner capabilities. Unless you hack it, the box only support media you can watch in iTunes, which means we need to re-encode pretty much everything. It appears you can also get a tuner to work with AppleTV which is promising, but not quite there.

XBMC is a tried media center, but the xbox suffers from being to noisy and it does not support HD content.

If you are willing to wait until late this fall the Syabas Media Tank is probably the media player to get. Its only a reference design and no consumer models have yet been announced. The HW specs look excellent though and it is well worthy of consideration.

Which leaves us with the final category: a Home Theater PC. Details and options to follow in the next post in the series.