Video media players: A map to the last 10 feet

As Pizzolo mentioned a few days ago, the X-box 360 is not just a hot shit game console. Its also a robust media player, useful for playing back a wide array of video files on your TV. What does that mean for you? It means that you can download any number of video files (legally or otherwise,) put them on a USB hard drive, and play them on your TV. For us, it means that the movies in our digital store at Televandalism.com are even easier to view on your TV than the DRM protected movies you might get from Apple or Amazon.

But the X-box isn’t the only way to play your pirated download of “Krull.” There are dozens of these players on the market, and many of them are cheaper and than the X-box, without the format restrictions that Microsoft and Apple are famous for. This isn’t a formal review, or an endorsement of any particular box. Also, this isn’t a thoroughly researched technical synopsis. If I misstate anything, or overlook details, let me know in the comments. I’ll update this list periodically as I find new information and new media players.

WD TV

The WD TV is at once very cool, but slightly bizarre. Its cool because its cheap ($129), it plays HD through HDMI, and its got a slick remote controlled interface. Its bizarre because its made by hard drive manufacture Western Digital, yet its not equipped with a hard drive. I guess its not that bizarre, because Western Digital wants to sell you an external hard drive to go with your new WD TV. Conveniently, the WD TV has a USB port for connection of any external hard drive. It plays just about any media format you’ll come across, but it won’t play DRM protected files from Itunes, Amazon, Cinema Now, etc.

Lacie Multimedia Hard Drives
In his original post, Pizzolo mentioned that the LaCie “rugged” costs $349, but the “LaCinema” series of media players starts at $99 for the driveless model. $149 gets you a 500 gig drive inside. The prices go up to $500 for the DVR model that can record standard definition video and playback HD. That model is also equipped with ethernet and wifi connections for playback of video from other computers on the network. All of the “LaCinema” products are equipped with HDMI for connection to the TV, but only the more expensive models actually play HD video.

Popcorn Hour
As a sure sign that this an emerging market, the interesting innovations are coming from obscure, but ambitious, hardware manufacturers. The Popcorn Hour C-200 seems to be the ultimate “play anything” pirate machine. It doesn’t have an internal hard drive, but you can add storage via USB, or connect it to wifi and send the video files to the box via network. It plays anything, including a few forms of DRM files (I’m not sure if that means ITunes movies or not), and it also plays streaming flash video from several websites to your TV. You Tube, Hulu, and several other prescribed media outlets are all viewable. But wait! Theres more! The C-200 also has an internal bit torrent application, so you can pirate movies right to your TV. At $299, this all seems too good to be true. But the technology at work here is fairly simple. Any computer, even a $300 netbook, can play back all of these file formats and connect to a wifi network. The video conversion hardware is cheap and easy to implement, so there isn’t much reason for these boxes to cost more than a few hundred bucks unless the manufacturers want to gouge us. The C-200 isn’t available yet, and there’s no date for delivery on the website. We’ll see what happens when it comes out.

Apple IPod
Last, and certainly least, any video capable IPod can send video out to your TV. The catch is that Apple wants $50 for the video adapter cable that sends component video out through the Ipod dock. A quick amazon search reveals cheaper solutions in a variety of configurations, but none seem to offer the magic combination of video output while simultaneously charging the battery, as is found on the Apple cable. This is a must because, in my experience, playing video on the Ipod kills the battery in double time. Furthermore, I’ve heard reports of the Iphone / IPod tough 3.0 software update blocking the use of non-Apple cables. Thanks Mr. Jobs!

Apple extends that restrictive methodology to the video files played by the Ipod. The video has to be scaled and compressed to a fairly strict standard. Videos from the ITunes store and other legal sources are formatted correctly. Most pirated video is not, so anything that isn’t in the correct h.264 codec will have to be converted. ITunes will do this conversion for you, but its slow and you don’t get any control over the compression standards.

There’s no HDMI, or any kind of HD signal, and sound is limited to stereo. I wouldn’t buy an IPod to serve as the hub of a digital home theater, but if you’re wiling to cough up $50 for Apple’s proprietary cable, its a serviceable method to watch movies from a device that many of us already have.