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Media Players, Mini HTPCs iboum.com, deciphering the entertainment technology of the future. |
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What is a Media Player?
In the most basic of terms, a Media Player is a box you connect to your TV and Hi-Fi to play digital audio and video files.
Although simple Media Players have been around for a few years it is only recently that they have become both much cheaper and powerful enough to make them worthwhile. The reasons for recent developments in power and price are rooted in the processing chips used. If you're interested in Media Player chipset developments then check out our (fascinating?!) article on the subject here. Regardless of the technicalities of it all, the result is that there are now many Media Players available that are more capable in video playback terms than all but the most powerful computers.
For less than $90 / €85 / £60 you can buy a Media Player that will flawlessly play all 1080p Full-HD video.
Of course, the other big factor driving on the development of Media Players is the widespread availability of digital video content. We don't condone it, but it is a fact that all movies and TV shows are easily available for download. These days you can also easily find HD versions, providing HD content for HD Media Players. In addition, many people are seeing the sense of ripping all their existing DVDs / Blu-Rays to a hard drive for access via a Media Player. This is a more streamlined solution than fiddling around with boxes and a drive tray every day.
Most people already have a large library of digital audio. This can also be accessed using a Media Player, so you can have one small box in your front room delivering all your media content. Look out for the Media Players with a front LCD screen for accessing audio without having the TV turned on.
So, people are acquiring ever more digital video content which they want to access on HD televisions around the home..
The answer to this need is the Media Player.
Some Media Players are also capable of playing back content directly from the internet. Free services like Youtube, Flikr, and Picassa are often available and by using a service like Netflix or Boxee, a vast variety of both paid and free content becomes available. At the moment this kind of functionality is rare but we expect it to become more common and very important in future. The future of Media Players will be paid on-demand content.
Various other features are also implemented in Media Players. Some have internet radio, some have inbuilt Bittorrent clients, some have web browsers. Again, there will be a widening of the features available as we move towards the inevitable future HD-on-demand world.
There are some TVs, Blu-Ray players, games consoles, and DVD players with rudimentary Media Players built in. The quality of the Media Player is any of these devices is significantly inferior to that of a stand-alone machine. When you consider that Media Players are relatively cheap and getting cheaper, we do not see a future for multi purpose devices of this kind. Both DVD and physical media will eventually (soon?) give way completely to Media Players, and replacing a TV is too expensive for it to be considered an alternative.
For these reasons we consider the only device that offers an alternative to a Media Player to be a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) or HD capable laptop with HDMI output. We also cover these on our site but for most people we think a Media Player is more suitable. Some advantages of a Media Player over a computer (HTPC) are as follows:
- Price. Media Players cost a fraction of an HD capable computer.
- Size. Most Media Players are considerably smaller than a DVD player. They can be unobtrusively located close to a TV or hidden completely.
- Performance. The Media Players on our site are all capable of playing virtually every audio or video file you'll ever come across, including Full-HD 1080P.
- Simple Interface. Media Players offer a simple graphical interface to allow you to access all your media.
- Simple Connectivity. Network enabled Media Players can access media stored on a home PC or network storage. If you use a Wi-Fi connection then this opens up all your computer media for use anywhere in the home.
- Simple Setup. All you need to do is plug a Media Player into a TV and point it at your media files and you are away. There is no complicated setup like you would get with a computer.
- Power usage and noise. Media Players use something like 10% of the power of a PC and most run silently.
Page last updated: 02-Mar-10
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