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Just a note on media players – I’ve been an avid media center user for ages now, starting with an nforce1 HTPC back in the day, then graduating to standalones; there’s a bunch of good players on the market that will play just about anything, but recently two have come out that stand above the rest, one’s the eGreat M34A, which is basically a rebranded Popcornhour A-110 at half the price (for those who don’t know, Popcornhour is the undisputed king of the modern media players and started off the whole HD revolution in media players) – dealers can get it for R1099 at pinnacle micro, but you can find it online at R1250 upwards on jump.co.za.

The other player, which is a bit newer and not quite as mature, and based on the same Realtek innards as the Mede8er, but again at about half the price, is the Xtreamer player which Scoop distributes at about R1100 ex. This starts for about R1500 online if you search Jump.

You can’t go wrong with either of them, and they’re about the same to operate, pop it onto a LAN (or plug in an optional supported USB wifi card), and browse to NFS/SMB/FTP shares and just press play – dead simple. You can attach a HDD onto them, but it’s almost a waste, because they’re fanless devices and the last place you want a spinning fan or HDD contaminating the sound is in your AV system.

I have absolutely no idea why these players are so cheap, the eGreat M34A is awesome build quality and is so close to the PCH A110 at double the price, that it runs literally the same firmware with a new splash screen. Although I don’t know about the Medi8er, I’m assuming the Xtreamer has the same story there, using the same chipset.

Just a note or two:

1. LINUX vs Windows vs MacOS
Comparing your experience with Gentoo to the current landscape of LINUX desktop use is like comparing Windows 7 with Windows 3.11, or your iMac to the Apple I (“what? must I assemble this thing before I can use it?”) Yes, at University you want to compile everything. The old mantra: LINUX is a moment of installation and a lifetime of configuration. But these days, and being business focused, no-one can take the time to recompile everything. Two words: LINUX Mint. Yes, yet another distro, but it feels as finished as you get with XP out of the box.

2. Antitrust
HP is trying the Microsoft ploy, and it is good a big player like Mustek is taking the time to try to set it right. The first case against Microsoft (before the big antitrust one) was for them telling OEMs if they ship DR DOS or non MS DOS (clean) hardware, Microsoft will not support them. So the Microsoft “TAX” where introduced, telling OEMs to pay per machine they ship, done.

Which brings me to:

3. Choice on PC like you choose a Mac
Mac comes with MacOS. Why the hell does PC come with Windows? Microsoft does not manufacture the hardware, why do they dictate the software? There is not more “MS TAX”, but I can’t get a non SA assembled machine without MS Windows. And, it does not seem like much, but on entry level, Windows (Vista and 7) can be almost 1/3 of the total prise. Then (!!!), I can’t transfer that license to a different machine?!

I can forgive the Mac Fanboism on ZA Tech Show, but your overly developed “Microsoft is always right as long as they don’t say anything wrong against The Jobs”, is getting weird.

@Herman:

Surely you should be pointing the finger at the equipment manufacturers for putting Windows on their machines, and not MS? Doesn’t/didn’t Dell allow you to buy machines with ubuntu preinstalled? And tons of netbooks came with linux preinstalled.

The market has spoken – they want windows preinstalled on their machines, and that’s what the equipment manufacturers give them, pure and simple as that. I’m by no means a fanboy, but you just have to look at the world around you, and how computers are used, to see why things are as they are.

I think the Popcorn Hour C200 is one of the huge contenders for being the king of media players. The hardware has a lot of potential for future growth and it looks damn nice in your AV entertainment rack. I wanted the C200, but I believe that a device is as good as its firmware and support behind it. That is where Mvix and I believe other media players are totally falling apart.

I found that the C200′s firmware was rushed to market (gosh, I can believe so due to the hype around it), but a few months on, and they are still issuing BETA firmware updates. The C200 is not ready for primetime and it is just such a pity that a device with such good hardware is still in BETA, but I can only hope that the firmware will become more stable and that anybody, even those who are not tech savvy, will be able to use it without any frustrations.

The xtremer is gaining good ground and it is basically due to its price.

Choosing a media player comes down to what your needs are. I want to be able to install an internal drive with all my content and still able to access content on the network and play anything I throw at it. The Mede8er fulfills those needs very well. The fan on the Mede8er is so quiet that I can hardly hear it. Sanji spent a lot of effort in making sure that the fan is as quiet as can be.

As I said in the show, their support and dedication to releasing stable firmware is a huge drawcard to anybody who is getting into the media player game.

Greg,

Dell only offered the machines with Ubuntu in US & UK. So no luck there. And, what if I’m more of an Toshiba, LG fan or HP fan?

Netbooks initially came out with LINUX, and I got a EEEPC with its LINUX disto. My choice however when upgrading was either the LG or the Lenovo (which I ended up in getting), with, you guessed it, Windows the (no)only choice.

It is documented that Microsoft is muscling in on Netbooks by employing weird tactics (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090619161307529) or keeping XP alive long after they intended too, and the OEMs just decide that it is less effort to bundle the $55 – $0.50 XP on the machines than put up a fight.

Had this same discussion with the Toshiba product manager, and the answer always is: this was decided upstream, sorry.

How difficult can it be for a OEM/manufacturer to allow the reseller in South Africa to either swap out the hard drive, or ship the machine with the OS media rather than having it bundled in the box? Or even charge me that $35 for the effort to load Ubuntu on there. Give the the choice!