[charleyfarley]

Hello to the great and the good out there. As you can see i'm a newbie, i might be posting this request for help in the wrong place... apologies if so and moderators feel free to redirect me.

What Do I Have? I'm UK based and currently have a low level sky subscription as i love the ease of sky+ and the number of channels to choose from. I watch a lot of movies thru my Popcorn Hour that works fine if a little clunky and interface plain i do use it a lot. I have a massive amount of music on my laptop and cds that in these modern times i rarely/never play.

What Do I Want? i'd like to cancel sky satellite subscription and save the £20/month. Maintain the channel quantity of the freeview or freesat service - i currently lack a rooftop aerial so freesat would be easier. The functions of a HD dual tuner are important as is the ability to attach external storage and connect wirelessly via my home network. My music i would like to store in a lossless format on the same or attached device and that in turn to connect up to the AV receiver. Finally in this dream set-up the real magic part is i'd like an additional handheld controller that displays artwork for my music and movies, kind of like itunes does.

A single piece of hardware that does all this would have me scrambling for my rainy day money but i am trying to keep costs down and thus far - i've been looking around for weeks - no definitive solutions. If the only one stop solution is to build a HTPC then down that route i will go but if i don't need to happy days!

I appreciate that this request is a bit of a ramble so if it strikes a chord with anyone who reads please share your knowledge.

Muchos gracias

[Hi-Jack]

I doubt you will find a one in all device... If HDI would release the add on extensions for the MAX and DUO you may find the "one in all video solution" in these units but they are not as affordable as you'd want them. In addition, everything it has to offer for the extensions and other "TV options" must still be shown by firmware as neither is ready to date.

For music, really something different is needed as neither of these media players, regardless the brand, can handle the replacement of a true audio device. Also those good ones come expensive.

What you want may happen in a year from now as brands mature their firmware concerning other than video file formats, at least the performance of these chips wil increase drastically enabling and warranting the expected progress since long time.

For yourself, a solution would be building a small form HTPC and using software based solution and added hardware cards you need to maximize the stuff you want although I doubt it will carry the "ease of use" or "quality" of the media players, but they in exchange lack some of the features you want.

If you can cope with it, relax and sit out for a couple months (possibly up to a year) to see what all these new promises deliver for real... Other than for video playback, there's nothing to highly recommend on the current load of players concerning music...