Media Extenders!

[paulbeers]

So I know this topic has been covered across many threads, but I wanted to get an opinion on what to buy. I want it to be able to play HD content. Why? Because I just bought an HD Ready tv and am going to order an HD PCI card for my sage box. Here are my options:

1. Roku PhotoBridge HD Digital Media Player
2. Buffalo LinkTheater
3. Pinnacle Showcenter 200

Here are my thoughts:
1. I like the roku for the card slots for easy transfer for my digital pictures
2. I like the Buffalo for the fact that it also has a built in DVD player (although to be truthful I just bought a new progressive scan dvd player when I bought my t.v. so I don't know about how my wife will react to 'another dvd player')
3. Pinnacle has been doing this for some time, and seem to know what they are doing

I already have a MediaMVP hooked up now in my system (although just got it and haven't checked out the client software for it so just using for MPEG playback right now, I'M BUSY OKAY!!).

I would like to see any of these converted to a Sage Client, but don't know realistically which one would be the easiest. The Xbox 360 is really making me think about MCE 2005 (I love sage, but virtually flawless integration as a media extender really makes me consider).

What to spend my 300 bucks on!!!!!!

HELP!!!!

Pauly

[waynedunham]

I've got a Roku Photobridge and just bought a Fusion HD5. Right now I'm in the process of backing up 2 computers for a big shuffle of hardware to build a better Sage machine. So I don't have any HD content right now, but from what I've been reading on the Roku forums HD content can be played with it.

I can view my Sage recordings on the Roku by sharing the video recordings drive/folder. The downside is no UI, just a file selector.

My fervent hope is that Sage 3.0 will be much more open giving us easy integration of at least the program descriptions. Since they're moving to build Linux boxes and support some flavor of MVP directly I'm also hoping that adapting that over to the Roku (which also runs under Linux) will give us a good Sage Client.

The Roku folks are agonizingly slowly (at least to me) advancing the firmware and developers kit. That's where the real strength is. The 3rd party developers have really stepped up with some great apps for playing video especially, but also have moved ahead of the software and interface for audio that comes with the Roku.

I'm still not 100% convinced that it will be the ultimate device, but it shows a lot more hardware potential than most of the others.

Right now I can play my MP3's, Sage recordings, and ripped DVD's over my wired network. There are still some bugs and inconveniences and nowhere near as easy to set up and use as the MVP, but it's capable of so much more.