Homebrew Current best Media Player?

[WizardOfOdd]

I've recently stuck a 320GB hard drive next to my Wii so am planning on filling it with stuff to watch. Can anyone tell me what's generally considered to be the best Media Player for the Wii at the moment, which supports the use of an external USB hard drive?

Thanks!

 

[SifJar]

WiiMC

 

[alphax13]

Geex box


Wiimc is okay but 4 out of 4 usb drives i have cannot be detected by it.

i also find it prone to freezing with the few usb drives i have tested on it.

 

[painless]

Geex box


Wiimc is okay but 4 out of 4 usb drives i have cannot be detected by it.

i also find it prone to freezing with the few usb drives i have tested on it.

Can Geek box play mkv files without stuttering? I know WiiMC stutters a lot with all of my mkv files on my hdd.

 

[Lacius]

MPlayer CE, hands down.

 

[painless]

I have a mkv file that's about 2gb in size and tested it with the following media players;

WiiMC
MPlayer
GeexBox
Dragon Media Player

What I found is that all of them SUCK at playing mkv files but some sucked worse than others.

WiiMC played it the best with the least amount of stuttering
MPlayer came in second
GeexBox absolutely blew @$$ and would not even load the file
DMP... well, what can one say? SUCKS

Other interesting finds:

WiiMC was easiest to use with a simple interface and a ton of cool features like streaming Internet video and music
MPlayer was second with good playback of widescreen content but I found the interface was not very intuitive
GeexBox.... I hope it gets better. The interface was a real bear to navigate and looks to be an acquired taste to be sure.
DMP has a kick ass interface but is only in Alpha at the moment. I think it has a lot of possibilities to become a great media player.

If only these media players had better codec integrations/management.

 

[koji2009]

MKV isn't the problem, it's the codec used in MKVs... If you had a standard mpeg4 (xvid, divx, etc) encoded mkv there would probably be no problem. Many MKVs, however, use h264 which is incredibly CPU demanding... At max wii res or higher, I doubt any media player will ever get full speed.

 

[Satangel]

Just convert them to a more normal format and play them via WiiMC.
Best option IMHO, or watch them on another device that supports MKV.

 

[WizardOfOdd]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I think WiiMC will be my first choice then, and I'll try the others if I find that doesn't work for me.

Cheers!

 

[painless]

MKV isn't the problem, it's the codec used in MKVs... If you had a standard mpeg4 (xvid, divx, etc) encoded mkv there would probably be no problem. Many MKVs, however, use h264 which is incredibly CPU demanding... At max wii res or higher, I doubt any media player will ever get full speed.

Absolutely.... this is why at the end of my previous post I said it's too bad there wasn't better codec integration/management. Seems like the future is mkv files. Seriously, given the choice (assuming your Wii is using the aftermarket hd cables for 480p) wouldn't you prefer to watch media in higher quality? I know I do. Maybe the Wii 2 will have an hdmi out and use a more powerful cpu! Or, like you said... stick with smaller, non-mkv files.

 

[Fishaman P]

The VERY latest WiiMC just got rid of every one of my (major) desynchs with AVI files. So maybe try that.

 

[alphax13]

i think geex box does MKV fine depending on how it was encoded

will try the new wiimc as i hear its better, still dont think they fixed the usb compatibility issues

 

[Dogway]

MCplayer ce works great, the new v.77 is even so much faster than v.76. Its what I use as I heard that WiiMC has still some compatibility issues as for video playback

 

[MelodieOctavia]

WiiMC

this. hands down, and constant updates are being made. If it's not the best, then it soon will be.

 

[WizardOfOdd]

I've installed WiiMC to my SD card, but to install the WiiMC channel, it's saying I need IOS58. So I downloaded the IOS58 installer and ran it, but it still wont let me install the WiiMC channel. It's still saying I need IOS58 and suggests I update my HBC and try again. Well I'm already running the latest version of HBC and I'm running IOS61. Is this why it wont let me roll back to IOS58, which I presume is an earlier version?

I'm running system menu 4.0. Would anyone suggest I update to 4.3? Although this will presumably break my homebrew etc yeah? So is there a 'safe' update? I think when I updated from 3.x to 4.0 I used a safe 'non-official' update I found the details about on here.

Anyway, basically what I'm asking is how can I enable the WiiMC channel and USB 2.0 support from where I am at the moment. (latest HBC, Sys menu 4.0, IOS61)

Thanks!

 

[Tantric]

I've installed WiiMC to my SD card, but to install the WiiMC channel, it's saying I need IOS58. So I downloaded the IOS58 installer and ran it, but it still wont let me install the WiiMC channel. It's still saying I need IOS58 and suggests I update my HBC and try again. Well I'm already running the latest version of HBC and I'm running IOS61. Is this why it wont let me roll back to IOS58, which I presume is an earlier version?

I'm running system menu 4.0. Would anyone suggest I update to 4.3? Although this will presumably break my homebrew etc yeah? So is there a 'safe' update? I think when I updated from 3.x to 4.0 I used a safe 'non-official' update I found the details about on here.

Anyway, basically what I'm asking is how can I enable the WiiMC channel and USB 2.0 support from where I am at the moment. (latest HBC, Sys menu 4.0, IOS61)

Thanks!

How could the message on the channel installer be any clearer? It says reinstall HBC. Do that. What will happen is HBC will switch from using IOS61 to IOS58. If HBC was installed before installing IOS58, it will continue using IOS61.

 

[WizardOfOdd]

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up.