Good or Best Media Players?

[godreborn]

something appears to be wrong with my original media player (kdlinks hd680). I have had it for years, but it no longer powers on. I was hoping to buy the same model, since it's a pita to remove or add something to my setup. what is a good or the best media player to buy or are there any alternatives?

edit: I'm for looking for one that can play most (if not all) file formats. I think I might want one that can do 4K, even though I don't have one of those tvs yet. I want one that can stream (I know nothing about NAS) and one that an hdd or flash drive can plug into. my budget is around $200.

 

[Alexander1970]

EDIT

Sorry,i read it not correct.

My fault (posted an Windows software player)

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

These days if you want a media player for a TV, you'll generally be looking at Android TV boxes. There are tons of cheap chinese ones, if you don't want to spend cash, or you can try one of Amazon's Fire options (which can range from cheapo to expensive).

My personal choice would be the Shield TV, probably the best Android TV box you can buy today. Up to 4k video, has HDR support, supports tons of streaming services and Kodi, and has the added benefit of having high end hardware so you can get away with emulating pretty much anything within reason on it. A little expensive, around $175 these days, but you can find them used or on sale for pretty cheap every now and again, and it's worth it IMO.

If you don't want Android, for whatever reason, you could also pick up a Raspberry Pi 3 and toss one of the Kodi based distros on it. Doesn't support all the major streaming services (Netflix and Amazon Prime work now, though it's been a bit buggy for me personally), but works great for streaming content from a home server. I have a Pi that runs as a NAS, and use a Pi as a media center for my living room TV and have never had an issue.

 

[tech3475]

It may be worth posting a list of requires/features and a budget.

 

[godreborn]

It may be worth posting a list of requires/features and a budget.

added to first post.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

If you want something that can stream to other devices, the Shield TV does support SMB sharing of the file system now, and has USB ports for mass storage. Though I believe when using SMB it's read-only (unless you root), so you'd have to move the HDD around to add files or use another network service (like FTP) to do it via network.

 

[Mythical]

VLC or Kodi

 

[npiet1]

If you've got an xbox one (or they are $100 second hand) use VLC on it but I use Universal Media Server (UMS) because I've got multiple devices and it connects easily with them while being better organised than plex. It can struggle if you haven't got a decent CPU for transcoding 4k but it plays every format I've tried including Video_TS (DVD format). I can't see the point on buying a dedicated media server when consoles do the job just as well.

 

[godreborn]

I can't figure out what the difference is between these two: https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-SHI...350355&hash=item2cd9426dd0:g:xqMAAOSwXOBbk1~l

and, https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-SHI...359873&hash=item4b56abeb56:g:MWsAAOSwlUhbk2o0

 

[Deleted User]

I can't figure out what the difference is between these two: https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-SHI...350355&hash=item2cd9426dd0:g:xqMAAOSwXOBbk1~l

and, https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-SHI...359873&hash=item4b56abeb56:g:MWsAAOSwlUhbk2o0

one comes with a controller and one comes with just the remote

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

It should be noted that there are two models of the Shield TV, the original 2015 model and a refreshed 2017 model. The 2015 model has a micro SD card slot and IR support, whereas the 2017 model removes the micro SD card slot and IR, and is smaller and thinner.

But the ones you linked, the only difference is the inclusion of the controller, they're both 2017 models without the SD card slot.

 

[LawnMeower]

MPC (Media Player Classic). Deals with everything and can read the FSA of a DVD or BD on your disk

 

[Sethtimus Prime]

Nvidia Shield.