Questions about WD TV Live Hub and should I pick another option?

[gameace12]

I'm thinking of buying a 1tb WD TV Live Hub which is 170 dollars. The model number for it is WDBABZ0010BBK - http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Live-Media-Center/dp/B004GK0GKO

I have a couple questions for anyone who has one right now, that's the option I'm almost certainly to go with the main thing I want to know though is my computer is a piece of garbage until I get my next big payment at the end of the year when I'm going to build an i7 gaming rig for around 1-1.5k dollars. So I can't do on the fly transcoding for 720p / 1080p until then.

I've noticed all the Thora releases use a high number of ref frames and I'm wondering if say The Sky Crawlers 720p, High at L4.1 with 8 ref frames would work on it. Most of the information I could find on Google was outdated. Sword of the Stranger has 10 and I'm thinking there's no way in hell it will work.

My second question is I know that I'll always be able to find a different groups release that will most likely be supported but how well are the subtitles on the vast majority of them going to play? I don't care about the karoke effects as long as I can get crispy video and normal subtitles I'm happy.

Last question for anime would I be better off buying another type of box instead of a WD one? Aka Boxee etc I know a box that will play x.265 and h.264 in an mkv container fine will be fine with normal hd shows so that's not a big deal. As I said I just can't do any transcoding because it takes so long. So I'm just looking for the best thing for Anime really since everything else will play fine if it does anime fine.


*Edit* Also for comparison to other devices here's what all the WD will play.

Video - AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9, FLV (h.264)
Photo - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
Audio - MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL
Subtitle - SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI 

[avatarl]

Just for the record, most hardware media players can't play 10bit files due to hardware limitations so they aren't going to release a firmware update for 10bit support.  I'm not even sure if they ever will, given how "popular" 10bit is, but whatever, this discussion has been done to death and thankfully there are still some nice people in fansubbing giving out 8bit stuff.  I'm not aware of any media player being released that has 10bit support.  There were talks about some Nixeus or what was the name, player but the reviews I've seen going around are mixed, not to mention that it was kinda expensive.

On the matter at hand, if you can afford it, get the Boxee instead.  I had the original WDTV thing, what it could play, it could play well, but there were many things it couldn't do, and worst of all, WD gave up on it just one year after release, dropping firmware releases completely and I was left with a buggy piece of garbage.  I'm not sure about what Boxee will do but I've had it for a year now and apart from the 10bit crap, there's nothing I threw at it that it couldn't play.  I can't recommend Popcorn since I never had one but I hear they are generally pretty good, if expensive.  There was also talk in the Popcorn forum (or was that ACRyan...?)about whether they would be releasing a player capable of 10bit playback but last time I checked was more than 6 months ago I think, so I'm not sure how that went.  You COULD go check it out though.  The subtitles support on Boxee is pretty decent, I had no issues with multiple lines being displayed, skips or anything regarding .ASS subs so it should work for you.

As far as x.265 is concerned, I'm not sure Boxee can play it as I have no such content available but I'm pretty sure that WD thing won't be playing it anytime soon

Coming from the original WDTV, I avoided Thora's releases like the plague.  They use too many ref frames, which ended up breaking DXVA which the WDTV relied on and made the video unplayable.  From what I can see, the Boxee is generally more lenient regarding ref frames but I have no Thora content to test it.

[gameace12]

I don't really care about h.265 and 10bit right now not a big deal to me that nothing supports it yet and may not for years. I just checked on a Boxee off amazon and it's only 10 dollars more than a 1tb WD right now, I can't seem to find what size internal the Boxee has though. I read somewhere that it was 2tb but i'm not really sure if they meant it had 2tb of space or that they had a 2tb external hooked up to it.

*Edit* Just found a thing on google from 2-3 years ago that said 1gb of flash memory but I'm not sure if they have different models / if they added a big internal into it since then. If anyone can answer from that amazon link provided I would appreciate it.

http://www.amazon.com/Boxee-D-Link-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B0038JE07O

*Edit2* Ok nevermind I just found out the D-link doesn't have internal storage but the Iomega does, so I found my answer after a few minutes of googling. I switched up my search a few times and finally found an answer.

[avatarl]

I don't really care about h.265 and 10bit right now not a big deal to me that nothing supports it yet and may not for years. I just checked on a Boxee off amazon and it's only 10 dollars more than a 1tb WD right now, I can't seem to find what size internal the Boxee has though. I read somewhere that it was 2tb but i'm not really sure if they meant it had 2tb of space or that they had a 2tb external hooked up to it.

*Edit* Just found a thing on google from 2-3 years ago that said 1gb of flash memory but I'm not sure if they have different models / if they added a big internal into it since then. If anyone can answer from that amazon link provided I would appreciate it.

http://www.amazon.com/Boxee-D-Link-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B0038JE07O

*Edit2* Ok nevermind I just found out the D-link doesn't have internal storage but the Iomega does, so I found my answer after a few minutes of googling. I switched up my search a few times and finally found an answer.

The Boxee Box is made by D-Link anyway, there's no alternative Boxee Box from what I recall, nor has a new Box been released so just pick whatever's new and cheaper.  The Boxee Box doesn't have internal disk nor needs to, imo or I'd have already told you .  It has Ethernet support, wireless support, USB support.  I just use a really long cable from my router to the Box in the living room, share my anime and movie folders on LAN and watch them on the fly unless a friend brings something via a usb external, when I just plug it in.  If you really need an internal disk with it, you have to buy something else.  All I cared about was having it play as much anime as possible and it delivered flawlessly till the whole 10bit retardation.

[gameace12]

I was leaning towards an Iomega 1tb but found out they're not good at all for h264 and x.264 so I'm leaning towards Boxee again only bad thing is WD TV is cheaper and has a 1tb internal :\

[halfelite]

If you want decent subs get a refurbed popcorn hour a210 right now for 119$ it has some of the best ASS/SSA style support,

I have owned a wdtv,popcornhour,dune,nixeus, and popcorn hour by far as the best ASS/SSA support out of all players,