Items Tagged With media player

It's no secret that we're big Plex fans here at Automated Home.  But while we love our Mac mini powered setup on the main AV system, even a second hand Mac mini of suitable spec is around £350 these days.  That's why we were excited to hear of a £100 box that would bring us the Plex experience.  It's been a while since the announcement but finally we've got our hands on one of the new LG ST600 TV Upgrader boxes.  Read on to find out how it performs...

Marmitek's ever expanding catalogue of useful devices for your digital home gets another new addition this week with the launch of the BoomBoom 152 Bluetooth Music Receiver.  The unit employs a similar set-up to many ceiling speakers, using a single mid/bass driver along with 2 horizontally opposed tweeters to give a stereo image. Its built in rechargeable batteries give up to 8 hours service and at under £50 it's an inexpensive way to free the music on your smartphone or tablet...

We're getting pretty tired of waiting (and waiting) for LG to update the ST600 firmware so the Plex Media Link app can actually play the popular video formats we all use.  It's entirely possible that the lack of love LG are showing the ST600 may even mean it's hurtling towards being cancelled!  That would be pretty sad as it's never even got the chance to show what it can do yet.

Meanwhile back at the ranch we're looking around again for that magic £99 box to bring our Plex library to secondary zones around the house (bedrooms etc).  The guys working on Plex for Samsung have made great progress and their widget is looking really polished.  Perhaps best of all, in addition to Samsung TV's it also works on Series C and Series D Samsung Blu-Ray players which you can pick up for as little as £89.  Check out the video of Plex for Samsung...

This months My Automated Home feature comes from Tom Lawrence, a final year student at Staffordshire University.  Along with his friend Andy Jackson, he has created a bespoke C# home automation system which controls X10 and XBMC with clients for Android and Windows Phone...

Last night Boxee unveiled its new UI plus details on its hardware box.  They are partnering with D-Link to produce an NVidia ION platform with HDMI, SPDIF, and analogue audio, 2 USBs for expansion and networking using both Wi-Fi (802.11n) and wired ethernet.  The boxee Box will be available in the first half of 2010 wiith no news yet on price...