Client streaming options?

[EricE 2]

I am trying to get help with a couple of issues and have posted them here:

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/13069-fast-forward-not-working-on-some-videos/

and

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/13071-music-but-no-voice-audio/

 

 

 

But in general, I am trying to learn enough of this stuff to help myself.  I watch TV and video files (generally AVI, MKV format) from my PC on my xbox 360 and my xbox one.  They both work to a certain extent, but not fully. 

 

Xbox 360

I use MB 2.x

My biggest issue on the 360 is that everything has to be converted to WMV before it will play stutter free.  MKV’s won’t play at all and need to be converted.  AVIs play but stutter badly in any scene with panning.  On WMV, video, sound, playback pause, ff, reverse work fine.

I would like to figure out how to use subtitles though.  I think I need to install a separate program on my PC for this.  I am not sure though because I think subtitles need to be solved on you player and I think when playing movies on the 360 that the player is on the 360 and not the PC. 

 

Xbox One

For a long time I played videos in IE from the MB dashboard.  That worked pretty good but I didn’t have ff, rev.  It was a huge improvement over the 360 play though because I could use MB 3.x and this allowed a much wider range of file naming which eliminated most of my file naming hassles.  It also played MKV and AVI files without stuttering so no need to convert the videos to WMV’s first.  That is HUGE as conversion is an extra step and takes SO long.

Then I discovered the Media Player (with Media Browser connection).  This works perfectly for some files but has issues on many files.  Those issues are in the threads posted above.  I posted them in the DLNA forum because I think MB 3 is using DLNA to stream the data to Media Player on XB1.  If that is the case, isn’t MB just working as a file server at that point?  All interpretation of sound and video is happening in Media Player on XB1?

 

I use both the 360 and XB1 to stream because I use them at different stations in my house where I have TVs I want to stream movies to.  I now have a need for a 3^rd station and I am wondering if there is a relatively inexpensive streaming client solution that would eliminate all my troubles in one stroke.  Is there a Client Streaming solution for purchase out there that would serve my needs and eliminate the need for the Xbox 360 and XB1 and be cheap enough to buy 3 of them?  It would be nice to have one solution for all three stations.  Cheap to me means around $400 for 3 of them.  I would like to continue to use MB 3 as my server. 

 

Any comments you can offer to anything I have said would be appreciated.  Thank you in advance.

[EricE 2]

Ok, I have been reading about Roku.  Is that a good option for what I want? 

Would I run a different version of MB on my PC?

On Roku, I would download and run an APP for MB and it would then allow access to all my media on my MB PC?  Would it provide all the things I like about streaming to the Xbox One but work better in terms of ff, rev and sound?

Edited November 13, 2014 by EricE

[EricE 2]

Ok, so with no input I bought a Roku and am loving it.  The interface is not as pretty as media player on the xbox one but it is functioning perfectly and that is the important bit.  So far so good.