Movie Playing options for my dad (no internet)

[jriker1 20]

My father is nuts about TV shows and movies and is currently in a retirement home.  Call him one of those new generation retirement home types the home isn't ready for.  TV picture sucks, no internet.  Care is exceptional though.  I am spending ungodly amounts of time converting all our movies and MCE recorded TV shows onto DVD's so he can watch them on his DVD player/recorder.  As I start to run out of old blank DVD+R media and start to look at new costs to start buying them thinking I need a new plan.

 

Since I use MB3 at home and love it, thought I would post here to see if anyone had any ideas paths I could take to allow my dad to watch all these shows at the home without having to keep burning them to DVD.  Remember no internet, has a nice Samsung wide screen I bought him, no phone.  Thinking something I can digitize content for and upload to the device from time to time.  If it had nice menus that would be good but understand that may be a challenge with no internet.  I have a iPad that can tether to the internet so would have the ability to update the device when I go there if I couldn't have all the images and stuff downloaded locally before I go there.  That's the other side, I would have to be able to upload the content from say my laptop to this device when I'm physically there.

 

Even if MB isn't an option, I know there is a lot of passion for all things media here so knew people would have thoughts of what's out there to help.

 

Appreciate anyone's thoughts on this.

 

JR

Edited October 26, 2014 by jriker1

[MrWebsmith 598]

jriker,

 

previous to mb3 and its abilities to stream work outside the home i would "hook up" my father with a loaded usb hard drive (the 1-3 tb variety) and at his place he had a WD TV box ... it gave him a decent menu with some of my mb-sourced metadata and images even loaded also.. folder images and descriptions at least i recall..

 

anyway.. he would watch tv shows and movies from it.. then he'd ask me "what i had that was new" and id get the drive from him and reload it with other media... worked well.. doesnt need internet etc

 

 

now he's moved to a roku3 box that connects to my mb3 server over the net which is a huge boost for him and saves me all that copying to the harddrive phase..

 

just an idea and that WD TV box is sub-100 and had good codec/file support and was "easy to use" for him.

[gthrift 64]

jriker,

 

previous to mb3 and its abilities to stream work outside the home i would "hook up" my father with a loaded usb hard drive (the 1-3 tb variety) and at his place he had a WD TV box ... it gave him a decent menu with some of my mb-sourced metadata and images even loaded also.. folder images and descriptions at least i recall..

 

anyway.. he would watch tv shows and movies from it.. then he'd ask me "what i had that was new" and id get the drive from him and reload it with other media... worked well.. doesnt need internet etc

 

 

now he's moved to a roku3 box that connects to my mb3 server over the net which is a huge boost for him and saves me all that copying to the harddrive phase..

 

just an idea and that WD TV box is sub-100 and had good codec/file support and was "easy to use" for him.

 

This is the best method, IMO.  2-3 TB hard drive and a media box that will play local content over usb.  I had a WDTV Live that I bought for my wife (girlfriend at the time) so we could have all my movies at her place.  I had two 1.5tb drives that I would rotate out every week or two so they had all the current stuff.  

[Kent 92]

I have several WDTV Live Streaming Media Players (SMP) sitting around (to be put up on ebay, replaced with Roku 3s running MB3), works great as MrWeb notated.  I can ship you one...if interested PM me.