Dave
You have got it.
The media player I recommend is the Western Digital “WD TV Live”, specifically this model as it plays DTS audio.
I have one of the model previous, the WD TV Live Hub but this models replacement has the confusing name WD Elements Play, so if you are after one make sure its the right one.
There are other media players but I cannot comment on something that I have not tested, I can comment on the Raspberry PI mini computer. These have media player software available which you can install onto an SD card, it connects via HDMI and you plug in a memory stick with the movies loaded onto it. The PI’s media operating system boots up to a menus screen not dissimilar to the WD TV Live unit. These PI’s are best when the data rate of the movie is 20mbps and below as I have seen some stutter with 28mbps movies. 20mbps is still great a quality video image.
The specification of the WD TV Live unit is:-
File Formats Supported
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
Note:
• MPEG2 MP@HL up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30 or 1280x720p60 resolution.
• MPEG4.2 ASP@L5 up to 1280x720p30 resolution and no support for global motion compensation.
• WMV9/VC-1 MP@HL up to 1280x720p60 or 1920x1080p24 resolution. VC-1 AP@L3 up to 1920x1080i30, 1920x1080p24 or 1280x720p60 resolution.
• H.264 BP@L3 up to 720x480p30 or 720x576p25 resolution.
• H.264 MP@L4.1 and HP@4.1 up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution.
• An audio receiver is required for multi-channel surround sound digital output.
• Compressed RGB JPEG formats only and progressive JPEG up to 2048x2048.
• Single layer TIFF files only.
• Uncompressed BMP only.
• For details, please refer to the user manual.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330
The WD TV Live is connected to your router and to the TV via HDMI.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=400
This is the WD Elements Play and it is available with either a 1Tb or 2Tb hard drive
Your home network should then see the device, after it is seen you can use it exactly as you would do with a NAS unit (network attached storage). Create folders on the drive using Explorer and drag and drop movies, images, audio etc on to the device and in the folder of choice. It’s just like an attached external hard drive except that it is found under Network and not MyComputer.
You repeat this process each time you want to add or remove files.
The easiest way of sending video files to a person or a club with such a device is to send the files on a memory stick (MS). To play the files, insert the memory stick into the WD TV Live and it will see the MS, click on not sync and then the device will see the MS as a plugged in drive, click on sync and the unit will copy the whole MS content into the unit into a folder that it will create, hence this can be a slow process. Once the MS is see it can be selected as the source and the movies played. There is no menu or playlist just the movies listed on the WD TV Live’s menu which in turn is similar to using Explorer.
As long as the file format is amongst those listed the unit will play it, personally MPG or MP4 being the best options with MPG being either SD or HD videos. I’d be careful with AVI’s as our club system does not like them but there again it is a couple of years old.
Solid state Media Players do not tend to include up-scaling, that is where the AV amplifier comes in to play, it does the up-scaling. If the recipient has a TV then it all depends upon the TV and if that itself does up-scaling.
Now some new TV’s accept MS’s and can read and play video files, catering for these is another problem.
Distribution via Disc would require the movie files to be transferred to the Media Player in exactly the same way as stated above or if the media player is fixed wired into a club room someone would have to copy the disc onto MS.