I just bought myself a Western Digital WD TV Live
The picture quality is excellent, especially when viewing 1080P material. No lag or stutter (this is on a wired ethernet connection). There’s an optical digital out but no RCA which I would rather have. And the box is small!. The remote is small and responsive.
Would I use this box to listen to music? No, the user interface is too rudimentary, but using it as an easy way of viewing transcoded or downloaded films it’s excellent.
Well, let’s face it. The iPod have changed my interest in music during the last few years. With my 5 gig first generation iPod I had most of my music coded in 128kbit MP3 due to the constraints of the number of songs. The first year I put up with the included earphones and really didn’t think of upgrading.
But finally I got a Koss Porta Pro by recommendation from a friend. These headphones are not audiophile, but good enough to make me realize how much better MP3 files coded in 160 or higher sounded. But to accomondate that kind of upgrade in sound, forced me to buy a 15gb third generation iPod to fit more songs. So I recoded all my music to AAC in 160kbit and faced out older songs when I could get my hands on a higher quality version. The third generation iPod worked excellent for me for over three years. Then I upgraded my headphones to some in-ear headphones which took the sound quality up a notch again. A month ago I bought a iPod Classic 160gb and now have all music in lossless full quality.
But guess what, I bought a vinyl record player a while ago. Some would say that it’s a step backwards, but have to disagree. There is something about listening to vinyl. It’s like smoking a pipe, It’s a bit more involved. An other good aspect of this is that I’m forced to actually listen trough a whole song. But one thing is for sure, you need to invest in rather expensive equipment to get good performance from vinyl. But one can still find interesting records dirt cheap. It really is the black gold. 