Multimedia player

I have a number of FLV files I would like to watch on my tv. I was considering the Micca MPLAY-HD player. The link of the product is below. I have an external hard drive that I might use with this device or I might just use a flash drive. Does anyone use this product? I am open to have suggestions of other products that might be better than this one.

I was reading one of the reviews on this product and one said "But leaves external drive on all the time, doesn't spin down. If left on will damage hard drive sooner than normal." Does anyone know what the reviewer meant by this comment? I have an external hard drive that I use on my computer and I only plug it in when I want to copy files to it, then, I shut down the drive and unplug the usb plug. Sometimes, I do this several times a day. Does this have any bearing on what the reviewer was saying?

I forgot to post the link of the Micca multi-media player that I was considering. Below is the link.

http://www.amazon.com/Micca-MPLAY-HD...timedia+player

Does anyone have any experience with multi media players?

Each harddrive is only good for so many hours. Startup and shutdowns. I have had new ones not work and still have a 2 GB and afew 20 GB that are really dated that still work. I just make sure I have backups of backups just so I do not lose anything.Had a couple USB hdds that got scrambled and lost everything on them by leaving them plugged into the computer. But that is just my experience.

Train, thanks for the info.

I guess nobody here has used a multi media player.

I haven't. I use a dedicated desktop as a media server in my setup and it allows drives to turn off after a period of time as per my chosen power option settings in control panel. I would assume that the device you're looking at does not have the same options as a desktop computer so manually turning off the device and/or the hard drive would be the only way to stop it from running 24/7.

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Originally Posted by JLS

"But leaves external drive on all the time, doesn't spin down. If left on will damage hard drive sooner than normal." Does anyone know what the reviewer meant by this comment?

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Mechanical hard drives have moving parts inside. Moving parts cause wear. So, when these parts eventually become worn enough, the device will no longer work properly.

I leave my computer on 24/7 because I read that it causes more stress on a hard drive every time it is turned on and off then just leaving it on. Is that not true?

Fink, you have one computer solely just for your music and movies?

Yes. It's basically a media server. I have it hooked up to my widescreen TV via HDMI and use it to watch mostly streaming movies, television, videos, etc and occasionally DVD's. It's a low priced iCore 3 rig and I kept costs down by selecting a good mid priced motherboard with built in graphics and audio and no other bells and whistles except a fair amount of RAM (8gigs) so I could dedicate as much as possible to the graphics card and not suffer otherwise. The only slight extravagance is a good 600 Watt power supply.

I also bought an inexpensive wireless Keyboard and Mouse from Newegg. The whole thing cost me a bit less than 350 dollars.

I had been using either my laptop or my older P4 for a couple of years but more demanding content, especially Flash, was causing their CPU's to run at 100 % most of the time and creating heat related issues and they just couldn't keep up.

My iCore 3 rarely goes above 20% usage and just idles along nicely even when I have more than one streaming window running. I also hooked up my old 19" computer monitor as a secondary screen to use as a kind of PIP (picture in picture) although it's PBP.. picture beside picture... but I have stopped using that a lot because I find it kind of distracting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JLS

I leave my computer on 24/7 because I read that it causes more stress on a hard drive every time it is turned on and off then just leaving it on. Is that not true?

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I suppose it would depend on how many times you start/stop it.

If you were to stop/restart an automobile at every red light, you'd be wasting fuel and starters. On the other hand, leaving it running 24 hours a day would also be rather ridiculous.

So, if your not going to be using your automobile/computer/external hard drive/etc. for a while, powering it down will be easier on the device, your pocketbook and our planet.