DivX Media Players or HDD Media Players

Stumbled upon these on Ebay the other day. DivX Media Player aka HDD Media Players. It consists of a sound card, video card, and a large capacity hard drive. It allows you to store music, videos, and DVDs onto hard drive. You can then connect this box to a PC or television and watch and listen to your collection. Might be using some kind of linux software to drive it. You would have to convert your DVDs to an ISO file or DivX format, then copy it to this device. Some also have network ports, so you maybe able to find the movie somewhere on the net already in DivX format.

Divx Media Players on Ebay (Note: I am by no means endorsing this particular product. Just providing an example of what is available. Search for Divx Media Player or HDD Media Player from the main ebay page.

Beware of the following:
1. Some do not come with a hard drive.
2. Capacity is limited to 1 TB on some.
3. Some do not do HD, highest resolution is 1080i
4. Does it do upscaling ?
5. Made in China or Canada (no offense to Canadians)
6. Customer service may be bad since they are probably just a couple of guys assembling these in their hobby shop, so you get what you pay for.

Attaching an external hard drive may be the way to go or possibly daisy chaining a set of hard drives.

But overall, if you can find one with AC3 optical sound and 1080i, it maybe cheaper than getting a media center PC or a Vidabox solution that I mentioned in previous postings. These also seem to be space savers since they look so small.