Hard Drive Media Player

Slunk

Im looking for a hard drive media player. Nothing to fancy, just to play my .avi's and mp3s in another room. Can I plug it into the computer and run a cable through the wall into the tv in the other room or can it only be connected to one at a time?

Also I have a seperate hard drive already so is there anyting cheap that can bridge the gap and also allow connection to the tv and computer simultaneously?

Thanks

coldfire1x

Worth considering these for you needs since you already have an external hard disk:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=408560

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=488524

http://www.xtreamer.net/

Slunk

Im looking at that second one, the asus. Thing is, my WD HD only has one usb connection on the back. Is there any way I can have the HD connected to the computer and to the Asus player at the same time as I want to save my stuff to the hard drive and then play it in another room. Dont want the hassle of messing around changing cables over. Can you get a one usb to two type thing?

steamboat

You could pick up a Philips DVD player with USB, like the dvp5990 or dvp3360 for about €50-70... these play avi (divx/xvid), mpg, mp3 etc from external HDD and have hdmi output with upscaling... oh, and they will play dvd's too

Check out today's IBOOD for another option... although this just has a crappy composite video output (but its small and cheap)

Having one disk simultaneously connected to two devices is probably possible with a y-cable, but you'd be asking for trouble I'd say... two OS's controlling the disk will bound to be conflicting and inevitably result in data corruption. I guess external disks are portable for a reason
Maybe a better option would be to get a wifi capable media player and stream the media from your PC over your wireless network. No extra cables required, you'd just need to share the hard disc on the network

Slunk

Not to clued up on all this network s tuff, rahter just plug in the two cables. Surley wont be that much of a problem will it?