Samsung DVD/Home Theater Systems: USB Input for Any Device!

[russ_watters]

Samsung is starting to sell DVD/Home Theater systems with a USB input for pretty much any device that complies with the USB mass storage standard: flash disks, external hard drives, cameras, Ipods, etc. I'm actually not convinced about the Ipod/mp3 player thing though - they usually have proprietary software on top of the USB mass storage standard. I'll need to double-check that. Still, it is extremely cool. It plays most popular media formats: mpg, divx, wmv, mp3, jpg, etc.

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HomeTheater/HomeTheaterSystem/HT_P38THXAA.asp

Samsung has raised the convergence bar again with a host of new five-disc DVD-receiver systems, some of which are the world's first to feature a USB Plug and Play port so users can listen to music from their MP3/WMA devices.

It's cheap, too - I'm so excited, I'm going to buy one right now even though I don't move into my new townhouse for another 2 weeks!

 

[Anttech]

Thats cool... you could do that anyway if you were using Windows Media center.. or something like this

 

[Curious3141]

Cool and all, but think carefully, there are other options out there if you want this sort of functionality. Have you considered a streaming media center ? This basically uses a network connection to your PC to stream media (video/audio/photos) to your TV/AV setup. It also allows you to surf the Net from the TV as a bonus (though without a keyboard, this is crappy). Both wireless and wired setups can be used and USB is often supported (it has a port behind for direct connection).

This is the one I'm using : http://www.neuston.com/en/mc500.php Designed and made in Singapore. Works on Win/Mac/linux (I've tested Windows and Linux personally).

There are other units of the sort available.

 

[russ_watters]

The thing is, one way or another, I need the receiver, so that piece of equipment may as well have as many features as possible. Ie, instead of plugging a media center pc or network device into the receiver, now I plug the media itself directly into the receiver.

Plus, unless you have a really high-end receiver, you're getting analog sound and video from the streaming media device to the receiver. With mine, it stays digital a while longer, since the mp3/avi/etc decoding is done inside the receiver.

Still, it might be nice to have my media accessable from the network and directly by the receiver at the same time. I wonder if network hard drives can do simultaneous usb access...

 

[russ_watters]

Weak - I just found out that it only reads audio and photos off the USB interface - not videos. I don't see why they would do that, but damn, that sucks. I can still play divx on cd's though.