If you go to Virramall these days, you’d see tons of these cheap HD media players being sold in stores (some of which, selling as low as DVD player prices). There must be demand for these as I’ve seen over a dozen models already.
There’s the original Popcorn Hour, the HDX Media, and the ones from Asus and Western Digital (perhaps even the earlier Apple TV).
Even the branded ones are becoming more affordable too. Check out the prices below:
KWorld Media Player M101 – Php2,250
TVIX M-3100U (160GB) – Php4,400
Buffalo Link Theater LT-V100 – Php5,400
Western Digital Media Player – Php5,500
Western Digital Media Player Live – Php6,900
Asus Media Player HD O! Play – Php5,800
Brite-View Cinema Tube – Php6,350
Seagate FreeAgent Theater Plus – Php7,400
Even Western Digital has a couple of different models in this category. I reckon hardware companies such as them would benefit a lot from people letting go of optical disks in favor of hard disk drives.
I noticed a few people here don’t have a clue about HD Media Players! I have the WD TV HD Live Media Player which has composite video and audio, HDMI, HD composite and USB and a LAN connection, so I can connect to my server and other pc’s on my local area network. I have full DVD and Blu-Ray quality movies ripped onto hard drives! I don’t even have a DVD or a Blu-Ray player! I have no need for a standalone optical player any more! There is no moving parts inside of these players unless comes with an internal hard drive. The more people using these players the closer it is to the death of movies being released on shiny pieces of optical discs! These players will not kill recordable DVDs as too many computers users including myself will still use the optical disc for backing up files.