What is a Media Player?

In the most basic of terms, a Media Player is a box you connect to your TV and Hi-Fi to play digital audio and video files.

Although simple Media Players have been around for a few years it is only recently that they have become both much cheaper and powerful enough to make them worthwhile. The reasons for recent developments in power and price are rooted in the processing chips used. If you're interested in Media Player chipset developments then check out our (fascinating?!) article on the subject here. Regardless of the technicalities of it all, the result is that there are now many Media Players available that are more capable in video playback terms than all but the most powerful computers.

For less than $90 / €85 / £60 you can buy a Media Player that will flawlessly play all 1080p Full-HD video.

Of course, the other big factor driving on the development of Media Players is the widespread availability of digital video content. We don't condone it, but it is a fact that all movies and TV shows are easily available for download. These days you can also easily find HD versions, providing HD content for HD Media Players. In addition, many people are seeing the sense of ripping all their existing DVDs / Blu-Rays to a hard drive for access via a Media Player. This is a more streamlined solution than fiddling around with boxes and a drive tray every day.

Most people already have large libraries of digital audio. This can also be accessed using a Media Player, so you can have one small box in your lounge delivering all your media content. Look out for the Media Players with a front LCD screen for accessing audio without having the TV turned on.

So, as people acquire ever more digital video content they are increasingly wanting to play it back via one simple box, on HD televisions around the home. The answer to this need is the Media Player.

Some Media Players are also capable of playing back content directly from the internet. Free services like Youtube, Flikr, and Picassa are often available. And by using a service like Netflix or Boxee, a vast variety of both paid and free content becomes available. At the moment this kind of functionality is rare but we expect it to become more common and very important in future. The future of Media Players will lie in paid on-demand content.

Various other features are also implemented in Media Players. Some have internet radio, some have inbuilt Bittorrent clients, some have web browsers. Again, there will be a widening of the features available as we move towards the inevitable future HD-on-demand world.

There are some TVs, Blu-Ray players, games consoles, and DVD players with rudimentary Media Players built in. The quality of the Media Player is any of these devices is significantly inferior to that of a stand-alone machine. When you consider that Media Players are relatively cheap and getting cheaper, we do not see a future for multi purpose devices of this kind. Both DVD and physical media will eventually (soon?) give way completely to Media Players, and replacing a TV is too expensive for it to be considered an alternative.

For these reasons we consider the only device that offer and alternative to a Media Player to be a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) or HD capable laptop with HDMI output. We also cover these on our site but for most people we think a Media Player is more suitable.

Realtek Chip

HD MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC1, RM/RMVB Decoder with Ethernet and HDMI

General Description
The RTD1073 is a highly integrated SoC for Consumer Electronics products requiring High Definition Media Playback, Wireless/Wired Networking, and Mass Storage capabilities.

Features

• HD MPEG 1/2/4 & HD JPEG Decoder
  
• HD H.264, VC1, RM/RMVB Decoder
  
• AV Streaming/Transmission via Ethernet & WiFi
  
• TV Encoder with CVBS/S-video/YPbPr/SCART out
  
• HDMI v1.3 1080P
  
• I2S, SPDIF out
  
• USB2.0 Host & PHY
  
• USB2.0 Device & PHY
  
• SATA
  
• Fast Ethernet MAC & PHY
  

Applications

• HDD Media Player
  
• Digital Media Adaptor/Server
  
• Networked Media Module for Embedded CE device