Dedicate, bitch

After a couple of weeks of trying to make Pioneer's Home Media Gallery to work properly I have to admit a simple fact -- HMG is a bunch of crap. It is strange indeed they couldn't make a simple uPnP client work right. Sure, you get to see the content stored on your network via uPnP, and even play music and videos. But with a minor caveat -- you can't pause or rewind or fast forward any of it because it's on the network. Ever tried watching a 2-hour flick without being able to pause it? What the fuck? I can pause Hulu and YouTube, but I can't pause streaming on my own 100MB network? I tried three different media servers, and all get the same issue. Of course, if you copy your movie to a USB drive, stick it where the sun don't shine into a HMG USB port, it will work just fine. But isn't streaming the shit from a central network storage the whole idea? And don't get me started on trying to stream House from Hulu.com...Oh, and I loved the fact that Pioneer's remote has three buttons that if touched permanently coitus interruptus your movie/audio experience and throw you back HMG home screen, of course without a possibility of going back to where you were in the movie/music file. What a bunch of retards.

Bottom line is -- no receiver or TV can do this right all the way (read lots of forums) because network streaming is secondary to those devices and thus underdeveloped.

I need a dedicated streaming device, capable of properly handling audio, stored SD and HD video and internet movie streaming, all in proper 1080p/60 with no audio loss over HDMI.

Looking at HMT's Popcorn Hour A110 now...to be continued...

PS. This infuences my choice of a receiver. I wanted a networked one originally, but they only do audio. If I get a dedicated device, I can save that money off the receiver price...