1. I think the optical output being referred to is SPDIF. It is for audio only and it is the highest quality in digital audio output possible. This is useful only if you intend to plug in a 5.1 (or 7.1) surround speaker setup directly to the media center. However, in most cases, people usually hook-up their surround speaker system to their home theater system or HiFi or dedicated sound amplifier. So unless you plan to connect your speaker setup directly to the media center, any HDMI output interface from your media center would suffice. HD ready home theater or HiFi systems already support HDMI input and can process the output from your media center to your HD TV and speakers without your media center having to do it independently. Unless you don’t already have a home theater system or have many surround speaker systems lying around to connect them separately to your media center, SPDIF is not really necessary.

2. The high end media center/player usually have support for many more formats and interfaces but costs RM1K and above. DiVX and VC-1 requires the product vendor to license them and pay royalties, just like H264 requires them to do so. Thus to add these additional codecs to their product would eventually increase its retail price. So manufacturers have to gamble on what is popular and supply those with their products. I have yet to see any mid-range product that supplies all the commonly used codecs, its always missing some, and sometimes it does not even provide complete support for the ones that it features. Also codecs are always evolving to provide better quality, so your media center may not be able to play future media encoded in newer codecs. Though the RM500 may seem like a good investment now, it is hard to say whether the manufacturer would continue to update the firmware and provide support for improved codecs up to two years down the road.

3. The VC-1 and DiVX codecs are popular proprietary standards. DiVX and Xvid was very popular prior to the popularity of H264 and MP4. This is still the case for many movies ripped from DVD and shared on P2P. You can easily verify this by doing a search for content you would like to download and reading the encoding format info in the download description. VC-1 is a standard introduced by Microsoft and was the default codec used in HD-DVD content encoding. It also used in BluRay encoded content as an alternative to H264. All BluRay players must support both VC-1 and H264. So if you intend to play HD content ripped from BluRay, you need VC-1 support. All the HD content served on P2P come in either codecs. So merely having H264 support is not enough. Keep in mind that this applies to HD MKV content as well. Uploaders usually avoid re-encoding content as it is very time consuming and needs a powerful PC. For example if the BluRay content is already encoded in VC-1 for video and AC3 for audio, it would most likely be same in MKV. By copying the same video and audio streams into the MKV container, no re-encoding is required. Thus for the uploader it depends on what is the fastest and convenient way for them to share their warez. To them, if you want to play their warez, you have to figure it out. Furthermore, the majority of downloaders are usually PC users that have little to no problem in downloading and installing the needed codecs. If that fails, there is always VLC and FFDShow.

If I were to get a media center with the best feature set, I would be spending as much as the Revo. Which was why I dropped the idea of getting a dedicated media center and opted for a HTPC instead. A HTPC gives much greater flexibility and a lot more features. You can never get that kind of feature parity from a high-end dedicated media center. Even the AppleTV doesn’t come close.

With the Revo:
1. Transfer movies from an external HDD through high-speed eSATA port. It is worlds above USB. For example, I managed to transfer 20GB of content from a friends HDD through eSATA in an hour. Which is impossible using USB.

2. It comes with a 320GB HDD, 4GB RAM, SPDIF for optical audio, SDC/MS/XD reader, WiFi N, Gb LAN, HDMI (with the cable bundled) and eSATA. Which are only available on high-end dedicated media center devices at the same price with a lot less flexibility.

3. It comes with an nVidia ION GPU that has dedicated H264 and VC1 hardware acceleration. It has CUDA, that could be used to accelerate playback of other codecs using the GPU. Hardware accelerated playback support from VLC, FFDShow, MPlayer and CoreAVC.

4. Install any OS and software I like. Not limited by firmware features bundled on dedicated media center devices. Use any codec I need to playback any media type. Download files over P2P in the background.

5. I even got it with the 3year (extended) warranty from Acer. Which is not possible on many of the dedicated media center devices, unless you purchase the extended warranty from a third party, which usually does not cover manufacturing defects.

In the long run I think it is a better investment than any limited dedicated media center device.

Try update the WDTV firmware, mine been running well and the only bad thing for WDTV its required optical audio out for HD movies and it doesnt support RMVB.

I was looking for a replacement and I bump into a friend that is using AC Ryan PlayOn! HD, which really impress me!! That media player is everything you can play. The support and firmware is also excellent. They occasionally release new firmware version which you can flash it your own.

The reason I prefer AC Ryan or Mede8er is because it has an internal 3.5″ HDD bay. Imation’s USB-host-only is surely a deal breaker for me. The FOC 2.5″ is surely not enough. 2.5″ HDD means smaller capacity and more expensive disk. Im using a 400GB on my el-cheapo player, and its not sufficient space already. Trust me, memory is like salary, more is never enough. Unless you do delete all the movies after you watch ‘em.

It looks like AC Ryan & Mede8er are from the same OEM, but the latter cost a little more, as the hardware is slightly better with the existence of hard button and the silent-fan. Other than that, the features are more or less the same. They can do everything, NAS, BT downloader, UPnP, Picasa, Flickr, News Feed, Internet radio….. the list go on. The price? You can refer to the link LaoApek has given above.

You should visit their website and youtube and Im sure you will be impress too!

It sounds a bit expensive to use a dedicated PC to be a home media centre, but I guess one’s definition of “expensive” varies! Each of us have our passions that we’re willing to spend money on!

BTW, is there a hard media player that is capable of supporting all codecs, plus subtitle support of the kind that you have mentioned, out of curiosity?