Battle of the Set-top Boxes

WD TV vs. Rogers Box - Take 1

Ladies and gentlemen…

On the right, crushing the scales at 11 lbs., the current living room media player champ… The Rogers-branded Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 SD.

And the challenger…

On the left, floating like a butterfly at a mere 0.67 lbs… Western Digital’s WD TV HD.

Let’s get rrready to rrrummmbbble…!

My Rogers Explorer 8300 SD is no longer available, it seems. However, an upgraded HD version costs $499.99 CAD to buy outright or $24.95 CAD/month to rent. It also sports a fancy HDMI connector.

The 8300 HD encodes encrypted MPEG streams from your cable company, and adds the ability to record programs to an internal 80-160 GB hard drive. You can also schedule recordings via the on-screen TV guide. Furthermore, you can select, purchase and watch exclusive pay-per-view content (like recent DVD releases) without the tiniest whiff of air passing between your ass and the sofa.

Oh, it also has a pair each of Firewire and USB ports, but don’t worry — you won’t be needing those

The WD TV HD can be had for as little as $124.09 CAD, and even cheaper in the US and A. It connects to your stereo and TV with analog cables and/or HDMI.

It has no built-in hard drive, but you can connect an external drive to it via one of two on-board USB ports — or a USB key — you know, the ones you keep buying because flash memory can’t possibly get any cheaper?

The WD TV HD will play any of the following formats:

  • Music: MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA
  • Photo: JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
  • Video: MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264), MTS, TP, TS
  • Playlist:PLS, M3U, WPL
  • Subtitle: SRT (UTF-8), SMI, SUB, ASS, SSA

So if you could have only one, which would you pick?

Yup, me too… Looks like Mr. Grubby Paws is going to have to find somewhere else to hang out!

By Andrew

Mobile phones, Linux and copyright reform. Those go together, right?

5 comments

  1. AC:

    I had to look twice to see the challenger — that’s a neat snapshot of technological evolution right there.

    There’s another reason this morning to go with the WD box:

    http://tiny.cc/sy8Ea

    I doubt the rental rate for the Rogers box will be the same after March 1…

    Ed

  2. The Pioneer 660hk DVR is my choice. $400 250GB hard drive and built in dvd burner. It also reads all those formats and has a USB and HDMI connection.

    1. Funny you should say that. A guy tried to sell me one that he picked up at a garage sale. He said Rogers wouldn’t activate it buy he wasn’t sure why. He gave me the serial, and Rogers responded asking me to ask the seller to return it, and the 2 other PVRs and a cable modem! So once it “goes missing”, Rogers won’t activate it.

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