AV Receiver + Media player?

[fedexp]

Dear audiophiles..

This is my first post here.. I have always been a great fan of this forum always.. thanks to the loads of information and reviews you guys share about everything related to AV. So, I am planning to buy a home theatre and I thought this would be the best time to register and ask a question.

So.. here is what I have:
LG 42 LD650 LCD TV
an XBOX 360 (component out)
a HP ENVY series with bluray rom + HDMI out.
a 1TB HDD full of bluray rips, each rips goes at around 12gigs for 1080p and 8gigs for 720p media.
a brand new apartment & a 11X11 aparment room for setting up a home theatre.
a budget of 1-1.5 lacs INR for a 5.1/7.1 home theatre and speakers throughout the house in the ceiling for music playback.

I love watching movies.. 70% of the time its movies..30% would be music.. hiphop/alternate rock/smooth jazz.

I need an AV receiver, which can play content directly from my NTFS 1TB harddisk, reading MKV files. I did a lot of googling and I really couldn't find much in this area. I could see a lot of AV that would stream MKVs via windows media player / DLNA - but I don't want to run another device.
I would like to plug my USB and watch movies off it - this is what my LG tv does beautifully - which is great - and it has an optical out too - but - it can't do DTS and I have to convert all my MKVs with DTS to AC3 (Dolby) and then play it via the native TV interface.

So here are my questions:
1) Is there an AV receiver that does what I want? Do they even ship any AV receivers with an USB port?
2) If there is none, Please suggest me the best way to doing this - without getting a PC and streaming over lan or something. (I know there is that western digital's media player with an AV out -costs about 10k - and popcorn hour from usa -but again all of these have lots of issues playing).
3) Are there good home theatre consultants out there.. who wouldn't charge me a fortune? Can you refer me to someone in Hyderabad?. I would need help/suggestion/consultation in wiring my house for those extra speakers and sound proofing my small home theatre room.
4) Is sound proofing that important for a 11X11 room? I went to this Bose showroom and I auditioned the Life Style V 25 series. It costs me a whopping 1.8lacs for a 5.1. I was told that Bose can do auto-calibration and sound proofing/dampening would not be required! - How true is this?
5) When I checkout profx website for Denon receivers, Profx - Advanced Audio Solutions, the only difference as the price shoots up is the wattage.. for instance.. a receiver that can do 170w X 7 costs almost half more as one that can do 160w X 6 - How will I know what is good for my room size? How do I calibrate?
6) Finally, I am confused with the amazing variety of speakers available in the market - such as Polk, Creative and all that - If you wanted value in your speakers - what would be the best brands for my setup? (for 5.1 and for wiring the entire house)

I know thats a lot of questions - but like I always, I know I can trust this awesome forum.

Cheers!

 

[NetFreak]

Regarding video playback via USB, did you consider a media player?

You can get players starting from 7k, these can play pretty much every format and are tiny, so you would not have bulk of another component.

 

[mittal_v2002]

Regarding video playback via USB, did you consider a media player?

You can get players starting from 7k, these can play pretty much every format and are tiny, so you would not have bulk of another component.

I am also looking for a media player. New to the HT field and recently bought a Onkyo 3300 and Sony BDP S370, assuming that it will play all the media from the USB port.. but now realizing that it has a max limit of 4GB per file and I can not connect my 320 GB WD harddisk on this port..

I am planning to watch some Bluray movies downloaded from net so the only option looks like a media player ?

What are decent media players available in the market (with or without Harddisk) that I can consider ?

BTW, buying a media player and an external hard disk is a better option of buying a media player with an inbuilt hard disk is good ? cost/reliability both considered...

Cheers

 

[NetFreak]

I am using Xtreamer, and it works for almost all formats.

You can either buy a media player or newer blue ray players that also have media player functionality via USB and LAN.

 

[venkatcr]

I need an AV receiver, which can play content directly from my NTFS 1TB harddisk, reading MKV files.

An AVR receiver is essentially an amplifier that also has a radio built in. It does not have the capability to play any files. There are some AVRs that have an USB built in and the max they can play is an MP3. If you want something that can play all files types, you have to go in for a media player.

Cheers

 

[binaya.kumar]

Hi,

I have been using WD Media Player with my 1 TB hard disk with lotsa BR rips , no issues so far with Hornttek hover External casing and AVS media converter....
But lately I think a lot of media players have been released in the market .... most favorite still being WD and ASUS.
But feature wise I was really impressed by Sony Media Player as it had HDMI upscaling and Dolby decoding and a great price tag of around 70 $. It was released sometime back and I am not sure how the response and reviews were for that ....

You need to check out the wi-fi streaming aspect also if you are interested because media players in that segment are really hot ....

CHEERS