Hardware How to set up a Media Streamer

I also went down the laptop route for the TV in my study. I have an HDMI socket by the sofa so just plug in the laptop and away we go. It sits next to me during play, so the all the control are easily to hand. Having tried internet TV over the weeked, or at least Samsung's frankly crap implementation of it, this is easily the simplest way to stream the likes of iPlayer to the TV.

For the main TV in the living room it is even easier. That has a very nice built in media player, so I use a 0.5GB USB passport drive to store all the files and play them off that. I haven't tried many 1080P files but those that I have done run nice and smoothly. I have a fair amount of 720P content and this set-up copes with these beautifully as it does with SD content whatever the format. The drive is so small and light that it just tucks into the cables at the rear of the TV. Whenever I need to upload or edit files I just unplug the passport drive and plug it into a networked desktop or laptop.

I looked into the alternatives and whilst they would satisfy my urge to do something a bit more technically challenging, frankly they were unlikely to work as well.

 

Gigabyte branched out to networking hardware?

 

like being a snuffaluffagus

I got rid of the media center as I run my pc's 24/7 anyway.. setup the hdtv as a second screen on another rig and have a audio switch.. it's not as nice but I don't watch pirated movies anyhow.. too low quality, just go to the movies

 

Step 3 is when you discover that the PS3 falls over any time you give it 1080p content, and give up.

 

@snootyjim - The PS3 plays 1080p content just fine. It simply doesn't have the same level of codec support as a decent media player though so you typically need to convert it first. Please, Sony! Let us play MKV files!