As I've been doing this kind of thing for a really, really long time --- I had a computer hooked up to my crappy tv, then DVD with USB, and an original Xbox with XBMC (Xbox Media Center).
Bang for buck -- a small zotac box (tiny computer with low power CPU and almost no fan noise at all), and download a copy of XMBC live (open source and free) and install it on a $150 box or an extra PC you have
Then buy a simple "Windows Media Center" remote and plug it in. XBMC has a easy to read at a distance interface, can play every movie format I've thrown at it, 1080p no problem, You simply connect it over you home network (or wireless) to you PC and play the movies directly from it without having to do the "copy to usb, move usb, playback movie
" for everything -- just go through the files on you PC directly, it even downloads cover art and movie info automatically.
It also does music, photos, facebook, youtube, etc. It doesn't do netflix yet.
It's polished, and clean and my daughter has been using it since she was 5, so it's really really easy to use. You can even try it out without installing it by running it directly from the CD. On my system it is up and running in under 20 seconds from the time I hit the power button.
An for those who want to get extra fancy -- if you have more than 1 of these, you can set them up to "sync" the video/audio on multiple TV's so you can move from room to room and have the same thing playing......
01-02-2012, 07:49 AM
XBMC
Hybrid Mode
