Streaming Media Centre


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Can anyone recommend a Wireless media centre which can stream video from an internal hard-drive, desktop PC or the internet to a TV -

something similar to http://www.sony.co.uk/product/network-media-player/smp-n200/technical-specifications#tab.

Budget is no more than ?150 and the player needs to play mkv, mp4 and avi.

Although being able to access youtube, lovefilm or netflix would be a nice bonus, it's not essential if it bumps up the price too much.

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  • 2 months later...

Have you looked at XBMC? It's free. www.xbmc.org

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  • 1 month later...

Boxee does everything you mentioned within your budget.

 

While I'm not the thread-starter, I am looking for something similar for my parents and myself. Boxee was often recommended in my circle of friends, so it seemed a good choice. The problem is, that the company was recently bought by Samsung. This has already created a change in their line of products, as I read about the shut down of their Boxee Cloud DVR (which I would've gladly used). I don't know what will happen in the future, but I'd like to have a reasonable alternative.

 

At the moment I'm using Twonky on my desktop/office computer purely for streaming existing media to my Panasonic TV, but that's not an ideal solution, because I don't run the computer 24/7. Starting it up and powering it down only for my media consumption has always been bothersome, but at least I have enough space available on two 3TB internal hard-drives for all the media I've bought in the past. I've read, that Boxee can only work with hard-disks of up to 2TB. While this isn't an issue for my parents, I can't see myself be content with that limitation.

 

Are there alternatives to Boxee, which allow for more hard-disk space? If the streaming box works very well, I wouldn't mind buying a (reasonably cheap) NAS, but I'd prefer a solution, where I could add two USB2/3 hard-drives to the box. Maybe I'll need something more elaborate like some kind of mini-PC, where I could install a media center software on my own. If the latter is the case, is a Celeron 847 (like seen in a Zotac ZBOX ID85) powerful enough, or do I need more power (like an i3-3120M in a ZBOX ID83)?

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