Can someone recommend me a media streamer

[lozkin]

Hi guys, wonder if someone can recommend me a Streamer.

I have loads of TV shows and movies on PC that I want to watch through my HDTV. I had an early Popcorn Hour, which played everything fine, but had no way of displaying box art and film info (I could never get the whole YAMJ thing working). I recently bought an Apple TV 3, now I love the GUI on that - I can have wallpapers / art for all my films, as well as stuff like episode date and info for my TV. Problems with this are the hassle of converting everything to mp4, and the inflexibility of organising files on itunes.

What I am looking for is something that can stream files from my external hard drives, that also lets me manually add box art / wallpaper and movie / tv show info

Can anyone make a recommendation?

Thanks

 

[next010]

WDTV Live
Boxee Box
Roku 2XS + Plex (needs PC Plex media server to transcode video, Roku only supports H.264/mp4 and H.264/mkv)
GoogleTV + Plex (still needs PC Plex media server but doesn't need to transcode for most media)

All those will scan media download metadata and display coverart for it with their built in media libraries.

AppleTV - it is possible to play some XviD/AVI and x264/MKV videos on an AppleTV by using AVI2MP4 and MKV2MP4 it repackages the compatible MPEG-4 & H.264 video (converting audio) into mp4 containers which you can then import into iTunes. Faster then actually converting the video but you still have to process the videos through those apps and if you want metadata/coverart displayed you need to run the videos through the likes of Metadatabatcher or Metax under Windows.

Lastly XBMC set top boxes are due soon, based on media player chipsets from Sigma Designs and Amlogic. XBMC is also in the works for AllWinner A10 devices which you can buy right now but XBMC isnt yet ready for it. If getting an A10 box go for the Mele A2000.