I'm looking for a device(s) that allows me to do the following:

Watch recorded TV from my PC on my home TV.
Watch live TV.
Watch streaming Netflix movies on my home TV.


Plan:

My plan is to have a tuner card installed on my home office PC, and also use my home PC to retrieve Netflix movies.

Some sort of device that allows me to play movies/TV from my office PC on the TV in another room.

Device must also allow me to select movies/TV via remote control.

Menu shown on the TV display.


After reading the forum and other sites, it seems what I need is a media extender. But which one? Are there any good review sites?

I'm considering Xbox, Netgear EVA8000, Linksys DMA-2100(2200), HP x280n, D-Link. I'd also consider a DIY if none of the out of the box are great solutions. I want a snappy interface too.

Thanks,

Jake

The SlingCatcher may be able to fill most of your goals.

The Xbox360 extends the snappy and pretty vista media interface but it is limited by codecs and licenses that it is allowed to pass.

There are a number of third party applications designed to make the xbox360 more capable, but you'll need to do some setup and tinkering.

At this time, there isn't a good "out of the box" extender in my opinion that will handle true media extension from the central server other than a separate computer.

However, computers can be built on the cheap (relatively) which should be able to handle all of your needs.

Do you have a budget in mind?

Can you direct me to a site/wiki/blog/forum that shows how to build a media extender?

As for budget, I'm open. If I can build one with blue-ray and Netflix capabilities, my budget would be a lot more than just a simple video/audio extender.

I'm okay with tinkering.

Most laptop manufacturers are coming out with stripped down machines based on atom and arm processors called webtops. The Eee is an example. Asus also has a desk top style machine based on the same platform. These boxes have enough power to encode/decode HD in real time, have HDMI ports etc and are cheap.

My guess is this is where the media extender action is going to move in the very near future. Buy one of these devices and then just load the software you want. Don't like your software just swap it for some thing else.

Great idea!

Will hardware encoding/decoding be much different than software encoding/decoding?

Know of a laptop that has hardware encoding/decoding? Or is this why people are buying USB encoder/decoder?

And if I use my main house machine for encoding/decoding, and just use the laptop as a media extender....then I don't need the extra hardware on the laptop...right?

Any suggestions for media extender software?