What should I buy... if anything?


OK, here's my current setup. A synology box wired to my network running serviio. My Sharp TV, also wired, has a built-in DLNA client that serves up virtually anything I throw at it.

 

This all works perfectly fine, I also have a Chromecast which I occasionally use to cast Chrome tabs. The one thing would be kind of cool would be a nice-looking interface that shows all the info from movies, tv episodes, etc. and their poster art. Given it is functionally unnecessary I only want to spend $100. Here are my options as I see them:

 

1. Raspberry Pi running XBMC. I don't mind the tinkering aspect of it, might be kind of fun, but given its only slightly cheaper than the other options and the performance is apparently a tad sluggish starting to get turned off.

 

2. Roku 3 (and run Plex instead of serviio on my NAS). Don't really see myself needing all the extra Roku channels but I guess it could be nice. My Harmony remote seems to be compatible. Don't love Plex, but it seemed decent when testing on my computer. Wish was there more customization of the menus and other things...

 

3. WD Live TV seems better focused on playing local content which is nice. Remote works. The only issue I have is that it uses its own media player and there seems to be a large-ish population of the internet who have problems with scraping the movie and TV data which is kind of the whole point. Maybe this has been fixed by now? 

 

4. G-Box Midnight - runs XBMC that is mostly the same as other versions, apparently, so plugins and channels "work". Lot of support for XBMC out there. Seems like the media center I would probably pick in a vacuum. But it looks like their version of XBMC only pushes out 720p? The hardware is good enough so it might be in an update... yet, seems like kind of a dealbreaker... I have a 60" TV and probably still couldn't tell the difference but still...

 

So, anyone have hands-on experience with any of these set-ups and have some advice?

 

Thanks!