With ManRoom 2.0 almost complete, I’m looking for some suggestions on a media setup.
We don’t have a cable television signal coming into our house. We have FIOS internet but no TV. So it’s either Over-the-Air or Over-the-Net for us. Over the air is craptastic in our area. We spend a lot of time watching DVDs from Netflix.
But we also spend a lot of time with one of our laptops plugged into the TV watching Hulu or NetFlix’s Watch Instantly stuff. We don’t tend to bit torrent a whole lot of shows.
It would be nice to be able to access my photos and music through this media setup over our wireless network.
Thus far I’ve considered:
- AppleTv. This doesn’t look like it does NetFlix’s Watch Instantly or Hulu with any real ease, so it’s not going to work. Though I really like the HD options since we have nice HD TV but watch a lot of Lo-Fi streams off of Hulu. Not that we mind, but HD would be nice.
- Just getting another laptop or Mac Mini and using Boxee. Boxee is sweet since it provides a great interface for a lot of stream sources as well as NetFlix’s Watch Instantly. Unfortunately, with no Hulu on Boxee we’d have a bit of hard time watching Damages.
I think our requirements are:
- Ease of Use/No Freeze Ups. I love Boxee but it is flakey as all get-out at times.
- Remote Controllability. The Apple remote is nice to use with Boxee, when it works.
- Being able to browse iTunes Library, Hulu, Boxee and Netflix Watch Instantly
Nice to haves include:
- HD streams
- Surround Sound
- quiet/small/dependable
So there you have it. Would love to hear your suggestions! Thanks.
