XBMC on a Gen 1 Apple TV with a Crystal HD card is pretty simple to get going, and has decent performance.
I've tried:
* Gen 1 XBox running XBMC (no 1080p on a Celeron)
* XBox 360 with WMC (flakey codec support, requires separate Windows PC, no subtitle support, remote control via Media Control is bad). Microsoft fluffed this one so bad. All the codec packs for it require you hacking your standalone host system to bits to get playback working.
* DLNA on my Sony Bravia to PlayOn. PlayOn sucks, to put it kindly. Still requires a seperate standalone PC.
In 2008, XBMC streaming over SMB directly from a NAS was the answer.
It still is, if you don't want to muck around for hours fiddling trying to get stuff going by following the cargo cultish forums that exist for video playback (blind leading the blind).
I've got XMBC on an Acer nettop which as well as being an actual full computer, cost the same as an Apple TV with the same size hard drive. It also has a powerful video card that means you don't need to add a video accelerator card, just add a remote (either a cheap USB-IR model, or use your bluetooth playstation remote, or your Android or iPhone, iPad or netbook).
Unlike Apple, who expect you to have their stuff out on show, it came with a mount that attaches to the back of your TV which hides it's cheap'n'cheerful plastic exterior while minimizing cables.
I believe xmbc also does DNLA too if you wanted to plug it into one TV via HDMI and stream to another.
* MKV support
* 1080p support
* Subtitles (.sub/.idx/.srt)
* Remote control
XBMC on a Gen 1 Apple TV with a Crystal HD card is pretty simple to get going, and has decent performance.
I've tried:
* Gen 1 XBox running XBMC (no 1080p on a Celeron)
* XBox 360 with WMC (flakey codec support, requires separate Windows PC, no subtitle support, remote control via Media Control is bad). Microsoft fluffed this one so bad. All the codec packs for it require you hacking your standalone host system to bits to get playback working.
* DLNA on my Sony Bravia to PlayOn. PlayOn sucks, to put it kindly. Still requires a seperate standalone PC.
In 2008, XBMC streaming over SMB directly from a NAS was the answer.
It still is, if you don't want to muck around for hours fiddling trying to get stuff going by following the cargo cultish forums that exist for video playback (blind leading the blind).