Been trying to figure out what the most economical way is to stream films from my mac to my TV.

Basically I would like to watch .avi films located on my mac in the spare room on my TV in the living room. Or even play .avi files from my 16GB memory stick on the TV. Anyway as long as it's cable free.

What budget options do I have?

I’ve been considering a PS3 or minimac but they aren’t really cheap options.

I've got a dvd player with a usb port, but there's got to be a more elegant solution, for a price of course!

I had an old Dell Optiplex PC under the TV. Share your movies on the network and away you go.

Think I paid about £50 off ebay. PS3 is a good solution but like you said it's pricey and can get a bit upset with codecs.

The problem with the PS3 is that apparently it can't deal with MKV files (like AVI, WMV, MPEG, VOB etc), and this is what I want to play.

This has been recommended to me and looks a good option, I could link it to my router wireless or just plug in my memory stick.

Xbox 360 will do it, far cheaper but highly likely to f*ck up after a few months 😐

If your TV has DLNA built in, you should be able to plug it straight into a router.

Apple TV will do what you want I think, but not the cheapest option. That acer looks interesting.

If you just want to be able to view stuff from a memory stick you might find that some TVs have a USB port nowadays.

Apple TV gets you that function, plus you can route music to yout TV (if you ave decent sounds coming out of it). You can also control it all with your iPhone from anywhere in the house.

I'm planning on getting a PS3 soon and streaming movies from my Mac

this software sounds good – think I will be using it – it supports multiple file types I think

http://www.nullriver.com/products/medialink

Western Digital do a little box that plays all manner of files inc HD stuff. They've done a new one now that will sit on your network too for a bit more money.

The PS3 is fine for most stuff (an update quite a while ago added support for the usual divx, mpeg ones), although it won't do MKV natively. I just convert them with mkv2vob, works quickly (it doesn't transcode, it just remuxes) and it plays the resulting files just fine.

It's a good system, it replaced my old xbox running XBMC for playing this stuff over the network, it's got an excellent iPlayer/youtube interface so if that along with a blu-ray player and an excellent games console appeals then it's easy to justify the extra.

Not a lot of help admittedly, but I find streaming over wifi very choppy, and that's with both devices in spitting distance of the wifi router and on a clear channel.

As you mentioned MKVs, I'm guessing whatever you're watching is encoded at a reasonably high bit-rate so I'd definitely recommend hard wiring the solution rather than attempting wireless.

EDIT: For what it's worth I have a mac mini under the telly that has all my content on a USB drive so no streaming necessary, this also means I can fire up a browser for iPlayer etc as needs be.

You can get old Xboxes for peanuts these days…hack 'em with XMBC. Maybe simon_g will give you his old one! 😉

Thanks for the replies, been considering the Western Digital Live and is quite cheap at £93 on Amazon. Just wondered if it was the best option for £.

I like the idea of a PS3 if it can be patched to run MKVs, but I never had time to play my old PS2 so I'm concerened I'm just buying one to watch films etc.

So if wireless could be choppy, I could just run from my memory stick.

Have a look at PS3 Media Server software too.

Not sure if it runs on Mac, but it's free and transcodes avi's etc. on the fly from our PC to the Sony TV flawlessly (unless the network is particularly busy)

You'll still need hardware to act as the go between, but it may open up some more options…

If you don't want to run Cat5 cabling around the house there's always homeplug networking

EDIT: That's just the first set I found when googling btw, I've no idea how they compare price/performance-wise.

If you don't want to run Cat5 cabling around the house there's always homeplug networking

EDIT: That's just the first set I found when googling btw, I've no idea how they compare price/performance-wise.

I've just ordered some of those, but the Netgear 14mbps – £15 each off flea-bay.

Although the WiFi has worked well for streaming, it's only 11mbps in a perfect world. Most of the time I'd imagine I get half of that.

Shite for online games and shocking when streaming at the same time.

I may upgrade to the faster ones depending on how well these work.

I freecycled my old xbox as I couldn't find anyone who wanted it!

To be honest, my PS3 spends 95% of it's time being a media player, be it DVD, blu-ray, files on the network or iPlayer. It's really good at all of them, and the fact it plays games is a bit of a bonus really.

I'm mulling over the same problem. Quite interested in a popcorn hour box. Hisense box also looks interesting. My other thought is that the new Humax HD Freeview box is supposed to stream over wifi so I might wait to see that – again will be pricey though

179 for the humax box. From what I've read it has USB and ethernet ports but currently doesn't have the firmware to use them, an upgrade is supposed to be comming

Have a look at the Sumvision MKV Cyclone

quite impressed with one that I have

It'll play pretty much anything, outputs 1080p & has network connectivity via a standard RJ45 socket or optional wireless dongle

neilnevill – would want the PVR version to replace sturdy hummy 9200T

Try one of these

Bargain at £25. Just been trying one out and it's spot on.

Just ordered that exact Acer PC for my parents which will have XBMC Live installed on it.. There are several guides around the web for this exact setup and as well as having the recognised best media player software (XBMC) it's a future proof, flexible solution. you can use the supplied keyboard/mouse or get a Media Center Edition remote from either fleabay or amazon for £20ish and you have the perfect media streamer.

I've spent the last 2 months ordering and returning media streamers for the parents, WDTV Live, Asus Oplay, Xtreamer etc etc ad nauseum.. and they are all universally awful to use, the frontend software is just dire.

A mate of mine has (I think) got Yet Another Music Jukebox software running on his popcorn hour – looks great. DVD coverart etc – I'm just not sure how much faff and being anal is required to get it to look like that

After trying XMBC on a Acer Revo for a while, I gave up – lots of lock ups & poor playback with HD stuff MKV etc

That box is now doing general PC duties & I've bought another one which I've put Mythbuntu on – much better all round IMO

I thought MythTV was a nightmare… Think I probably tryed Mythbuntu as I quite like Ubuntu.

richcc, yeah I'm after a PVR but the Humax box for 179 networked to a NAS or just with a USB hard drive plugged in gives you the PVR once the firmware upgrade is sorted. Okay, it's only one tuner so watch something or record, not both but otherwise it seems reasonable value to me. Compare 179 plus say 65 quid for a terabyte usb harrd drive, so 245…and the foxsat freesat hd pvr costs….240 I believe (for a 320 Gig hard drive). So price is comparable.

Nice one Dave, that micro media player from Maplins looks like a nice cheap option, might give it a go before splashing the cash on a more expensive option 8)

But must admit, the Acer Revo option does seem a great choice.

Hmm, just read this about the Maplins player 😥

Frequently Asked Questions

Q- Will this play mac formatted USB drives? – Jason

Answer- No sorry this product does not support that.

Hmmmm…

If I put a PC formatted USB drive in a mac, surely it will be able to read the data?

Don't have a mac to hand out here to test that though.

Apparently my maplins player has just arrived at home, so I'll be having a play when I get back in 2 weeks.

My budget option at the moment is to stick films on iPhone and play them through telly using that. Quality leaves a bit to be desired but adequate until I sort out a better solution

Best option if you have the skillz is aspire revo at £150 with mythtv and XBMC on, plus a usb tv tuner and a remote. Tis my setup (tips on http://doitdifferent.wordpress.com ). Silent, plays HD content fine, lets me record TV to watch when I want, set recordings up over the web etc. XBMC gives me iPlayer (in HD too) on my telly, and last.fm through the stereo.

Macs will read pc formatted drives just fine. Though if you use FAT32 you may be limited to 2Gb files maximum. NTFS would be fine though (using snow leopard, or ntfs-3g on older mac os).

As the Micro Media player is sold out at Maplins there seems to be another version made by Cyclone. Worth a punt for 30 notes?

Have a look at the selection at Ebuyer
should be cheaper too

http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Home-Entertainment/subcat/Media-Players-&-Wireless-Streaming

Got one of these recently and it streams without much problems. Does .mkv (but not HD). Does DivX HD though…

http://whathifi.com/Review/LG-BD390/