i sell a load of satellite stuff, and freesat/freeview, but i have no idea about tv’s/apple stuff.
i want a new 47” tv, and i want to use it for everything…..tv, films, computer browsing, email, fb, the whole lot.
i want a film library (on demand), i want music (i tunes) so, what is good, what do i need.

If ITunes is your go-to media library and you have an iPad or iPhone, get Apple TV. Best purchase I’ve made in a long time.
I got an LG 50″ plasma, sound bar and Apple TV for less than I was going to pay for a Samsung LED smart tv. We have Netflix too which means we watch very little normal TV.
Whilst I’m not a fan of IPhones and prefer Android, Apple TV just works.

Apple TV won’t really do very well at browsing or FB etc. Might be worth just sticking a Mac mini under the TV and that will do everything you list above.

Mac Mini is a great (but expensive) solution if you want to use your TV as a computer monitor basically. Looks smart, very small, very low power consumption.

There is an app called Plex (also available for PC/linux I think, I just prefer Macs) that will turn it into a media server. One of the best things about this is it can serve up films/tv shows/music to all your other devices e.g. phone, tablet, other computers, even Raspberry Pi (which makes an awesome low cost media player).

Is TV the best idea for browsing, email, etc. though, seeing as you’d need a mouse/keyboard etc. Would a tablet not be a better idea? You have portability, touch screen input, plus not tying up the TV for other family members.

As others have said you won’t get a device that does it all properly.

The best bet is to have an Apple TV plus an iPad.
You use the apple TV for the film and music consumption – and it’s very good at it.

Assuming you want to do it all from the sofa – use the iPad for email/browsing and then mirror the display on the TV via the Apple TV when you need to.

thanks for the info.

As others have said you won’t get a device that does it all properly.

Windows mini pc (shuttle xpc style) running Windows and xbmc does exactly what you are asking for.

Don’t forget that if you run an AppleTV you still need a PC or Mac somewhere running iTunes (or Plex, XBMC, etc) to serve content from your home libraries.

I have a Mac Mini under the TV, plugged in via HDMI, which runs Plex. All of my content is held on a NAS drive elsewhere. I also have an AppleTV in the garage for watching movies etc on the spinning bike. Note that if you want to run Plex (or XBMC) on an AppleTV you’ll need the Gen2 version so you can jailbreak it. AFAIK this still can’t be done with the latest ATV.

One other thing – if you’re using the AppleTV and iTunes you might not be able to get to things like iPlayer (I haven’t checked for a while). There is an iPlayer plugin for plex, but the ITV player plugin currently doesn’t work. This is why I prefer to have the mac mini straight into the TV, you can drop back to a browser if you need to. I have a wired keyboard/mouse plugged into it for emergency use, you could just as easily use wireless or maybe a touchpad.

For browsing etc the wife has an iPad and I have an old laptop if required.

Think my Samsung smart TV can do everything you’ve listed, music via linking to your PC with the sharing app – not sure if/how it handles iTunes specifically though

I have a small(ish – not one of the teeny ones – they often die from overheating IME) form factor PC and it does the job very nicely – Dell 760 IIRC.

Looks like Plex is available on quite a few devices now, smart TVs included.

http://www.plexapp.com/connected/

The problem with a mini pc is you need the keyboard and maybe a mouse to drive it. Not easy if you’re sat on your sofa.

I stand by an Apple TV and an ipad – You can get players for all the channels on the iPad and then display them through the Apple TV – Is so easy even my wife can do it !

You don’t need another PC to serve content to it – you can stream from iCloud for your music and I can’t remember the last time I attached to the office PC. I have ripped movies to a NAS drive and an ipad app detects it and plays through the Apple TV.

There may be an issue with the ITV player – last time I checked it only sent the sound but you can mirror the display as a last resort.

You can do all the above with the apple TV if you have an iPad or iPhone as you can use airplay to mirror what’s on the idevice screen to your TV via the apple TV. It is really good for playing games.

Rasplex +1, streams off my Synology NAS running Plex server, integrates with zero fiddling with my TV remote, ipad/tablet not required. Brilliant.

If you don’t have a lot of media stored locally then ATV might be better for you, but lack of local/LAN playback was a dealbreaker for me. RPi was only £50 and does all I need it to. Very impressed with it.

Apple TV (get V2 then use seas0npass).

Yah xbmc is real easy to plug in and play i presume , requires no fannyng about with drivers and tweeking set up to get it to be noise free – even the sky hdd pisses me off when watching tv.

Apple tv and ipad does the 95% of the job for 80% less effort in set up maintainance and energy 🙂 *

Depends how much fiddling and how tech savvy you are . Atv is pnp though. As above lack of local storage playback can be a pain but i just leave a 2tb hdd wired to the usb input of the tv all the time – does the job and requires only the push of the remote to “media input” on our samsung non smart tv.

*statistics made up

Itv definantly streams the mrs used itv player the other night to watch some drivel

Eurosport players what ours gets used for most.

4od wont mirror to the tv thats a point , neither did lovefilm last i checked

We had (still have) an apple TV but found it a bit limiting for some things so bought a mac mini instead, HDMI into the back of the TV, running it at 720 instead of 1080 makes the computer screen easily legible from the other side of the room. It takes care of browsing, any catchup TV service that is delivered over the internet and being a regular computer is about as future proof as it can be. It’s also used as the itunes server for general listening with all our CD’s stored on an external hard drive, you could do the same for films and TV shows too.

For control we either use a combination of wireless trackpad, mouse and keyboard depending on what we want to do and whatever’s in easy reach. Music is controlled by the remote app on a 1st gen iPad.

It’s not the cheapest solution but it was easy to setup and we’ve been able to everything needed on it.

We had (still have) an apple TV but found it a bit limiting for some things so bought a mac mini instead

exactly the same here. I bought the wireless keyboard and track pad plus a little drinks tray from ikea which holds both pretty much perfectly and makes typing and using the trackpad super easy from the coach. I wouldn’t use this to browse the internet for fb, etc, but its great for internet tv and has none of the limitations of Apple TV.