Sorry I am going to sound real thick about this, but I know there are some of you on here that know your stuff on this subject.

Right I have the following available:

Sony PS3
Dell Inspiron Laptop (XP or Ubuntu no wifi)
2x USB harddrives with my photo/movie/music collection on
Sony KDL40W4000 TV

looking to link up my movies/pic/music collection to my TV, prefuabbly wireless, can the setup also be accessed with a remote control of some type too?

I have only small buget in mind to buy bits I need to do this, say less than £100 if possible?

Any pointer as to which is the easiest/simplist route to do it?

Like I said this might be obvious to someone here, but I am a little in the dark here.

Thanks for any advice…

NAS of some kind (Buffalo is one make but plenty more out there)

Have a look at PS3 Media Server, apparently it's pretty good.

PS3 will happily stream from XP as long as you set the Media share up.

You have pretty much everything you need, you just need to get a network connection between PS3 and laptop.

And you can use the PS3 controllers as remotes

You'll need a router of some sort to connect the PC and PS3, either WiFi or wired if you can be bothered. Wired to PC and wireless to PS3 will work fine. TVersity software on the laptop, it'll let you see the USB drives from the PS3. PS3 controls will let you browse, playback etc. You'll need the PC on though.

NAS would be my favourite, make sure it's DLNA compliant and the PS3 will see it. If it's got USB connections for expansion so much the better.

No need for s router a cheap hub/switch like this http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/43633/art/netgear/switch-fast-ethernet-5-po.html

will do the trick.

as an alternative, and maybe simpler, you could buy a Western Digital TV HD Media Player, for less than 70 quid at Amazon, plug it into the tv via hdmi and plug your usb drives into it. It'll play just about any filetype you throw at it including mkv, the commonest hd file type, without any performance issues, which your laptop probably isn't going to be able to (HD that is). The unit is very small, about 6"x4".

The only downside is that you need to keep all the content on the hard drives, and you've now got another box and remote.

Wow some good info, lots for me to look into, thanks.

vinnyeh – that looks a great bit of kit to do the job, have you got one?

What's it like?