Interwebs on a tellybox

I’m in the market for a new TV. So while I’m at it, What are my best options for being able to watch:

YouTube
iPlayer (expat, so need to go in via a proxy)
rips & downloads I’ve got on the hard drive

I suspect the options are:

Apple TV??
Xbox?
hooking up an old tower pc or notebook to use as access point & storage? (We might be about to write off some old IT gear at work…)

Any recommendations?

Cheers

Samsung SmartTV?

Not heard much love for Smart TVs. Is that one better somehow?

Well, it does what you want, in one box. I have one though TBH I’ve not used it in anger.

Many, many other options. Raspberry Pi, Intel NUC, Apple TV, smart Blu-ray player…

Thanks Cougar – will have a look at one at weekend. Whether iPlayer will work on it abroad is a big factor.
AV discussions make my head spin – looking for simplest, cheapest and most idiot-proof solution. If such a thing exists.

Appliances like smart tvs or set top boxes almost certainly won’t let you use vpns or other cheats to get online, I reckon. You would be better off getting a Pi to use as a router, and on that you can set up the dodginess. I’m tempted myself actually.

Interesting… wonder how it takes for an averagely stupid person to get sufficiently savvy with the Pi? An end-of-life PC sounds better to me – if only ’cause I know how it works.
As for dodginess – for the record I would love to be able to buy a BBC licence for a foreign address. Alas, that will never happen.

We are watching BBC iplayer over here in Germany. Kit includes:
A reasonably capable Win 7 pooter,
HDMI cable
A pretty bog standard flat screen Sharp TV as a managers special from Comet bought to use as a monitor.

We have 11mips connection speed and it streams wirelessly without any problem.

We signed on with expat tv for €5 per month. It works by an ip address change so that iPlayer believes we are in the UK. Otherwise it would fail. Satellite is also not possible for UK / BBC tv as we are outside of a good signal zone.

Happy to help if you need more info…

Thanks Rickmeister – so basically it’s just a TV hooked up to a PC? Wonder if it would work with an old XP machine of the sort I’m hoping to pick up cheaply. Bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem.
Can you control it all from the couch?
(BTW, a friend here in Czech can pick up the BBC etc by satellite – but he has a 6 foot dish which cost a fortune and looks like a hassle to me).

I’m in Austria. Imac running wiitopia. Sent to tv via apple tv.
this will do all you need. Get Filmon app on your phone and you’ll have british tv streamed live to your telly.

Think of it as a two box smart tv. The computer bit is outside of the tv casing, thats all.

Contollable from the couch using a wireless mouse and the keyboard

Sound comes from the TV via the HDMI cable or the jack plugs on the PC sound card.

We are scaling up to a 60″ tellybox with the same kit so Google Earth route scanning will be easy. Obviously will get all the features of the PC and could even add a second screen….

Its simple, cheap, easy to set up on W7 and works well. PC also does DVD so thats another extra box got rid of.

You can control the pc with a remote but it’s more of a faff than simply having a tv that works. On the other hand, using a computer makes masking the IP a cinch.

I’m certainly bending more & more towards the PC route. Is there a wireless equivalent to HDMI? Then I could just slot that into my existing set up. I think.

There must be… Apple TV perhaps ?

Yeah, but means buying into Apple. I’ve got a house full of windows boxes.

My setup is a low power windows box running xbmc as a media player and browser for the rest. Silent and easy to setup. Hdmi or dvi is essential to get the resolution you need.

We have both an AppleTV and a Pi running XBMC and we get to use a Samsung Smart TV quite a lot at my mums holiday house – these are my thoughts:

Samsung Smart TV – It’s OK, easy to use but 90% of the apps are crap. iPlayer works well. I’m not a fan of all in one devices as they become outdated sooner rather than later and you’ll potentially miss out on future advances.

AppleTV – ours is the v2 model that can be jailbroken and XMBC installed (fairly sure you still can’t do this with v3 but I may be wrong). Works really well, is pretty solid and all the XMBC plugins work well and are constantly being updated.
I stream various videos, pics and music to the TV/surround. You can put it in your pocket and take it with you.

RPi – brilliant devices and I’ve now got two. The one on our other telly is running Raspbmc which you install and set up in less than 5 mins. Once installed it runs very well, can access video from various sources and can do Airplay, plus it can be controlled using your TV remote which is fab.
Again it’s constantly evolving and being upgraded so you’re not going to miss out. Can be run wirelessly or via cable. Will run from USB power from the TV so no power cable required and obviously you can load it up with films, etc and stick it in your pocket when you go away.
Pi in action…

Overall the winner for me is the Pi as you’ll get set up for less than £50 (if going wireless, otherwise £40), it’s quick, works really well, uses almost no power and you can turn it into a desktop puter simply by pulling out the SD card and putting a different one in – 30 seconds.

AppleTV comes second but a v2 now costs about £200 I think so maybe not.

Samsung – better than nothing I suppose.

To watch iplayer on AppleTV at the moment (unjailbroken) you need to stream it over Airplay via another device. I use my iPad mostly.

Thanks Sharkbait, very interesting post. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can you also use the Pi running XMBC to get online – via a proxy? (Without changing the SD card – I want something that will live behind the TV that I never have to think about).

I’ve lived abroad a bit and did the same.

The easiet setup for me was to use a MacMini computer with wireless keyboard and mouse where the tv was the main screen, used to everything inc read email and browse web whist sat on sofa with keyboard/mouse on coffee table.

Trying to do this with Apple TV means you must have the VPN (I use strongvpn) on your computer to download the programmes and then play them, you cannot stream this way because the BBC iPlayer website doesn’t allow AirPlay (note this may change in new Mavericks operation system to be launched very soon).

To stream iPlayer etc on phone/tablet you need the VPN on at the router (but harder to do needs more sophisticated router). What I did with apple tv is download programme on computer then sync it to iPhone then use that to drive Apple TV

So IMO Apple TV is great for watching content you can access anywhere (so not iPlayer etc) if you have an iphone/ipad otherwise the dedicated computer with hdmi (and possibly sound out as well as older computers don’t support hdmi sound) is the way to go. Apple tv allows access to net flicks, YouTube, Vimeo but you canot run a VPN directly on it. IME it’s best to use a phone/pad as the “source” device and AirPlay it to tv.

I live in Germany. I built a fairly decent spec PC to use as a media computer. I use smart DNS rather than a VPN, which works with bbc iplayer and netflix. The pc is overspeced for just that, but I use4 it as my home server as well, and do most of my online activity on it as well as using it for my home server, and hosting VM’s for some training stuff. I think it is worth getting a half decent video card, but you don’t need to go overboard on that.

Quick tip for other expats, I have a top up credit card from skrill, that has a British issue number, that allows me to register for services that use the credit card as an identifier for location when registering for services like itunes, amazon and netflix, I register at my parents address, but the CC billing comes to me here in Germany. There may be other cards that do the same.

I also haver an apple TV, but don’t use it since setting up the media PC, I just watch stuff straight from itunes on the TV.

I’ve just got one of the android mini PC HDMI dongles. Basically displays android on your TV. Works well for YouTube, shoebox, Netflix etc, plus browsing and anything else JB does.

Just make sure you get one with an aerial, the ones without don’t work well.

Controlled either with a wired mouse or a Bluetooth mini keyboard.
All in cost about £30