Looking for some kind of media center for parents

ZombieLee

I'm looking for some kind of media center to give to my parents. They're your typical late 50's couple who are extremely smart but somehow manage to understand little to nothing about computers, even though they use them all the time :P Lately they've been wanting to watch movies, but my 360 red ringed a while ago so they can't use any services like Netflix with our TV, and they'd never work up the energy to go all the way to the movie store if we had a DVD player :P

So basically I'm looking for some kind of all purpose media center for the TV that hooks up via HDMI. I want it to be capable of streaming content across wifi from their iMac, play video files from USB drives, work with Netflix, and accepting digital camera memory cards would be a plus. I have no idea whats on the market at this point, as I usually just watch movies on my laptop. Any suggestions on what to get? Price point is around 150 or less

Esh

Well, if you want to stream from their iMac, you're probably looking at an Apple TV box.

http://www.apple.com/appletv/

It doesn't have a USB or memory card slot, but that shouldn't be necessary since you can just plug those into their iMac and stream from there. And it does do Netflix.

$99

Shazkar Shadowstorm

yeah get an apple tv

i got one for my parents too

The Crowing One

One of the simplest ways is, if the setup is correct, to simply run an HDMI cord from the PC to the TV. That may or may not be a possibility.

AppleTV is a good thing to look into, as well.

I gave my parents a Wii a few years back. They use it for fun games every once in awhile, especially when they have people over. Mostly, they use it for Netflix, but that wouldn't allow (it's been awhile since I owned a Wii of my own) for streaming of anything else unless apps have been released.

ZombieLee

Yeah I was looking at AppleTV. @Shazkar I do that setup with my laptop and TV in my room (so. awesome.) but unfortunately the iMac is from 2008 and doesn't have HDMI out, also it is in another room :P

So can AppleTV stream any source of media, not just media purchased from iTunes?

Esh

ZombieLee wrote:

Yeah I was looking at AppleTV. @Shazkar I do that setup with my laptop and TV in my room (so. awesome.) but unfortunately the iMac is from 2008 and doesn't have HDMI out, also it is in another room :P

So can AppleTV stream any source of media, not just media purchased from iTunes?

That might involve getting creative. Unfortunately, needing to stream from an iMac and dealing Apple and their fun proprietary issues might make this tough.

What about a Boxee?

http://www.boxee.tv/buy

You can't stream from their iMac, but you could just put whatever they want to watch on USB and plug it in.

ZombieLee

Esh wrote:

ZombieLee wrote:

Yeah I was looking at AppleTV. @Shazkar I do that setup with my laptop and TV in my room (so. awesome.) but unfortunately the iMac is from 2008 and doesn't have HDMI out, also it is in another room :P

So can AppleTV stream any source of media, not just media purchased from iTunes?

That might involve getting creative. Unfortunately, needing to stream from an iMac and dealing Apple and their fun proprietary issues might make this tough.

What about a Boxee?

http://www.boxee.tv/buy

You can't stream from their iMac, but you could just put whatever they want to watch on USB and plug it in.

My friend has a Boxee and I'm not a huge fan of the UI or speed. Plus I need to keep the number of steps from movie on computer --> movie on TV to a minimum.

Does anybody have any experience with Google TV?