Streaming content from windows 7 to tv?
 

Just about done running cables through my entire house to TVs and trying to find the best way to stream content from a windows 7 pc to the TVs.

I read that XBox 360 is a pretty good choice, but I'm not looking to go out and buy a bunch of xbox's to do this.

Right now its mainly just some music from iTunes, few videos and 2 bluray movies... dont have that much room for my entire library and just testing this out with my desktop in my office on the 2nd floor. Id like to not have to run to the basement every time I want to watch a movie, so this will be a great option for the 2nd floor.

Anyone running something similar and what is the best (and not insanely expensive) way to do that?

I hooked up an old Win XP P4 to my 52" LCD HDTV in my living room as a media server and I simply drag and drop any Xvid, Divx etc video files over to the the P4 from my laptop or wherever I have the files via a wireles connection and play the files locally from the P4 in my living room to my HDTV using a DVI to HDMI cable. The best part is that the P4 has a Windows Media Center version of XP on it which comes with a remote so I can play, pause, FF or RW from the couch!

I use a small computer made by Acer called a Revo. (has built in HDMI) Basically makes the perfect home theater PC if you have a server in the house you can stream from. Just add a $20 infrared receiver and you can control it with any programmable universal remote. (I use a couple different models from Logitech)

I have it boot up directly into Windows Media Center, and I have the mediabrowser plugin installed, so you can run a setup like this:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2sddO...eature=related

I tried using xboxes but there was too many file format incompatibilities.

Install the shark007 codec pack and you can play absolutely ANY file type in media center.

Nice! :thumbsup

Thats pretty much exactly what I'm trying to do, however control it from 3 different TVs.

I found a few options that allow you have multiple outputs, but I'm not sure if you can watch one file on one TV and another on another TV.

Basically, it will go HTPC (or currently just my PC) then cat6 wires connected near the TVs... trying to figure what to connect the cat6 to, to display the content on the TV

Unfortunately for my method you basically need a separate PC for each TV. You would keep all your media files on your current main PC and use that as the server, then run the cat 6 to each TV where you would have another PC to use just to stream the videos from your server.

There are also dedicated media streamers that basically operate in the same way the xbox would, streaming from your PC. I haven't used any so I can't recommend any. You can pick some of them up quite cheap, but you also have to be careful with which file formats they support.

example of one:
http://www.amazon.ca/Western-Digital.../dp/B001JZFQU4

I just use HTPC's

I have 1 in my family room and 1 in my home theatre room

Then i have a bunch of hard drives in my home office computer that stays on 24/7 and use it as the "server"

On the htpc's i use media center with media browser addon

A laptop with a big HD and a HDMI/VGA output is enough :)

Dell Zino HD:

http://netbooked.net/images/sized/im...02-600x370.jpg

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

http://www.wdc.com/global/images/pro...fWDTV_Live.jpg

Works great .. they may have a new integrated wi-fi one.
I just connected it to a wi-fi netgear print server and I can play files from any of my computers as well as a local drive or usb key.

You will need one per tv tough ...

This looks pretty cool!