Essentially, I want to buy a UPnP AV compliant Digital Media Adapter (DMA) to replace my noicy computer in my living room - which is plugged into my TV & Hi-fi at the moment. The computer is an eye sore and I want it out of the living room. But in its place I want a quiet, elgant box which can do the media play back part of what the computer was doing up to now.
I considered a Windows Media Centre - but I am warming towards the idea of a elegant set top box which can access my pre-existing digital content from devices in the home network - mainly the Maxtor NAS hard drive.
Can anyone make some suggestions and reccomend something around the $300 to $600 price range.
My list of requirements are pretty simple:
- THe DMA must look elgant and accessible via Remote. It must be able to play music without having to turn on the TV to Browse to a 'folder' to find the music
- It must have a Ethernet port (or Wi-fi) and be UPnP AV compliant - so it can play streaming media coming out of my Maxter Shared Network Attatched Storage II (which is basically a network connected external hard drive full of media files)
- It does not need to have its own storage as I have a Terabyte of storage in the Maxtor
- It must be able to capture incoming analog video (connected via RCA) or digital (Firewire?) and save it to the Network shared hard drive above. The incoming video might be stuff I record off TV / Sky to watch later, or output from camera / camcorders.
- It must be able to drive my Bose Hi-fi with crisp music with no fan noice or distracting background noices
- It should Preferebly have a DV output to drive my Plasma TV (though I got adaptors if this is not possible)
If someone can help me, I would be really grateful.
Tim
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