NowTV boxes

[Famous Mortimer]

Those things they're advertising for a tenner. You can hack them and turn them into pretty sweet streaming boxes, apparently.

Anyone got one?

[Santa's Boyfriend]

Do they show Topless Darts?

[Bored of Canada]

Do they show Topless Darts?

Nah, they cancelled that show after they realised the darts are too blunt like that to pierce the cork.

[Uncle TechTip]

Yeah. The iPlayer etc side of things is worth the entrance fee alone. Works well, nice interface, no connection issues though it is super fast broadband. Definitely a good choice if you want an online official streaming solution. They've got plugins for lovefilm, can't remember if Netflix was there. YouTube sadly isn't there except as part of an overall web streaming app, that works well but not as nice as say the YouTube tablet client.

Now, streaming of local content is prob what you're most interested in. I understand that Plex Media Server is the only way to achieve this. I've found it a mixed bag. On the one hand, great performance - crisp streams and all wacky codecs re streamed as something more sensible. The built in web streaming works incredibly well. The web interface for plex is very good. It's a breeze to set up though you will need a computer to install the server on to. Can't just get away with a nas box unless you have the ability to stick software on it.

But key to this media server approach is the scanning and library functions. I found plex did not cut it. Too many mis-identified files, too much farting about with file permissions, not enough info on why it couldn't find x file. I wanted something that could go and get plot summaries and posters of big films and TV, and to be fair plex does that well. But give it anyone that's off beam or just slightly poorly-named and you'll never find it. Most importantly it doesn't offer it to you in a plain form like say mythtv or even the dreaded xbmc. Tries to be far too clever and in the end didn't do the job for me. Yes I could spend hours renaming everything but that's not the point. I want to spend as little time as possible doing that.

Having said all that, if you have a collection of only famous recent films and popular long form US TV it will not be a problem.

Couple of things might not be immediately obvious - now tv is SD only, the HD version of the roku product it is based on is ninety pounds. It's Wi-Fi only, you'll need a decent setup in your house.

Overall the home streaming was hit and miss in my experience, but for a tenner it's a no brainer anyway. The iPlayer and 4 od offering is a deal winner in itself has Five, no ITV). Get one.

[olliebean]

I've not had problems with Plex misidentifying anything I've downloaded, apart from a couple of things that refused to be correctly identified by anything no matter how I named them. I don't think you can install it on a NowTV box without shenanigans, though.