How Would You Set This Up

[mharner]

I currently own nothing, but a decent laptop (i5, hdmi out, blu ray drive, geforce 425m graphics) and two non smart (I guess you'd call them dumb in this day and age) HDTV's. I'll be moving in with my gf next month and to save money we are going to cut out the TV bill. The first TV will be next to a gigabit modem/router and the second will be across the apartment in the bedroom. I'm unfamiliar with the capabilities and the limitations of things like Plex, XBMC, Roku/Android boxes which is why I'm not sure where to go from here. As far as I can tell this laptop would be capable enough to act as the HTPC and be directly connected to the first TV in the living room and play any video format. I'm not sure the best way to get the second TV access to the media found on the laptop/external HD. Would a roku or android box be all I needed? I could set up Plex on the laptop to do the transcoding if it needed it and I could have the roku (or whatever variant) connected through a powerline network to allow stutter free streams. Is this approach something that makes sense and will work well or am I way off the mark? Since this is basically a from scratch set up....how would you guys get the job done? Scenarios involving leaving the laptop out and building a more capable HTPC are not out of the question.

 

[DesiPower]

How about Chromecast? I believe it can support all your needs. And get indoor antenna, you will be surprised what you can get with that!

 

[Mushkins]

Transcoding is a nightmare, avoid it if at all possible, especially if you watch anything with subtitles. Transcoding over powerline? I've got a dedicated media server with gigabit wired ethernet throughout the house and it still runs into problems on 1080p transcoding sometimes depending on what device I stream to. Not to mention that with transcoding you typically lose functionality like fast forward/rewind/scene selections/etc.

I'm going to assume you're looking for a low priced solution, in which case I would suggest this: For the secondary TV just leave an HDMI cable dangling off the side and plug in your laptop as needed.

For the primary you have a few options: If you typically get your video from services like netflix/hulu/amazon instant/etc then look at the boxes like Roku, WD Live, etc. Any of those that support the services you use will do just fine. If most of your video is downloaded and stored, and you're looking for more of a media server solution, your best bet is to buy a small form factor PC: something like an intel NUC or similar offering. Toss windows on it, put it next to your TV like you would a cable box, and use it as an HTPC. These typically run about $3-400 USD for the hardware. Alternatively, you can buy any old off the shelf on-sale PC with decent specs from a local retailer and do the same thing, assuming you dont care about a big PC sitting next to your TV. It's typically cheaper than a small form factor, the markup on SFF is all about the aesthetics and quiet/low power footprint.

You could also just take the laptop from room to room and plug it in via HDMI depending on where you're sitting that night for a no-cost solution. The downside here is that only one person can use it at a time.

 

[ghost_willis]

Netflix or chromcast will cover you