Advice of Media Player/Center

[dluby]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of getting a Media Player/Center and I'd like the following capabilities (I'm a little unsure of some terminology), but keeping the price to < €400.

HD enabled
Play all the latest video/music formats
Ability to stream content from web sites
Wireless streaming
It can be just one unit or the storage can be separate

I was thinking of something like the Iomega ScreenPlay Director:

Iomega Screenplay Director

Do any of you have experience with Media Players/Centres as I'd appreciate your input before I purchase.

Many thanks.

Damian

[CWuestefeld]

In my bedroom I have a US$200 EeePC netbook running XBMC (XBox Media Center, http://xbmc.org/ ). This covers all of your requirements, with a couple of caveats:

HD - I've got a little EeePC 900A, and its processor can only get as far as 720p. A different device might get you all the way to 1080, I don't know.

Stream from web - In principle it does this, and I use it on the XBox in my family room. But the Linux distro of XBMC doesn't come with the scripts that accomplish it. I'm not sure if you can just steal the same scripts from the XBox or Windows distributions.

Storage - obviously on a netbook, storage is limited. You might get away with a moderately sized music collection, but you're not going to have on-board storage for movies. For that you'd have to supplement it with something external. In my house I have a NAS for this (a D-Link DNS-321 with two 1TB drives in a mirrored RAID array).

[dluby]

I've heard good things about the Acer Revo 3610 so this is currently top of my list.  From reviews it seems to be able to handle 1080P without much trouble.

For those who are interested, take a look at this Acer Revo 3610 review.