Quote:
Originally Posted by bigluv
HTPC's have been a major hobby for me for probably 15 years or more.
If your only purpose is hulu, netflix, etc, you are probably better off buying one of the little streaming boxes that include those services. Some names are Roku, Apple TV, boxee, WD Live TV, etcetera etcetera. I admit to knowing very little about the streaming boxes since I have always built my HTPC's, and now use raspberry PI's as satellite extenders to other TV's in the house.
The reason I recommend one of the packaged solutions is that just getting a remote connected and working if the PC is not sitting next to the TV is going to be a bit of a pain in the ass, then there's the question of navigating between apps/websites/etc.
Now, this all assumes you don't want to take building one of these up as a second job for a while. I read your message as saying you want simple and "just works". If that's not the case, feel free to mess around bringing the PC to the TV and try it out to get a feel for what you want.
Also, you can youtube XBMC to see some people's setups on HTPC's but not so much on the netflix/hulu side.
Good luck
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The only problem I've found with the other boxes like Roku is you can't stream Hulu "desktop" only content. For instance, I was to watch the League that is on FXX. To do so, it's available on Hulu but not through Hulu on my TiVo or iPad.
I've looked into these monsters before and was about to drop about $1500 into a beast then realized, I don't watch that much TV haha. I was trying to make an all-in-one system to store all my blurays on to watch anywhere in the house and get a cable card device to record 6 shows at once.
Now, I can get the TiVo Roamio for $100 off and transfer my lifetime membership for $99. Requires one cable card which is $5/mo. and I already have a big external drive that will work with it.
At the end of the day, there's no reason why I need to pay $110/mo. just for TV channels that I rarely watch anyway, I should be spending time at the gym or working ;)