Family Media Player

In 2002 I bought a first generation Xbox with the intention of using it as a DVD player. I was student and thought that I might be able to get into console games and leave PC games behind.

A year later I had a mod chip and larger HDD installed and started using it as a media player. At first I FTP'ed files to the hard drive inside the machine to watch content in Xbox Media Player (XBMP). Later I installed the more popular Xbox Media Center (XMC) and started playing content directly from shared network drives.

This was a whole new world of consumption. The software allowed movie trailers to be played from the web, and eventually youtube and other content sources were added. Web and downloaded movie content became a social experience and in share houses and relationship since, it has been the primary method of consumption. I have never looked back.

Last week my Xbox died. The power button stopped working and the machine stayed on for a day or two having to have the power cable removed to turn it off. Then it started turning off randomly in the middle of a video. Now it it flaky and unreliable and a replacement family media player is required!

I am not massively into TV, our living room TV is smaller than my computer monitor. I am not totally adverse to getting rid of the thing all together, although I may have a small battle with my better half. Nevertheless, assuming a replacement is needed, my acceptance criteria are as follows:

• Must have network access (SMB, cross-platform open source streaming server, or similar)
• Must have random codec support. There are many many audio and video codec's out there.
• Must support HD video (the poor old first generation Xbox was not up to the task)
• Must play movie and audio files.
• Must support at least CD and DVD, Blue Ray would be a bonus, but physical media is dead right? (at least dying)
• Support for online services is a bonus, maybe even a weak requirement (apple trailers, youtube, similar).
• A drive on board is a bonus.

I'm expected 5-10 year lifespan from whatever device I choose. I don't know what the state of the art is or what is popular, but I have started asking around. Some options include:

• Do Nothing.
• Buy another first generation Xbox. Cheap, understood, works, but it will not support HD video.
• Xbox360. Play from portable HDD, requires Windows Media Center for movie streaming WMV on the network. We have no Windows boxes in the house. There are transcoding solutions, as well as mod chip solutions.
• PS3. Similar to Xbox 360, with transcoding and mod solutions.
• Boxee. Very encouraging. Preliminary reading suggests one can use a Boxee device, or just run their software on a PC (mac, linux, windows).
• Apple TV. Has to be in iTunes!?
• Google TV. Concept only, one must grab a Sony device or Logitech Revue. Comes with a keyboard (I like Boxee's keyboard on the back of the remote better). 
• Mac Mini. Add a mac remote or iPhone and we have a powerful solution. One could use Front Row (with plugins), VLC, Boxee, XBMC, and many other solutions. 

There may be other solutions. For example, there are external HDDs you can buy that act like media servers (no network). There are DVD/BRay players that can play various coded's from physical media, and there are even TVs that connect to WiFi or take an RJ45 directly. At this stage, I'd prefer to maintain the modularity I have enjoyed, but further research may be required.

I'm open to any suggestions, but I think I'm learning toward a Mac Mini or equivalent, likely with Boxee. I might start experimenting with software solutions with a laptop.

Image taken from Wikipedia.