HTPC to Media Player - who's done it?

[Columbo]

So I'm thinking of replacing my HTPC rig with a stand alone media streamer.

I'm currently using an AMD 4850e CPU, 785g chipset mobo, 4gb DDR2 ram all running under Windows 7 and I use XBMC to play all media from my NAS.

Now the Mrs (who is not technology minded at all.!) finds all this a bit daunting and as she is not PC literate at all I can kind of understand.

So my question is if I was to replace my current rig with a simpler / easier to use Media Streamer would I regret it?

All my films / TV are stored in either .avi, .mkv, .mt2s & ISO formats so would need something that would play those and it must have an ethernet socket for a wired network connection.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Columbo]

Do you have xbmc? Even my mrs can use that and she hates computers.also are you using a keyboard and mouse to control it? As xbmc has mobile phone support built in which is 100% times better.

I'm using XBMC with the Official Microsoft Remote

Have you considered tweaking your XMBC configuration to make things more understandable for her; although I don't see the media player interface being any easier than XMBC.

I've got XBMC starting up automatically, the password is 1111 so she even use the remote to log-on and I'm using a skin that makes things very easy.

The issue is that sometimes things happen in Windows and she has no knowledge of how to sort it out, even a reboot is a massive challenge and I'm not there a lot of the time.

I was thinking that a media player should be as easy to use as On / Off and I've also had a play with my mates WDTV Live and was really impressed.

Apple TV 2 with XBMC installed.

Thanks for the suggestion but I could never let myself get ripped off by buying overpriced Apple products.