Pc to Tv streaming

Ashley Long · 14 Jul 2009 at 00:10

im not sure what section this should be in so sorry if its wrong feel free to move it...

my dad said that he wants a device that will allow him to watch media (bbc iplayer, movies, videos, and listen to music) from his pc on the tv in the living room. i been trying to think up a few cheap options that will work for him.

budgets is £100 at most but the cheaper the better (quality isnt to important as its not a HD tv and dont think they will be getting one any time soon). i think this budget will rule out building a HTPC, but i do have enough parts for a low spec normal pc which could be set up in the loft. this means that i need some kind of transmitter from the pc to the tv which allows the pc to be controled with a mouse and keyboard in the living room (or remote controler tv style and some media software). he wants to be able to use bbc iplayer and torrent some stuff so desktop access as well would be nice.

any help would be great. thanks in advance

StevenRaith · 14 Jul 2009 at 00:27

XBox 360 mit remote control - check out the second hand pages of your local rag, and other second hand places.

Set up Media Centre on the PC, select Media Centre on the XBox, and it pretty much just works.

Not used it extensively with different formats, but IIRC if the PC will play it, the XBox will. I think. Can someone confirm deny?

Ashley Long · 14 Jul 2009 at 14:47

so he will be able to use bbc iplay from the living room? how does the xbox solution get on the iplayer website? or does media centre auto connect with the bbc iplayer website?

StevenRaith · 14 Jul 2009 at 17:26

Ashley Long said:
so he will be able to use bbc iplay from the living room? how does the xbox solution get on the iplayer website? or does media centre auto connect with the bbc iplayer website?

I don't think it will stream the flash client [I can't even think how it would access the page] but if you use the iPlayer app to download the file I guess that should work.

If you want to stream stuff and use it as a desktop though, then an Acer Aspire Revo is probably the way forward - small, Ion chipset, powerful enough to play 720p without a problem IIRC. iPlayer is sorted by just using a web browser, arf.

Ashley Long · 14 Jul 2009 at 18:13

the acer aspire revo looks good but is out of my budget,

i was looking around at something like the "One For All PC to TV Wireless Video Sender" for £50.. (cant find the product on the manufactures website but a quick google search will find the product or similar products.) the only problem is that it only sends the signal and wont support using a mouse and keyboard to control the pc.

EDIT: just found the "FlyImage 5000 PC to TV Wireless Bridge" this seems to be the right type of thing that hes looking for, i just cant find any UK sites that stock it

do you know if there is any similar products that are available in the UK?

JonJ678 · 14 Jul 2009 at 19:52

Take care with these. If you get one on 2.4ghz, and there's a wireless network in the house, they'll fight with each other. If you can do it wired this is a far better idea. A very long component cable would work i suspect. Ive got a vga (whatever the sd monitor cable is called) to phono lead which Im using through a scart socket at the moment, but only because my graphics card doesn't have a component output. Obviously I can't control what the tv plays without going to the pc.