so i have what i call an ebawx which sits next to my tv that i stream video files across my network *and the odd bit of music* to watch on my lounge room tv. i was just running windows xp with a bunch of codecs installed and i had no problems with skipping or what not and everything was running fine, however my hdd has since crashed due to it being old and crappy and i was looking at experimenting with something else.

im looking for bassically an OS or application that would be ideal for showing videos across a network. something that is easy to show people how to use as there is a few people who live with me that use the system aswell.

anyone suggestions?

Modded xbox running xbox media centre...

dont really want to spend $250 on an xbox just to stream movies across a network when i have a pc that can be setup todo it.

Boxhead's on the money, XBMC is excellent. The other option is Front Row on a Mac Mini if you're willing to spend a bit of cash. New version lets you stream content wirelessly across the network with basically zero configuration. Font Row, XBMC.

windows xp, ffdshow and mediaportal

i also agree with xBoxhead.
however to answer your question, to be user friendly while not spending money on an xbox would of course be windows, if they dont know how to use windows forget about it.
to make it real simple have 3 icons.
folder icon linked to your mapped movie/tv eps folder.
folder icon linked to your mapped music folder.
folder icon linked to porn

have everything set to run using mediaplayerclassic or vlc media player.

boba has mediaportal and from what I've seen it looks awesome

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

dont really want to spend $250 on an xbox

its a shame you dont know me, coz i get operator to mod xboxes for the price of a carton of beer

cost of harddrive + 40 bux = happy xbox times

Linux + MythTV

Linux + MythTV

Quoted for great justice, really good.

its a shame you dont know me, coz i get operator to mod xboxes for the price of a carton of beer

cost of harddrive + 40 bux = happy xbox times

ohh, that sounds the goods

I used to have a modded xbox but I let my brother take it when he moved out.

I reckons every man and his dog will be offloading their current xboxes cheaply soon so they can get a 360..

thanks for the link boba, i think im gonna go with that, i was designing a simple html desktop for windows that had icons directing users to where they can find media it also had an update script for when anything new was added it would show the newest 20 files, but alas i got lazy f***ing around with it to get it all working on the desktop and so forth.

Linux + MythTV

I never thought I'd say this but after trying the latest Geexbox, MythTV seems like bloatware.

mediaportal

this ~20-odd meg program sure gives the legit version of Windows Media Centre a run for it's money - I just can't find any decent DVB Digital cards that actually work with it with current drivers :/ Fantastic if all your running is DivX rips, other than that - wait for the next release. Interesting that they made it in .NET

modded xbox ftw :)

this ~20-odd meg program sure gives the legit version of Windows Media Centre a run for it's money - I just can't find any decent DVB Digital cards that actually work with it with current drivers :/ Fantastic if all your running is DivX rips, other than that - wait for the next release. Interesting that they made it in .NET

wait what? dvico card works fine with media portal, look on their website there's s***loads that work with media portal