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[gigglez]

We are using a projector in the living room for a tv. We have Media center running off a desktop pc downstairs (apollo).  I was wondering what the cheapest (best) device to run upstairs to get audio and video to the projector would be.  I was thinking of a Rasberry Pi but I haven't seen any mention of video. I installed dlna mini on my mac but that didn't work. I have a Playstation 3 but when I go in there it doesn't show me the tree view that I see from jriver (apollo) downstairs.  It has its own tree structure and I can't find anything!

 I was then thinking of a NUC I think that would be like running my laptop running its own copy of JRiver. 

[gigglez]

Oh I was thinking chromecast with a hdmi seperater so I could get sound to speakers.  I don't know how that would work. 

[mwillems]

You're sort of asking a "how long is a piece of string" type question.  Without knowing what kind of video you need to play and at what quality, it's impossible to say.  You could need a full-blown desktop PC, or a chromecast might work fine.

What kinds of video do you want to play?  Streaming video?  Locally stored videos (Hi def?)?  Blu Rays?  Interlaced content?

Do you want to use Media Center on the device to take advantage of Media Center's video processing or do you just want a DLNA renderer that can "play video" (even if it's downconverted/transcoded)?  

Without knowing your goals, it's hard to say what kind of device will suit your needs.  An i3 or i5 haswell NUC would allow you to run MC, and has integrated graphics good enough to do basic Red October HQ for 1080 content (with some slight settings tweaks).  If you don't care about running MC on the device, any number of DLNA renderers would probably work. If you want absolutely maxed out quality you'd need a computer with a high end discrete graphics card.  

[gigglez]

Streaming Video from Amazon Prime and xvid type stuff from the server (Apollo) downstairs.  We don't care to much about quality but want it watchable and not choppy. Most or movies are about 700mb so nothing crazy. 

Thanks!!!!

[ferday]

I run $80 wdtv boxes, they output HDMI and optical and play full 1080 with no issues.  The dlna was easy to set up and as a bonus they stream Netflix etc

By far the cheapest method...I don't get the same tree structure but the views are pretty customizable within MC.