Man, how did I live without Lazarus before, I love it so much. What an incredible stress reducer.

He's a pretty chill guy. Pretty cocky though. I didn't know he had moved to SF.

Hive question.

We are doing some remodeling. Part of it is a reworking of our entertainment systems. Cable is going out, streaming is going in.

Here's what we've got: 37" LG TV and LG Blu-Ray player that streams a bunch of stuff. Audio is very old Technics Receiver w/ Boston Acoustics speakers.

We're adding another TV for the rec room. And will likely get a good Blu-Ray + Streaming player for that. Audio is either TV or 2.1 Logitech speaker system we already have.

Questions. What is a kick-ass Blu-Ray player that also does streaming? Streaming is more important than Blu-Ray so Roku + inexpensive player would be an option.

We want to be able to play music from the network NAS (it's a DNLA server as well). The Blu-Ray player can do that but the UI makes it nearly useless. What is a good music playing solution that isn't too spendy? Playlists are a must.

Controlling things with iOS or Android tablet would be really nice.

Ideas?

I've found researching things to be of limited value. I can find out what is supported, but I don't know how well the UI works or if support is flaky for certain things.

If you are already invested in the Apple/iTunes ecosystem the Apple TV is quite nice. We have three of them in the house.

The thing I don't like about AppleTV is, in order to stream files from your NAS, you have to have iTunes running on a computer. And my particular computer (a cheap Windows laptop) make it rather annoying at times. If you have purchases from iTunes Store, or Netflix, or HBOgo, it's excellent! If you have an iPad, and want to show everyone what you are laughing at, it's great. But the "I can't play files without a computer" thing really annoys me.

My experience with streaming devices is that nothing does everything well. Roku are great for streaming, the LG Blu Ray players will play videos off a NAS pretty well but the interface is bad (as you mentioned). I haven't really explored dedicated music options because I don't really do that much - maybe a sonus system? But they are pricey.

I'm not in any ecosystem. My media is free range.

Onkyo has an interesting system to play music off a iOS/Android device via WiFi to a receiver. That would mean replacing our 15 year old Technics receiver, but the Boston Acoustics speakers would still be in use.

I'll have to look at Sonus.

Hmmm.... Looks like you can install the Plex media server on a Synology NAS and that will work with Roku or LG Smart TVs. Wonder if that's true for LG Blu-Ray players. I could try it for free at least.

The thing I don't like about AppleTV is, in order to stream files from your NAS, you have to have iTunes running on a computer.

You can install an iTunes server on a Synology NAS.

The plex media client on Roku is pretty good, but it is not the nicest interface in the world. Certainly not as nice as the Plex interface on an actual computer.

It disappoints me that the original X box I had running XBMC 9 years ago did a better job with streaming video and audio from a network. It wasn't HD but it had a rocking interface that was just so dang functional for audio and video, and it could play DVDs just as well. Why haven't we quite mastered that?

If you don't mind actually storing audio on your Android device, rather than streaming from the network, Roku's remote app actually let's you do that quite nicely. Unfortunately not compatible with streaming audio (I am using Google Music All Access on my phone lately) but works great with standard music files.