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Over the years I hoped for a marriage of the TV, computer and internet that would allow me to watch content from the internet and my home servers.  My first foray into the streaming media space was with Apple TV.  I bought ATV version 2, the one with the internal hard drive, a few years back.  It was enjoyable to buy or rent movies and have them either downloaded to my ATV or my home Mac Pro Server and stream them with iTunes.  The ATV only offered the ability to stream content on the ATV locally or on a connected iTunes in the household.  Anything that was not in iTunes or stored locally was inaccessible.  And that was fine for the time as I did not have too much other content out there.  I did hack Apple TV and place some other software on it to do streaming from my home servers, but it was not a perfect solution and had quite a few bugs.

When Blu-Ray players were released with the ability to stream media and other content from the internet I jumped on the bandwagon.  I did originally buy a HDDVD player as I thought it was a better technology, but the better technology does not always win.  I was excited that my first LG Blu-Ray player, the model number escapes me,  but it was absolutely brilliant at streaming Netflix.  Later I would buy a new LG BD-390 model which had a few more features and the ability to stream from my network.  At that time I started moving from the physical discs and started encoding everything to be place on my Linux server.  This was fine but made finding the media I wanted to watch a little cumbersome, as the interface was very basic.  I still have this Blu-Ray player, but only use it now for playing Blu-Ray and DVDs.

I started going into overdrive with converting my physical media to digital media.  I had hundreds of DVDs and a few Blu-Rays and spent days converting them and placing them on large hard drives.  Over the past 2 years I have upgraded my server and I have now several terabytes worth of movies and televisions shows that I have bought.  I was looking for a better experience with my television and my streaming media.

Enter the Logitech Revue with Google TV.  At the time I was unsure if I wanted the Boxee Box or the Google TV, but went with the Logitech Revue because it was true TV pass thru and was built on Android.  At the time I was really impressed with the ability to almost seamlessly incorporate my television, internet and home streams together.  It was nearly a match made in heaven.  I did have some issues with some films streaming from my server, but that was few and far between.  Then television networks started blocking content and it made the Google TV still really cool, but not as useful.  

Months passed and I started to get a little frustrated with the Logitech Revue as there was no new updates that made any difference.  We were promised a new version of Android with the Android Marketplace, but that did not show up in the time frame discussed.  Meanwhile, more content would not play on the Logitech Revue and I started getting frustrated.  I thought it might have to do with my media server, MediaTomb, so I started looking around for alternatives.

While doing my search I came upon Plex and it blew my socks off.  It was nicely designed, easy to use and the nicest feature was that it allowed the sorting of movies and television shows in a variety of ways.  The software also provided a nice description and some other information about the media.  The other big advantage is that it worked with my iPhone and iPad, so I could watch my stuff from half way around the world.  It now works with Android too.  I  immediately installed Plex on my Mac and used the Mac as the transcoding machine from where my files are stored on my Linux machine.  Like XBMC and Boxee, with Plex channels can be added and watching content that was forbidden under Google TV was allowed under Plex.

This was all great, but I had no way to get it to my television.  I went out and bought a Mac Mini and installed Plex on it.  I used the Apple Remote to control the system and was my all in one media solution that solved all my issues and allowed me to do other things since I had a computer in my living room.  It is a more expensive solution, but one that made the most sense to me.  I still like the Netflix app under Google TV better than the one on Plex, but they both worked great.

Recently Logitech updated the Revue to include a new version of Android and Google TV with the Android marketplace.  They revamped everything and made it a more enjoyable experience and married together even more the television and internet experience.  I was excited to see that Plex in an installable App for $0.99 in the Android Marketplace and I  immediately downloaded it.  It was not as aesthetically pleasing as the Mac version as it was designed for Android devices, but it was easy enough to navigate around.  The only problem I have with it is that Google TV does not really support HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), which means that some of the movies and television shows have no sound.  This is going to be correctly in a new version of Google TV.  However, for $99 for the Logitech Revue and all its apps makes it an unbelievable steal for those who are looking for the future of television and internet and Plex is the killer app for it.