Having KooRaRoo Media on GOTD seems to have sparked some questions & discussions on getting video to your [HD]TV other than the traditional plugging in an antennae or cable from your cable or satellite box. I think it might be helpful to go over the basics
On-line video is a way that biz can make money without the investment in infrastructure that cable, broadcast, & satellite providers have had to make. The sticking point has been securing the rights to the content that they want to stream -- why Intel allegedly sold off their efforts. To secure those rights most streamed content includes DRM measures -- even if you buy it outright from Amazon you may not really own a movie, nor do you have a DRM free copy. Very much like traditional providers, quality costs money, so you get the least quality the provider feels they can get away with.
The selling points of on-line video have been greater variety, lower costs [at least initially as they're trying to get a foothold], mobility, & as a protest against traditional providers that may not have always given good customer service. So far traditional providers are fighting back with greater mobility, providing on-line streaming content at no extra charge as part of their regular contracts -- they've also been expanding different recording as well as on-demand viewing options... the advantage of both is you still get to watch when you want to watch, but without worrying about Internet traffic conditions, which can sometimes make on-line streaming iffy -- as the bandwidth of your connection drops, the servers doing the streaming automatically drop the bit rate [quality] of your stream, so what may start as good enough HD winds up OK standard resolution.
Another option in some areas is Internet TV, which is very basically cable TV over your phone lines. And of course you can always play video that you've stored in your home, whether that's on a disc or a hard drive or whatever.
TO watch video you need a display of some sort, electronics to send a video signal to that display, & some way to read the video itself -- the last 2 is where you find a really huge number of options.
To watch broadcast you need an antennae &/or cable signal & a tuner. TVs come with a tuner built-in, or you can add one cheaply to a monitor &/or PC/laptop. Scrambled cable & satellite channels require a decoder. That limits your options. Sending a signal from a fixed location decoder everywhere else might seem a common sense solution, but then you run into DRM that makes it impractical. That said, you could probably use a device to capture [record] up to 1080i video over component cables from a cable or satellite box, then feed that stream over your network -- you might even set something up to change the channels on the cable/satellite box remotely -- but you'd be pioneering more than following in someone else's footprints.
To watch files you've got stored at home, you need something to read the video file & something to render it, i.e. turn it into a stream the display can display. Reading the file can include finding or accessing it over your network. The device that's reading or rendering the file can connect to your display or rendering device via a cable connection, over your network, or with a transmitter/receiver pair, wirelessly much like a cordless phone communicating with its base station. Long story short, there's a Huge number of ways you can make this happen.
A PC/laptop can read & render the video file, sending the picture to any display connected to it's video output jacks, or wirelessly. A tablet or cell phone can likewise play a video file & send the results via cable or using your network to a device connected to your TV or the TV itself if it has so called Smart capabilities.
A media player box or a *Smart* Blu-Ray player can connect with your display wirelessly too, but usually they're located right at the TV. They might access the file on local storage, e.g. a USB stick or Blu-Ray disc, &/or they may be able to see & read it when that storage is accessible over your network. It can be on your PC's hard drive, with the PC's only role being to make it accessible over your network. Both types of devices, &/or a *Smart* TV, act both to read & render the video.
A device Streaming video OTOH reads the video file, then sends it out to another device where it will be rendered. The problem is it's less efficient because you're processing the video twice. Currently the only reasons I can think of for streaming locally are to distribute a live feed, say from a tuner or a camera in the classroom, or when you're limited to a single descrambler/decoder. Otherwise most all video is easily handled by common rendering devices, with the exception of high bit rate HD, which you can't re-encode in real time for streaming HD anyway, & if you were going to stream a lower resolution video, it's faster/easier/better to just start with lower rez video to begin with. Streaming remotely is a different matter.
The nature of the Internet is you upload/download files. Trying to get a continuous stream reading a file or anything else can be very problematic. OTOH the same advances that now allow Skype etc. to work may now allow that too, but it's not in the content owner's interests. At any rate, if you want to watch on-line video it's streamed. And that streamed video can be viewed on all sorts of devices -- no need for a PC/laptop at all, though there's nothing wrong with using one, particularly if/when it's more convenient or the display is nicer than alternatives.
Streaming video can be received by most devices that connect to the internet, BUT, they need software that can talk to the servers doing the streaming. To reduce costs most of the processors & software in things like Smart TVs & Blu-Ray players are pretty limited, & you can only stream video from the limited number of servers the software has been hard coded to work with. As you progress more towards the electronics in a smart phone or tablet the more you'll find stuff like real Internet browsers & the capability to install added software to let you stream from more sources.
A small Android box then would be more capable than say a Roku. But you can also use a tablet or cell itself. I mentioned playing video on your cell/tablet & sending that wirelessly to something like a Smart TV or Blu-Ray player, but there are also hybrid solutions. Google's Chromecast for example uses your cell/tablet to find what you want to watch, but then the device finds it on-line and receives the stream itself, decoding & rendering the video which it feeds your TV via HDMI.
