Streaming content to my TV

I was thinking of getting some sort of extender to stream content from my laptop/external hard drives in my room to my TV in the living room, and so far it seems like the best bet is the xbox 360 elite. My laptop has vista home premium and thus WMC, which I like and after installing a couple of codecs it plays basically everything in my media library plus integrates with netflix. However, since I had to install codecs to play some videos, will the 360 not be able to play these different formats, or does it just stream directly from the PC so that whatever my laptop can do in WMC, the xbox can also do?

 

Another question- can I stream stuff to any old xbox 360, or does it have to be the elite model? Someone told me I can't do any of that stuff with a regular xbox, but those are much, much cheaper on ebay which would leave me with enough $ to get a couple games (Forza 3 FTW).

 

Any xbox as im aware, the 360 has some codec support out there (but you have to install i believe).

Your old xbox will do the job just fine, i ethernet to mine and it works fine.

 

You might want to check out WD-TV from Western Digital, $119.99

WD-TV Live via Newegg.com

It supports almost all major formats including mkv and iso & Dolby Digital + DTS. This version has a network port to connect to your pc, or just plug in an external hdd directly to the device. Also pushes 1080p if you have HD files.

One big complaint about WD TV is no chapter support, you can only fast forward up to x16 I think.

 

Edit 2: Also you should check out the Boxee Box by D-Link.
If you dont mind waiting it should hit the marked soon.

Xbox1 (modded) with XBMC can play standard definition stuff with no problems.
Xbox 360 should playback video if you set up a media server solution that transcodes the media to something the Xbox 360 handles.
TVersity

Edit 1: Arg, to slow. xD

The recommended solution would be to get a dedicated video player.
Western Digital TV
http://www.wdtvlive.com/

I got a ASRock Ion 330 with XBMC and it plays everything i throw at it.
And i can also so 1080p thanks to the Nvidia 9400m and VDPAU.

 

Xbox 360 works, but doesn't play MKV files, which are what most ripped HD movies are nowadays. Unless you want to spend time converting, or rename files to .avi (which doesn't always work right, at least not for me anyways).

Also, you don't have to go through WMC. If you just look in the videos tab through your 360, you should see your computer and it's files. This way also has a few more codecs available than WMC for some reason.