Updates!

The Plex Media Server just works. It's absolutely amazing. I installed it, told it I really didn't want to have a username/password at Plex and it was okay with that. It scanned my stuff, found and cataloged my files, and generated a nice menu structure (e.g., Top Gear -> Series 17 -> Episode 3) that isn't there in the original file names.

Since Plex Media Server is a DLNA server, I thought I'd try the easily available DLNA client I've got in my house: my old Oppo BDP-83 (moved upstairs to make room for the GoogleTV in the home theater). Lo and behold, it just worked. Almost. All the files show up in the web UI on my Mac, but not all show up in the Oppo menus. It's unclear why, but for the ones that do, you select them, and you wait well over a minute for buffering, and then it starts playing and does it thereafter without missing a beat. Given that I'd written off that Oppo for anything other than playing Bluray discs, this is a big step up in the world.

Apparently my Xbox 360 can also be a DLNA client, if you enable the PlayTo feature, but at that point it has no UI of its own. You'd need to use something else, like Avia or Allcast (running on your phone) to tell your server to fling the content to the Xbox. I haven't tried this yet to see how well it works.

For my GTV box, the answer is clearly the Plex app, which costs only $0.99, so that was a no-brainer, relative to the much steeper price for the Plex Chromecast support. (They claim that the PlexPass subscription requirement will eventually be relaxed and the feature will be rolled out into the regular Plex Android app, which is presently $4.99.) I can't yet try it as my family are watching TV and have no actual interest in my playing around with video streaming technology (yeah, shocking), but this combo should presumably work without issue.

EDIT: Wow, the Plex GTV app works great. When you bring up a show and are scrolling around to find a particular episode, they helpfully fill the background with an image from the show (e.g., for Top Gear, it's the three hosts standing and looking at you) and they also have a sample of the theme music playing quietly in the background. Much spit and polish went into this thing. Also, I tried the built-in "Media Player" as well as "ViMu", which I'd used previously. All discovered the DLNA service being offered from the Plex Media Center and there were none of the latency issues nor missing shows. Everything just worked.


Medium term:

I'm back to being happy with my current hardware situation. I'm not feeling a need to rush out and buy a Chromecast any more. Plex Media Server is free and brilliant and the Plex GTV app is well worth $0.99.

At some point, the Sony Bluray will die. It's inevitable. Were that to happen tomorrow, I'd go the Plex Media Server / Mystery Android Client (Plex? Avia?) / Chromecast route. While it's cute that I can use my Bluray player as a DLNA client, it's slow to get rolling and it doesn't have what you'd call a well-sorted user interface. This is acceptable for the one-off wanting to watch a video on the bedroom TV, but only just. The Oppo supposedly has really, really good video decoding hardware, but a typical compressed-for-the-Internet download is so crufty that it's not exactly going to make diamonds out of coal.

Longer term, we'll see. Like I said, the winds are clearly blowing in the Chromecast direction. It's so much more pleasant to browse your collection on your phone and hit the "cast" button.