When I was using my PS3 for this purpose, I was using DLNA servers such as Tversity and MediaLink since the PS3 had somewhat limited codec/container support. If the DLNA server had to transcode something on the fly, the trick-play performance of the PS3 really suffered and the PC was getting bogged-down.

The great thing about the eGreat is that you can simply point it to an SMB share. Then it just reads the filesystem without needing any DLNA stuff running on your computer.

The eGreat/Popcorn Hour is also DLNA compliant, so it does work with Tversity and things like PlayOn for Hulu streaming.

One slightly annoying thing with the eGreat is its inability to fast forward and rewind an MKV. It can move in 30 second increments back and fourth. It can also jump between 0-90% of the file in 10% increments, so it's not such a big deal.