Orb TV streams video from your Mac to your TV

Plex can run on the older AppleTV, there is a version for AppleTV2 but you need to jailbreak. Plex is also available on iPhone and iPad as well as Android. Mobile clients can be used as a remote with gesture support. It runs on a Mac mini. LG announced Plex support in their newest televisions The Plex Media Server runs on a Mac or Windows. It organizes your media and populates metadata automatically. Plex is a native Mac app that was forked from XBMC. It is much better than XBMC. It is very much like Boxee but the media server makes it better.

Plex media server and the client on the Mac is free. As is the Windows media server version. The mobile clients can remote control and play the streaming video. The mobile clients cost money which is being used to fund further development.

I have a Mac running the Plex media server. A NAS for storage of my media library. 3 other Mac clients, two ATV2 clients (jail broken), 2 iPads and an iPhone acting as remotes and clients. All clients can stream different videos at the same time. If you pause and exit a show or movie you can pickup where you left off on another client.

All this is free with the exception being the iPad apps which were $4.99. You install the server tell it where your media is and tell it to use iTunes and iPhoto. Add plugins for Netflix, ABC, CBS, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. All extremely easy. The clients just see the server over Bonjour.

http://plexapp.com/

Orbs biggest asset since the iOS app intro a few years back is that it will stream all your music and videos AND LIVE TV to your device anywhere. This is totally separate from this 99 hardware puck and a hell of a lot cheaper. It also gives you access via any Internet connected computer.

I use serviio on my mac and DNLA Sony Bravia TV no need buy any other equip and its free, its a great piece of software.

Or you could just install TV mobili and pull video from the Mac to network DNLA enabled tv's

"But my favorite thing about the Orb TV is that it picks up any video -- not just video in your iTunes music library –- on your Mac and streams it to your TV."

Even TV shows and movies from the iTunes Store? Wouldn't Apple's DRM prevent that?

For the same price, you can get an Apple TV 2 which, among all the other "official" features, can be jailbroken which allows you to install XBMC on it. After that, you can play the same Orb streams on your TV (with HDMI)

At CES, they announced they were going to sell the software on a disc for network-connected Blu-ray players. I'm eagerly waiting for that, as a complement to the Apple TV... it's supposed to support Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and Comedy Central streaming, as well as local video on your computer. It was supposed to be available in late February, but it isn't. $20 for a disc beats buying another set-top, especially since the disc will support 1080p.