All I want to do is watch video files on my television, without having
wires connected between my computer and my TV. Is that too much to
ask? It appears that it is. That's the conclusion I've come to, being
neither a techie nor a noob, but just a regular joe who likes to get
his content over the internet, and watch it on my television.

This may sound like a trivial point, and obviously in the grand scheme
of things it is. But in my daily existence, the need to have wires
connecting my computer and TV is a pain, because s-video cables are
bloody expensive, and therefore the layout of the furniture in my
living room is largely determined by the affordable conjoining of
these two devices.

I tried the DLink media server some 18 months ago, but it failed
because the unit was incompatible with the video card on my laptop. So
I decided to wait a little longer, because I didn't think it would
take that long before the marketplace provided a solution.

Fast forward to the present. The prodiguous marketing of the Apple TV
made me giddy over the prospect that perhaps my days of waiting were
finally over. Except they're not, because Apple TV requires the use of
iTunes, and iTunes doesn't support AVI files (and many other file
types besides). The fact is that the vast majority of the video files
I watch are AVIs. Yes, its possible to convert all uncompatible files
to iTunes-compatible formats, but this hardly strikes me as a
reasonble solution. And it reflects the political economy of a large
corporation profiting from both content and hardware.

Then there's the Netgear products, the EVA700 and the EVA8000. But
I've read some lackluster reviews about each, and they are not
available for direct purchase from any retailer in my (rather large)
city. Then I start reading about Xbox and something called XBMC, and
that perhaps this is the solution. But I'm not a gamer, and I don't
understand but I don't think wireless streaming is not possible with
Xbox anyway.

I call some local boutique store that specializes in "solutions" for
personal computing. Now he's telling me to look into some IR Blaster
device. I'm not liking the look of that thing either.

All I want to do is watch video files, stored on my computer, on my
TV. This is either not possible, or so fraught with problems that it
hardly seems worth it.

It's 2007. This is ridiculous.