MediaGate has designed the MG-350HD, a stripped down media PC, with wired and wireless networking and support for most A/V systems, high def or not … but no hard drive.  Without the hard drive, it is still able to stream media from a PC, but with a hard drive it can play directly from it.  ExtremeTech tried one out, and you can see what they thought in their article.
“A media center PC can be expensive, even if you build one yourself. What do you really want from such a machine? Primarily, you’d probably like to store media on its hard drive to play through your home entertainment center. If you don’t need other typical media center functionality, such as digital video recording and channel guides, the MediaGate MG-350HD might be the device you’re looking for.”

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