Roku Box? Chromecast? Apple TV? Help!

Alright, so I would like to be able to stream movies from my PC to my TV. The only thing is, my setup does not allow for an HDMI cable to run through the whole apartment to then plug in my TV. I have heard of Roku Box's, Chromecast and Apple TV and I have done a bit of research on all of these peripherals, but I'm still confused. I would like to get the opinion of people who have used these products before, what their impression of the product was and, what is the ideal thing for me to buy in my situation. (And no, I do not and will not have cable in my apartment, too expensive)

i got a roku and it streams stuff fine, i mostly use it for netflix, although the interface is a bit sluggish. No idea about streaming from a pc.

I have an Apple TV and I can easily recommend it, unless you don't own an iPhone/iPad/iPod/Mac in which case I do not recommend it. If you do have one it's great, you can load video content on your device and then send it to the Apple TV to watch it there. It also has stuff like Netflix and Pandora built in and runs those pretty well too.

You know, I manage a small AirBnB cottage, and I've been thinking about updating the blu ray player which using some streaming tech but it's total garbage. I'm considering getting a Roku 3, or an Apple TV because everyone here in the Bay area has a hard on for apple. Again, the people who rent the house are really tech savvy, so they tend to just plug in their laptop through the HDMI cable but every now and then I get a family with screaming kids who need netflix playing, so I'm thinking roku because I want something speedy to load up netflix. I'm amazed how shitty these media steaming boxes interfaces are, and how slow they are, so I might update it if it's like 100 bucks.

If you are trying to stream stuff off your pc to your tv, I use the application called plex media server off my roku player. I believe it is also offered through chromecast and apple tv, don't quote me on that though.

https://plex.tv/

EDIT: Check this out: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/roku-3-best-streaming-box/

I have had good experiences from getting buying advice from wirecutter. I don't always go with exactly what they say, but they always give REALLY detailed information on different devices. My dumb advice might still be helpful, but they will say what I did but better.

What do you use to watch videos? Are you trying to stream stuff from your PC(ripped movies, etc)? Or are you talking things like netflix, hbo go, amazon, etc?

If you are just streaming stuff from netflix, amazon, hbo go then I would go with a chrome cast. Stupid simple to use; I have never had any issues with it.

If you like to rent movies from iTunes or are heavily invested in Apple's products then an apple tv might be a better choice for you. I know it offers stuff like photostream and being able to throw stuff from your ipad to the apple tv(I think????). So that could be good.

If you are looking into more of home streaming from your PC then a Roku would be best.

The Roku's media streaming capabilities are rather limited, in my experience. Plex sorta broke when it tried to process my media library and seems to automatically pull video information from IMDB no matter what, so each episode I ripped from my House DVDs would get tagged as movies. It has a media player channel that supposedly supports DLNA but demands a very specific video format I could never quite work out. Chromecast also seems pretty picky about what video formats it supports for streaming, but it at least seems to have support in at least one DLNA server application.

A lot of this depends on how powerful your media server is and how much bandwidth your wireless network has. If it can handle on-the-fly transcoding of the videos you'll be playing back, then you really have the pick of the litter. If either one of those is a concern, then you should look for something that can directly decode the videos you'd be playing, which would take a substantial load off your media server and potentially require less wireless bandwidth. The article SSully linked above mentions the WD TV Live which would play back just about anything you could throw at it, but it doesn't seem to have great reviews on Amazon and the article also mentions stability problems with the device. A small purpose-built PC would be capable of decoding just about anything as well but would be more expensive.

I had a WDTV Live for many years and it worked quite well with many of the widely used codecs. MKV's, MP4, WMA, and VOB's worked fine when streaming from my PC. OGG's and H.264 Hi10P (10 bit) didn't work, though. Also subtitles were utilitarian only and lacked color or design found in many "soft subbed" media. Finally, the UI was a very clunky for anything other than streaming video. On the other hand, it often played videos that would skip or wouldn't play at all through the PS Media Server (DLNA on PS3). If you are looking to stream music or photo's off your PC, you might want to go another way because the WDTV that I had (the 2010 model) wouldn't read playlists or made it easy to create them on the fly. As for movie streaming services, Netflix worked without issue back then. YouTube functioned well, too and auto cued up videos from the site.

I know I sound down on the product, but I am not and have considered getting a newer model as my old one died after three years of near constant use. If you are looking for a no frills media station for video streaming, I think it's a good choice.

I had the same problem as you. Wanted to stream to my livingroom TV from my PC but didn't want to run an HDMI cable across the whole apartment.

I went with the Chromecast approach. I use Plex as a server on my PC and stream to my TV through the Chromecast (which has full Plex support).

It's working great for the most part. Picture is crystal clear with no bitrate issues and full 1080p resolution. The reason I said "for the most part" is because, sometimes, I get buffering issues. The Chromecast does not have any ethernet inputs, it's WiFi only which makes it a little bit unstable at times. Honsetly, it's very rare that I get buffering issues and it can actually be the WiFi conditions in my apartment that are causing these issues, but it is very annoying when it happens.

Obviously wired solutions are better for these types of things (be it HDMI or Ethernet), but I still find the Chromecast a viable solution and also the cheapest.

When my 2nd PS3 died (the 60GB launch) it meant I had no access to the media server or netflix in the bedroom. I bought the just then released Roku USB stick and its pretty decent. All the apps I want (including a nifty Giant Bomb one) and its pretty reliable.