Mac Mini - Seriously. We have tried Boxee, Roku, Apple TV and many more. I love trying new things and seeing the best options. And what our final set up includes:
all hook up through our Receiver. We use the Gaming Consoles for gaming, Roku for Netflix, Justin.TV, Chow, Hulu Plus and Selected Podcasts. When we want more content we just switch to the Mac Mini to watch BBC iPlayer, Channel 4 and Hulu Web Only Content.
We use the Mac Mini to use the VPN to connect to the UK, Rowmote app helps navigate and we have a bunch of free plug-ins to make accessing everything with a click.
One final thing -- I have created a website so that with one-click I have access to all our favorite stuff and our search keywords because I got sick of typing the same thing over and over again.
Resources for Mac Mini:
I use tvmobli to stream to my Moxi, its free, and their website says it also works with xboxes, so i would suggest you give it a shot. Its still in beta, but I haven't encountered any problems.
DLNA makes this task so unbelievably easy.
I use tvmobili which is totally free and works remarkably well. I have all my media content on a Windows 7 pc and can access it on a Mac, my TV (via PS3), and my Android. I've tested it on an iPhone and it works great as well.
i dont see an indication of the tv or the PVR supporting SMB. i would set up a DLNA server on your computer, pointing it to the WD drive as its 'library'
you can do this with windows media player 'share' feature, but you'd be limited to the filetypes that WMP recognizes.
alternative:
You can run UPnP servers on Windows, Mac, or PC. Installing TVMobili requires no more effort than installing any windows program. All it would take for someone to have a setup like Justin's is to find the UPnPlay app in the android market, and do a google search.
I'v recently discoverd this jewel.
Works flawlessly in linux, and it can even stream to your networked tv or bluray.
It's the only one I've seen who shows embedded (mkv) or separate (srt) subtitles without transcoding. It can even stream outside the network.