Mediastreaming wirelessly to a projector...

December 20, 2015 5:33 AM

We do not have and do not want a TV in our house. Instead we want to play CDs, and stream stored digital media and other internet/app content, wirelessly to a projector. (The audio can go by wire from the player/streamer to the speakers.) Does such a player/streamer even exist, in one device? We're an Apple household, so should I be thinking an macmini or an appletv, with CD-playing somehow added to them? Or a Roku?

We used to have a DVD&CD player cabled to a projector. This is intended as an upgrade up that set-up. Are we kidding ourselves it as simple as we'd like?

Added twists:

- SkyGo mobile content is a must, ideally played out wirelessly to the projector. But it appears to be limited to local mobile device play, not allowing playout to an external "screen" via wifi/airplay. Will this affect the main set-up we should be thinking about?

- at some point, we might want to connect a console to this projecting set-up. Is this workable?

posted by progosk to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

Are you looking for a standalone unit or just some way to project content from a computer to a projector? There are dongles out there where you plug one into your display-out on your computer and the other to the vga-in on a projector which allows you to display wirelessly.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:57 AM on December 20, 2015

Response by poster: A standalone, that sits in the bookshelf in lieu of the stereo (alongside the CDs), cabled to the Internet and power, and wired to the speakers.
posted by progosk at 6:17 AM on December 20, 2015

Response by poster: (We're also in the market for a projector, hence the ambition to define an ideal, complete set-up.)
posted by progosk at 6:51 AM on December 20, 2015

Best answer: You can watch sky go via an Xbox or PlayStation console. And play DVDs on either, yes? Not speaking from experience re sky go, trust but verify.

Buy a ps3/ps4 or 360/xbOne, and a projector with at least one HDMI input port. Console lives next to and wired plugs into projector. You might want a receiver and some speakers too, many recent receivers have HDMI pass through (console(s) and roku and etc plug into receiver, receiver plugs into projector). Consoles also have other apps available like Netflix etc.

This is not the least expensive approach but should get you going in a friendly flexible platform.
posted by enfa at 3:22 PM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

One option would be to use a NAS that has HDMI output - (I have the QNAP device reviewed here). Apart from storage it has a wide range of applications available for it - including Plex - which does a pretty good job of getting the metadata from a library TV, movies and music. A NAS is a more expensive solution than many of the alternatives -and takes more effort to set up - but worthwhile if you want to use it for high capacity, resilient general storage or for other potentially useful things such as acting as a VPN gateway, etc.

You would put the NAS next to the projector and connect it using HDMI. If it were me I would take efforts to try to get the NAS on a wired LAN - but you could also use a wireless dongle to connect it. The wireless connection would not effect your playback however - since everything is coming from a "local" source on the NAS.
posted by rongorongo at 11:42 PM on December 20, 2015

If it were me I would take efforts to try to get the NAS on a wired LAN
By which I mean I would either run a cable to it - or I would use I power line networking adapter connected to the same outlet as the projector.
posted by rongorongo at 12:14 AM on December 21, 2015