Let's say you're interested in playing media back to your television/home theater setup, but you're unwilling to go through the trouble of building/maintaining a media pc and you don't necessarily want to record; you just want playback of materials you are grabbing off the net -- all legitimate, of course -- from, say, ourmedia.com or archive.org's live music archive. Whatever it is, I just happened across a fantastic way to get this media into your tv for relatively cheap. Check out the Mediagate MG-25. $130 plus the cost of a 2.5" hard drive gets you a fantastic, extremely versatile little media playback box and a remote control. It is only slightly larger than an Ipod, it supports pretty much every video and audio codec you would reasonably expect it to, and it is extremely cheap. I can actually envision a use for these at work (instructors moving content around via sneakernet instead of relying on a campus network) and am going to try and get one in-house or buy one for myself. You can check out a review at akihabaranews.com as well.

[update]

A little digging has revealed that they have a new model coming, the MG-35, that handles 3.5" hard drives and has an ethernet port. Even better! So far it is not available in the US and appears to be a bit more expensive (~$220 or so) but the extra features are more than worth it.