They are great units, expensive mind. Be better off with a cheap £15-18 off ebuyer, WDTV or Apple TV unless you're going to use all the functions of the A210

That's right yeah, just stick the HDD inside it and access the media straight off it and it also acts as a NAS, FTP and torrent server. Coincidentally I have one of the a200s for sale if you are interest? Ive got some HDDs lying around too :-)

this popcorn hour thing looks promising, will i be able to use that without the pc, and just go straight from my hdd?

the tv box is a finnish one, elisa viihde :P their version of sky i suppose

Popcorn Hour A210 :-)

What tv box is it? You can get a NAS enclosure for about £20 iirc, plus you can access it, albeit slowly, from any networked device

ill look into the NAS box, this kind of thing is all new to me until we got the new tv box and ps3 etc.
The tv box struggles to read the hdd and the ps3 sometimes does and sometimes doesnt...but it always works fine on the laptop and my pc back at home.

Also will open up the laptop and check out the fans etc

Don't the PS3 or TV box read NTFS? If so just convert/reformat the hard drive to NTFS...

Cheapest option is to fix the laptop. Bit of new thermal paste and a good hoover will fix the overheating typically.

get a NAS sorted

Currently use either my ps3 or tv box to stream from the missus' laptop, but its getting old and after a while gets too hot and cant buffer etc or shuts down which is real annoying.
Is there any other option other than buying a new pc/laptop to stream from? As all my movies are on a portable hd i brought with me and i cant just plug that in as its not fat32 which wont support the hd movies etc