I just thought I would pop in here and recommend something that I bought this week. It's the
Western digital HD TV media player, what it does is play high definition material from an external usb drive on your tv via HDMI. I use it to watch Japanese anime shows that wont ever air in my part of the world and it works like a charm with great quality. Prior I had to either stream them to my 360 and deal with the hurricane noise it makes as well as the computer noise or watch it on my tiny computer screen which isnt exactly the proper way experience it.
I dont know how it works with non HD material but its supposed to take everything and hacking has just begun on the device so there should be a lot of fun uses for it in time. WD is good with regular firmware updates and they listen to the requests and feedback from the community of users. Best $160 I spent in a long time.