Replace your TV’s media streamer with a mini PC and thank me later

Once upon a time, add-on media streamers were a lot closer to PCs. The original Apple TV, launched in 2007, wasn’t even a streaming device in the manner we think of them today. You were required to sync media from a nearby computer, or later, download purchases directly to its hard drive. If you were determined, you could actually convert it into a sort of Mac mini by flashing the hard drive with a USB boot disk image.