I'm really looking for a feature-rich, organized media center platform that I can connect an external drive to (negating the need to stream files across my network). I basically want something the Apple TV Home Sharing interface (organized by tags, w/ cover art, access to multiple audio streams and subtitles and chapters), but with local files.

Roku couldn't do that, I found.

A friend suggested building a Raspberry Pi system that will run an XBMC port...that is what I will try next.