I have an external drive (5TB in your pocket for US$120 - the mind boggles) to which I've ripped DVDs, including Game of Thrones. Now that my son is off to college, it might be easier for my wife and I to find the time to watch them.

They play back fine on my wife's MacBook - but its USB ports died so we have to use a DisplayPort adapter, which then precludes connecting it to the big screen TV. However, the new router has a USB port and can share the drive over the network. However, it's still a minor annoyance to get it set up.

But then I thought - I wonder if I could use the Raspberry Pi I got for the DIY microconsole.

To make a long story short, the answer is yes. I did need to spend the $5 to get the MPEG-2 license key to unlock the hardware decoder. And for some reason the Pi and the TV don't like to be connected directly ("No Signal"), but I have gotten it working through the amplifier (which also gives me 5.1 audio).