Best (or best value) HD Photo streamer?

[MattB]

I've been through several devices to try and find one to do it all well, and it seems the weakest part of almost any system is photo viewing. I take a lot of photos and want to be able to easily view them on my TV. Currently, for music I have a Roku Soundbridge and for movies I have a MediaGate HD350. Neither of these currently go through Twonky; but I do own it from previous hardware (like a Phillips Streamium 400). The MG plays movies from network shares well, but the photo viewing interface isn't really usable.

So...

What's a good, preferably inexpensive, HD (w/ HDMI or DVI output) streamer for photos? If it did everything well and I could consolidate my devices, that would be great, but if there was a cheap device that did photos well and nothing else, that would be ok too.
From what I've read, the PS3 and XBox 360 are very good, but I really do not want a game console.
I want to be able to see thumbnails, view individual photos or do slideshows, zoom & pan with relative ease, and have an interface my wife won't hate.
Is there such a device that isn't a game console? I certainly hope so! Thanks!

FYI: I have a wired 100BT and wireless 102.11g network but I'd rather use wired. My server is a old Celeron 2.66 GHz with 1 GB RAM running Windows Server 2003.

[mgillespie]

I realise you don't want a console, but the PS3's photo capabilities are better than anything I have seen on any hardware, and you get HDMI 1080p output.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCpf139wS-c

Different mode (with sound)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7d6eb_n4Yw

Sound of course can be streamed from Twonky

There are other slideshow modes (about 5 currently). Another nice touch, is the facial recognition, where pictures are automically zoomed to the faces during one of the slideshow modes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDypErvJrD0

There are a couple of the other modes about halfway though this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xs885Ub ... re=related

SO whilst it far from "Best Value", if you only want it for it's photo features, I consider it "The Best", better than anything else around. It really depends if you can use any of it's other functionality (Blu-ray, DVD upscaler, Audio/Video/Photo streamer for Twonky, SACD, Webbrowser and gaming)