Hi Keith, thanks for answering and the suggestions.
IIRC, the video files are mostly *.mkv containers with x264 codec.
I am not sure whether Itunes supports these codecs, but then again I don't even have it installed on my pc (and don't want to). Also I am no big fan of syncing (which basically is downloading content to a device and then playing it) but rather want to stream content on-demand over the network. I do realise the that there is significant user-friendliness of the apple ecosystem which is what you described. But there ought to be a solution for people that don't exclusively use apple products, which IMO should be the majority of users.
So my questions remains, are there any apps that will do what I want?
12-04-2013 02:22 PM