Again, I fail to see WHY I need a streaming device.
Example: Down in my living room, there is a smart TV. I stream 1080 over wifi from WMP to it perfectly. No lag. No incompatibilty. No problems.
There is NO reason that I can remotely think of that I would need a seperate device. Am I missing something?
Yes but this is completely dependent on how much content you have.
I was in your position before and I streamed from my PC to my smart TV.
I only had less than 100 movies at the time I think, a very small library.
Then my library grew, and navigating it on my smart TV was a chore. It involved tons of extra button presses, and even then it was only useful if I knew exactly what I wanted to watch. I want my Romantic Comedies in a list for me? Well, I better know by heart what those are. I want to know what the movie Battle Royale is about? I have to get my smart phone out and google it.
Something like Plex, changes that. It adds all that information to your TV so you can navigate a larger library more efficiently, get recommendations on what you haven't watched in your library.
Lets say you were watching Fringe, and you left off on a certain episode. Didn't watch for 3 weeks and forgot where you left off? You open Plex, and it already knows what the next episode is. You don't look for it, you just hit play. Want to know what happened in the past episodes? Go read the episode descriptions for the last 10 episodes, all within the app.
It really is dependent on how large your library is though. I'm going to be willing to guess that yours isn't that large, hence the thought that you don't need a separate device (Which is where I was when I was in your position about 8 years ago).
Now for me? I have 28 terabytes I think of HDD space full of TV/Movie. Without a program like Plex/XBMC, there is zero way I can remember what a show is/what episode I'm on.
I am way too wordy so I don't want to bore you with any more details but that's just the gist of why people recommend media programs like Plex. Even now on my PC, I'm using Kodi/XBMC to access my "NAS"(Dumbest term ever but whatever), rather than just navigate through folders. Why? It's more convenient, it remembers my episode location, if I get tired and fall asleep, I can open up and start exactly where I left off, if I feel like it, or start watching something else. If I ever come back to that show/movie, it will ask me if I want to resume right where I left off.
We'd need information on your viewing habits/library size/content acquisition (How you acquire content) to really assess the best option although I'm guessing from this thread, you really aren't the Plex/XBMC candidate.