What are the specifics? What kind of devices do you have to support, what kind of network? What kind of media?
If Netflix is too hard, then my goto Plex, wouldn't be much easier. Before they added all their cruft, it was by far the easiest solution, things just worked.
How do they fair using iTunes? Apples stuff integrates really well together. You could get them an iPod Touch and let them control it all from that.
Lowest rung for just music would be load all the media onto a drive and use Winamp. But that is assuming just a computer playing music.
> What kind of devices do you have to support, what kind of network? What kind of media?
Apple devices, including phones, tablet, laptop; as well as an old high-end stereo (I'll need some digital-to-analog adapter, but I assume those exist).
Standard home WLAN, with wired connections available for devices that don't move.
Media - whatever works, but I assume it will need to be on a server to be available to all those devices, and therefore I assume I will prefer it in the cloud so that I don't have to setup and manage the server. Ripped music will be in ALAC format, I expect, though possibly FLAC. They will also want to play newly downloaded tracks in whatever format provided, and stream music.
> iTunes
> Winamp
How user-friendly are those? WinAmp I used long ago, and certainly it was too geek-oriented, and there was too much going in that GUI.
> well as an old high-end stereo (I'll need some digital-to-analog adapter, but I assume those exist).
Those adapters exist, look into Airplay 2 compatible devices.
iTunes is pretty easy to use, my older parents don't seem to have much of an issue with it. Admittedly, I don't regularly use iTunes anymore, only for the occasional iPod sync or restore.
Once you have Apple's HomeSharing setup, it's really easy to play stuff on your apple devices.
The Winamp 2 default skin was pretty basic. It had a stereo layout (play, stop, skip buttons), an equalizer, and a playlist. It was a great stand alone app. If you were just wanting a simple way to play stuff on one computer, it might be the better way to go.
If Netflix is too hard, then my goto Plex, wouldn't be much easier. Before they added all their cruft, it was by far the easiest solution, things just worked.
How do they fair using iTunes? Apples stuff integrates really well together. You could get them an iPod Touch and let them control it all from that.
Lowest rung for just music would be load all the media onto a drive and use Winamp. But that is assuming just a computer playing music.