Ideas!

[ljstevens]

Hi!

Im new to this site so any help would be great!

I have an understairs cupboard and i would like to locate my DVD player, Video, PC and Digital reciever and would like to access them from different rooms. The PC bit is staright forward i have a wireless access point to connect my laptop to. Also is there anything out there that i can plug into my stereo system that can access my mp3 collection on my pc, over my network?

many thanx

lee

[TimH]

Re: Ideas!

Lee,

There are quite a few devices that will stream audio from a PC / server. I know I will miss some off but here's a selection, in no particular order:
Sonos: www.sonos.com
Squeezebox: www.slimdevices.com
Barix Extreamer: http://www.laser.com/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=353
and the wireless version: www.laser.com/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=269

For some players that do audio *and* video:
Pinnacle Showcenter: http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSit...Center+200.htm
Xbox Media Centre: http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/ - note that you also need a modified Xbox (not 360) to run this.


HTH,

Tim.

[toscal]

Re: Ideas!

I can recommend the Sonos system as you can connect an external audio source to each unit. So you could connect a CD or DVD player to one of the units and then stream it to another unit or all of them.
If you want to stream video, as well as MP3, to your TVs etc from your PC. As TimH mentioned, the Showcenter is worth a look at. Its a bit of a pain to install. And you can forget the wireless link, unless its less than 3m from your router, if you want decent video playback. Just use the normal network connection. Also there is a little known feature with it. You can surf the internet with it. All be it very basically, and some pages won't display correctly, but for reading the news from the BBC or looking at the weather on the weather channel its fine.
There is also a few homebrew servers for the Showcenter and a few other systems that use the same chipset. Have a look at www.swisscenter.co.uk to see what they have done.