Ok, so I've been beefing up my media environment recently and am working on building the ultimate, but affordable, multi-media experience in my home. My goal is to clean-up some of the antiquated audio/video/PC equipment I have while establishing the next few years worth of new media experience. Of course, money is indeed an object however I obviously can't do this for free so I'm intending to put down a few G's anyhow.
So what do I want to be able to do and what have I looked at so far? For starters, I want to clean up the current entertainment center (7' tall BTW lol):
36" Phillips CRT, 11 years old
Teac 5.1 Dolby surround-sound receiver, 12 years old
Sony dual-cassette deck, 10 years old
Teac 5-disc CD changer, 10 years old
Pioneer VHS player, 10 years old
Pioneer DVD player, 8 years old
Digital Cable Receiver
2 x Fisher floor speakers, 30+ years old
Sony Vaio PC, 8 years old
DELL Latitude laptop, 7 years old
Ok, so as you can see I'm a bit behind the times.
I'm intrigued by the idea of integrating my PC into my entertainment system via wireless and/or wired media. I've started looking into some products but I'm wondering what other people are doing.
For example, for wireless audio streaming nothing can beat the affordability and efficiency of an
Airport Express however this is an audio-only solution and there are limited 3rd party options out there that relieve you from having to use iTunes to stream the audio.
For video there are products such as the
Sony BPD-N460,
Popcorn Hour, and
Roku but these are all based on only streaming specific Internet-based content providers rather than media from the PC. In other words, all of these devices connect to the Internet directly thus don't work if I want to play a DIVx from my PC to my television for example.
I can go with a PS3 and use the streaming capabilities and gain a Blue-Ray player (and gaming console) to boot but we're talking major power consumption for something that wouldn't get used as a console anywhere near as much as a multi-media station (200 watts verse 40 watts of the Sony BlueRay player above is a huge difference).
So far I've built a new PC with a TB of storage and plenty more eSATA space and Windows 7. I didn't put a Blue-Ray player in and now I'm kicking myself in the ass but I only blew $30 on the DVDRW in it now so adding a Blue-Ray to the PC is certainly an option. I plan on buying a new, mid-range (under $1000) laptop and a 46"-47" LCD/LED television. Now I have to integrate all of this!
Anyone else battling with these questions? Anyone else doing any of this? What is your favorite configuration? PS3? Wireless verse wired? Etc? I'd love to hear from you!
XII
