The connected house: Music and video in any room
As the world becomes more connected, video downloads outrun their traditional counterparts and online music stores well and truly take hold, many have begun thinking about chipping away the old ball and chain that is physical media. Begone, CD! Thou art banished, DVD! Standalone players are cast out! Digital is in, and we want to experience our downloads all around the home. Distributed via a home network centralized storage and decent media playing hardware, entirely within your grasp.
The goal
To collate all your music and videos in one spot, then be able to access them from wherever you want in your house, without hunting down CDs or DVDs.
The final goal is to put all your media files on a central storage device, then feed them to the settop box which, in turn, is hooked up to the TV.
What do I need?
At the bare minimum, you'll need a computer, network router, appropriate cables and multimedia streamer. To watch stuff on your TV, you'll need a nice luscious screen, too. If you're just after music, some kick-arse speakers are also good additions. Ideally, you'll have some sort of file server with a quantifiable buttload of storage space (that's measured in gigabytes or terabytes, not cubic meters), a gigabit router, a broadband connection and the aforementioned streamer.
