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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 — and with the help of a home network, some centralised storage and decent media playing hardware, it's 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 the need for hunting down CDs or DVDs.
What do I need?
At the bare minimum, you'll need a computer, a router, the appropriate network cables and a multimedia player. If you want to watch stuff on your TV, you'll need one of those too, or if you're just after music you might want some kick-arse speakers. Ideally you'll have some sort of file server with a quantifiable buttload of storage space (that's in measured in gigabytes or terabytes, not cubic metres), a gigabit router, a broadband connection and the aforementioned multimedia player.
The final goal is to put all your media files on a central storage device, then feed them to the set top box which in turn is hooked up to the TV.
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