There may be only one place in the home where you can play pool, arcade games and watch the big-screen, but with proper wiring, you can set up a network to distribute audio and video around the house. Electronics design and installation by Projectus of Lake Oswego, OR.

As anyone living in today's digital world knows, there's an overabundance of audio and video content just waiting to be enjoyed throughout the house. CD and DVD libraries are taking up valuable shelf space, music and maybe photos and video are stored on our computers, and much more audio and video are just broadband downloads away. It seems so simple and right, but for many of us, actually enjoying all that stuff anywhere in your home can feel as distant as interplanetary travel.

More and more people today are conquering their scattered media and shattered expectations to achieve wall-through-wall entertainment dreams. This usually starts with finding a primary place in the home to store those ever-growing music libraries. "There has been large growth in media servers due to the convenience of easy and instant access to their content," says Steve Vasquez, co-founder of ReQuest Multimedia, which makes hard drive–based music servers.

Because the content is in a digital format, it can be delivered to other devices throughout the home over standard Category 5 communication cables, which are used for computer networking and structured wiring. "This allows different members of a household to listen to different content from the same collection at the same time," Vasquez adds.

Adding a whole-house audio system that runs off an audio server, such as those from ReQuest, Escient and others, can be an expensive proposition. Hard disk–based media servers run from a couple thousand dollars to well into five figures -- and that's just for the music. However, ReQuest and Escient offer DVD-changer systems for video storage. Dedicated video servers that can store DVDs onto hard drives are few and pricey. These include slick offerings from AMX and Kaleidescape, each starting at $10,000 and running up to $27,000 just for a base system -- and that's before you add multiroom capability.

The most popular media server today may just be Apple's ubiquitous and much less expensive iPod. Many love downloading songs to the handheld music carrier and plugging it into their whole-house entertainment systems to enjoy favorite tunes everywhere in the house. Sonance, SpeakerCraft, iPort, Russound and others are even developing ways for people to dock the iPod for access to those tunes throughout the house. Then, of course, there's wireless music and even wireless video streaming that uses the power of the PC to convert your workhorse computer into a home entertainment server.

Screaming for Streaming

While using wire to distribute audio and video signals is best in terms of quality, there are some intriguing and affordable wireless options that can turn your PC into a media server. Any homeowner can install most wireless media players. Just load the server program onto your PC, and it feeds content over the air to the player, which is connected to a TV or stereo.

One wireless media player making a splash is Microsoft's Media Center Extender, a set-top box that delivers favorite shows, music, pictures and home videos anywhere in your abode using the same streamlined interface as the Media Center PC. The Extender communicates with a Media Center desktop or laptop over wireless Wi-Fi technology and connects physically to a TV, stereo or receiver in another room so you can hear and see every media file stored on your computer.

Tom Laemmel, product manager of Microsoft Windows, believes today's souped-up computers are powerful and nimble enough to shuttle our content around the house. "In many cases, [people] already use the PC to store their digital videos, pictures and music. In addition, the PC often has the fastest processor and the biggest hard disk of any device in the home," he says. "We believe that this makes the PC the best platform for storing and distributing digital content."

Because even the most state-of-the-art Media Center PCs max out at about 200 gigabytes (GB) of storage space, dedicated media servers are stepping in with whopping hard disks that can store multiple seasons of sitcoms, dramas and reality shows. The Niveus 1 Terabyte A/V Storage Server, for example, boasts a whopping 1 terabyte (TB) of storage. That's 1,000 GB, or enough room for 100 hours of high-definition TV, 16,000 hours of music and 670,000 photos.

If you don't own the latest and greatest Media Center PC, there are several stand-alone wireless digital media receivers that work with other flavors of Windows. Apple, Creative and Netgear each offer wireless audio players that stream MP3s and other music files to a stereo. Most work well, but with the exception of higher-end gear like the Roku SoundBridge, they mostly look like mutated routers that don't exactly fit in with the rest of your entertainment center. For those who want to access pictures and have something that complements the living room, there are some wireless media players that should more than satisfy.

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