media networking

[MGordon]

I’ve been investigating wireless networking. I am specifically interested in routing music, video and images on my computer(s) to my entertainment center. It seems that most of the media servers require you to manipulate the data through your TV, that’s fine for video and images but I really don’t want to sit in front of the TV to listen to music. In fact, our main listening area doesn’t even have a TV. What I want to do is set up play lists and /or internet radio on any of my computers, and have that data routed to the stereo.



Has anyone done something like this? I would appreciate any pointers or suggestions for further research.

 

[rkressg]

I do not know your exact setup, but you could create a share on the root computer and put your music along with a playlist in the share. You could play your music from that share on your other computer. I have never used a media server, but have a little exprience with wireless networking.



You also could directly connect your computer soundcard to your home entertainment center. that is what I have done with my home computer. This allows me to listen to internet broadcast radio from the computer to the stereo.



If you plan on utilizing a wireless network, do your best to secure it. Require MAC address authentication, give the network a unique SSID and do not broadcast it, do not broadcast a beacon. You can consider using a WEP key, but the encryption on WEP keys sucks, and it is usually not even worth your time to create one.



One last thing, if you have not already bought a wireless access point, you do not necessarly need 802. 11g, 802. 11b only provides for 11 Mbps, but due to the modulation techniques utilized (DSSS), the signal will propagate further, and your mantained data speeds do not degrade as fast. 802. 11g (OFDM) will only operate at 54 Mbps for a very short distance due to the high requirement for channel sync, and the speeds degrade very quickly. Also, most computer will not be able to fully utilize 54Mbps or even require speeds even near that. Remember, your internet connection is, at best, probably lower than 3 Mbps. You are only as good as your fastest link.



-Rich