On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:57:28 -0700, Jim Thompson
wrote:

Today's gadget request...

Is there a network "appliance" that will allow adding music to your
network, retrievable at some other location on the network?

...Jim Thompson

Yeah. It's called buy a nettop computer and make it into a media
server, wireless or wired. Most have HDMI out, etc.

If you buy the dedicated "media server" crap that is out there, you get
handcuffed to their set-up and all their limitations, which are great in
number..

If you buy a $200 PC, you can set it up however you want. XBMC (XBox
Media Center)through Windows or from within Linux. That is currently the
most popular media server software currently available.

Plays movies, music, does pictures, gets the weather and drags song
info and movie info of all your titles. Grabs its own updates.

Popped mine up from a 160GB drive to a 320GB 7200 rpm drive and jumped
it from 1GB RAM to 4GB, so I am now up to $400. Add the monitor and we
are at $600 as it is a 24" display.

The best thing about it is that it plays just about anything.

You have to add an external USB CD/DVD drive to it to get disc access,
and to install an OS. It is also possible to do with a USB stick.
Once up, however, it can handle remote operation etc, via the net hooks.