Gordon Henderson wrote:
You are now entering the realms of the home server + network arena -
You have a living room "appliance" which is nothing more than a small
(fanless) PC (boot off flash) with a slot (combined CD+DVD reader), an
RF/UHF in with digital tuner on-board, Video & audio out and a network
interface to take the data to/from the "home server" stashed under
the stairs..

Well gekky stuff, but it's all do-able with todays technology, and open
source stuff.

I'd really like to do something along these lines but TBH I think I lack
the geekability to do it from scratch and would need somethig a bit more
off-the-shelf. My own living room TV sits next to an ethernet socket
for my home network, which includes a PC with (underused) TV card and I
can't help feeling that there must be a relaitively simple way to take
advantage of this!

I keep dipping into this to find out if technology has got there yet but
am not convinced it is yet. There seem to be various media streaming
devices (eg:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/pro..._mediamvp.html
www.streamium.com
www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318&sec=0 but I'm not convinced these are
really replacements for a VCR, especially in terms of userfriendliness -
am I wrong? I've never seen these gizmos in the flesh; has anyone
experience of them?

David