Some time ago, my roommate and I ripped every CD we owned into mp3’s and put them on a file server. Makes it easy to get to the music from anywhere in the house, and Ian got a networked mp3 player for his bedroom to listen to music at night. Now, with a 5.1 surround setup and a 57 inch rear projection HDTV in the den, that music was just itching to be played through the stereo. Itching, I tell you. In my quest for nifty-neat gadgets, I was envisioning having some of the nicer eye-candy winamp visualizations playing on the TV along with the music. Thus began the saga.

First, we attempted some of the networked mp3 players on the market that supported video. Most of them require some sort of server software to be running on the server; and, of course, they all conflict with each other. After Ian’s difficulties making the Roku Soundbridge M1000 and M2000 work with our wireless network (the setup is a joke… you have to telnet to the device), we decided to skip their high-def model; which is a pity, because it looked really nice. Next came the D-Link Media Lounge, which worked… after a fashion. It was really, really, really slow. It apparently didn’t cache anything, and with 5000 mp3s, going from one page of songs to the next took upwards of a minute.

Then we started looking at Media Center Extenders… hardware devices that connect to a PC running Microsoft’s Media Center. HP and Linksys are the only two on the market (other than an X-Box one); and they’re both basically identical and both actually made by Microsoft. Since we were upgrading the server closet, we went ahead and build a media center server to try this out. The Linksys connected fine and was much, much faster than the D-Link… but was saddled with Microsoft’s digital rights management restrictions. Certain things wouldn’t play, like certain file types and high-definition content. It also had problems with caching information… make a change to a playlist, and it might or might or might not update.

So, we took those parts from the media center server and purchased a Silverstone case- that matches the other stereo components- and rebuilt it as a home theater PC. Component video out to the TV, digital out to the stereo, and video and audio in from the satellite dish receiver to the PC. Theoretically, we’ve replaced the DVD player and VCR (and laserdisc player, which I haven’t used in two years… anyone want to buy it?) and gained mp3 playback, and can control it all with the remote.

But of course, it wasn’t that easy. First, the remote IR blaster that came with the Turtle Beach audio card wouldn’t work with Media Center. The Microsoft IR blaster works, so we went with that. Getting the picture configured correctly took a bit of doing, but we finally figured it out. Then there was the DVD playback- Microsoft doesn’t want you playing DVD video back to a TV device, only a monitor. WTF, over? What do you think people are going to be doing with a media center PC, anyway? A little third party program took care of DRM and region encoding issues, so now DVD’s played back with an exceptional picture. Now the problem was sound- Turtle Beach’s audio card would only let you choose 2 channel audio or forced 5.1 dolby digital through the optical out. Dolby DTS was right out. No, wait… Media Center uses whatever third party DVD player you have installed. In our case, it was Power DVD. Upgraded that freeware version, and voila… dolby digital acts like it’s supposed to, and DTS support is there.

So it was a long, drawn out pain in the ass; but I got what I was aiming for; plus digital video recording without having to pay the $700 Dish Network wants for a dvr/receiver. Only drawbacks to the DVR function are the video quality- because we don’t yet have a video in card that supports component video, but just acting as a digital vcr, that’s not a big deal for us- and being able to watch one show while recording another. That will require two dish receivers, and that’s something for another day.