Just Waiting on the Technology
I have fairly large plans for our eventual media center and network, but basically right now it’s at a state where I can’t do much of anything until the technology catches up with my desires. Time Warner has (or will be imminently) changed our cable system to the standard one outlet system, so that means I can how utilize Cablecards to tune to all the digtal channels. Well, that’s great except for the fact that Cablecard support won’t be coming until Vista, which releases at the end of January. And then, Cablecard tuners will only come in new PCs that have been “certified” by CableLabs, so it’s not like I can upgrade one of our existing computers or buy the parts on my own.
Additionally, my dad wants to get a TV down in his study. Well, there’s no cable outlet, so my choices there are either to have one installed or go with some solution utilizing our network. Sony has their LocationFree line of TVs that operate wirelessly, but they’re (IMO) overpriced and people have made less than stellar comments about the video quality. So, that means that any other TV would need to use a Media Center Extender, which requires a Media Center PC, which I don’t want to get until I one can use Cablecards, which…
Finally, I also want to set up our network so that essentially our entire (read: primarily my, but some of my mom’s and dad’s also) music and movie collection can be streamed to any computer (and eventually TV through MCEs). Well, right now the file server I have set up is running Ubuntu Linux, and the primary technology used by MCEs (Windows Media Connect) isn’t available under Linux. So, that means I’d need to install XP or Vista onto the computer to achieve that functionality, but the computer I have set up to be the file server right now isn’t powerful enough to run either of those. That means I’ll wait until we get a Media Center PC running Vista and offload all the media duties to it, keeping the file and backup storage handled by the old computer (which I eventually want to replace with a sleeker, smaller one, but that’s like a next summer project).