Streaming media: Wireless home music, photo and video sharing

Many new devices allow you to wirelessly share your media around your home streaming music, video and photos from one machine to another.

From photos to music and video, much of the media that we use or create is going digital. That makes it more portable, easier to manipulate and to store, but for many people it has also meant that their record collection is now trapped on a computer. Few of us, however, want to watch television on our computers if we can get away without, and even fewer really want poor-quality computer speakers playing our favourite songs.

That’s where streaming comes in – this is the process of freeing your media, and in practice that means adding some sort of hard disk to your current music system. In some cases, you’ll simply be able to connect your computer to a Wi-Fi network and add some speakers. But with a little more planning you can use digital media to make your hi-fi and your television a lot more flexible.

For most people, music is much more likely to already be digital than TV – DVDs remain the main way of watching films, and although the BBC’s iPlayer has revolutionised catch-up television, it has yet to achieve the integration with television sets that the Corporation is known to be working on.

The important thing for music, therefore, is to make sure as much of your library as possible is on a single hard drive, and to decide how you want to access it. An old computer and an iPod, for instance, can become the perfect “media server” – you don’t need a monitor because the iPod can act as a remote control and browser for your music collection, but you will need a decent set of speakers, such as those made specifically for the purpose by companies such as Teufel or Altec Lansing.

Although there are many rather more expensive methods of integrating digital media into your hi-fi set up than those we detail here, recycling old kit and buying inexpensive add-ons really can set your current collection free, and mean you never have to get up to change the CD again.

Read the full article here: Streaming media - Wireless home music, photo and video sharing