Our homes — the place where we live, where we play, and where we get almost all of our entertainment during our off-time. Because of this fact, it is quite common to see people spending thousands of dollars on home theater setups of all shapes and sizes, always trying to get a better and better media experience for their music, videos, and photos. However, most people don't use these systems to their full potential. Often they will simply keep their various entertainment systems separate, or put them into a mostly lip-service combination by hooking them all up to a bulky receiver. There is an alternative, though.

The Digital Home
No, it's not an Intel marketing term. Well it is, but this one isn't full of fluff. Imagine a home where, with a few clicks of a button, you can watch the latest CS frag videos on your big screen DLP, even though the file is on your computer upstairs. Or play your latest MP3's as loud as possible on your ground floor stereo system without burning anything. It is possible to turn your home entertainment system from an everyday one into a media monster. All you need is some computer knowledge, the right programs, and depending on the setup, a hefty wallet. The digital home we're referring to is basically just your everyday network, but with a twist. Instead of being designed to share common files, this network is designed to stream media throughout the house. With any network you'll need a few items: tons of cat5 and cat6 cables are one thing, but you’ll also need routers and several computers. In this article we'll cover the types of components that are critical to a full media experience and what each of them do.

The Router

The heart of any network is of course the router. In our setup, the router will be responsible for being able to consistently stream a steady amount of bandwidth from computer to computer. This level can actually get quite high for some types of media such as DVD images; so we generally recommend that you use a Gigabit router for this particular operation. A solid D-Link gigabit router can be found on Newegg for around $110. This will provide plenty of bandwidth for any streaming activity, even the when the newer generations of videos come out.