Wireless Home Networking - Index of

228
Part IV: Using a Wireless Network
� Home theater PCs: Finally, you can bring the content right to your home
theater or media room by installing a home theater PC. These are
purpose-built PCs designed to function as your home theater’s DVR
(digital video recorder), DVD player, and general jack-of-all-trades content
source.
In the following sections we take a deeper dive into these product categories
and talk about how you can get audio and video onto your wireless network.
Almost all the entertainment networking equipment we discuss in this chapter
includes wired Ethernet connections in addition to Wi-Fi networking. So if
your whole-home network consists of both wired and wireless network infrastructure,
and the wired part of your network reaches your entertainment
system, you can use Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi to connect your audio/video
gear — we recommend that you do so if the cables are there!
When you shop for a wireless entertainment device of any sort, it’s important
to make sure it’s certified not only for the variant of 802.11 you’re using (g
or n), but also for the level of wireless networking security you’re using (see
Chapter 9 for more on this). Most new devices support all current Wi-Fi security
standards (up to and including WPA2 Personal), but traditionally this category
of product lagged behind computer networking products in terms of
security. Remember that you can’t have a mix of WEP and WPA/WPA2 on the
same network — we recommend walking away from a product that supports
only WEP unless you’re comfortable reducing the security on your entire
network.
Getting Media from Computers
to A/V Equipment
The most common question we’re asked in the realm of wireless entertainment
is, “How do I play the thousands of digital songs stored on my computer on
the high-quality audio system in my family room?” The second most common
question we’re asked is, “How do I take all of those videos on my computer
and play them on my big-screen TV?”
Well these are questions we can answer. In fact, this entire chapter is designed
to answer those questions and variants thereof. But let’s start off with the simplest
answer to these simple questions: get a digital media adapter (or player)!
If audio is your biggest concern (and for most folks it is), a digital media
adapter can be an easy-to-configure and inexpensive route between point A
(your computer) and point B (your A/V system). Adding video to the equation
means you’ll have to spend a bit more money (and will probably benefit from
the local storage contained in a digital media player instead of an adapter).