Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 12: Networking Your Entertainment Center
Other wireless ways (where there’s a will . . . )
We are obviously biased toward the 802.11
technologies because we believe in a wireless
home network backbone. We think that with all
the focus on standards, costs will decrease,
new features will evolve, and the overall capability
will continue to get better. Collectively, it
simply gives you more options for the home.
That doesn’t mean, however, that standards are
the only way to go. Plenty of proprietary 900
MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5 GHz approaches — as well
as other frequency bands — are popular
because they’re cheap to manufacture and
cheap to implement. For example, check out the
Audiovox Terk (www.audiovox.com, $99) Leapfrog
Series Wireless A/V System (Model LF-30S,
for example), which uses the same 2.4 GHz
You’ve undoubtedly read about Hollywood’s drive to rid the Internet of peerto-peer
file-sharing programs, to halt the ripping (copying) of DVDs from
rented DVD discs, and so on. For the rest of us, who have better things to
focus on, a slew of great online music stores and services are legal, economical,
and easy to use — you just have to try them.
You find three types of online music offerings:
frequency spectrum as 802.11b and 802.11g to
carry audio and video around the house. The
gear we’ve tested in this space, like the X10
Entertainment Anywhere and various Radio
Shack 900 MHz models, has been somewhat of
a disappointment, but it does work.
So, 802.11 isn’t the only way, but we prefer it
based on experience. Just remember: The more
signals you put in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ranges
to compete with your 802.11 signals, the more
problems you have. The 802.11 products are
building in new quality-of-service capabilities
designed to deal with multiple simultaneous
audio and video transmissions, and over time
will be more robust, accessible, and reliable, we
think. Look for the Wi-Fi icon when you buy.
� Online music and video stores, such as Apple’s iTunes Store, where you
download music to your PC or network-capable device. There are limits
to what you can do with these songs after they’re downloaded, but generally
you can play them anywhere on your network.
� Online music subscription services, such as Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music,
where you can play any songs available in their catalogs. These are
streaming audio songs that you play as often as you like, wherever you
want, as long as you have Internet access. For many of these services, if
you want to play them off your PC, you need a media adapter or player
designed for that service.
� A combination of the preceding two items where you can play any songs
you want during your subscription period and optionally download (and
keep) songs for an extra fee.
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