My family moved into a new home with a basement nine months ago and I’ve been looking at ways to stream music down there. I’ve looked at the two no-brainer solutions available, the ROKU SoundBridge m1000 and the Slim Devices Squeezebox, but, tbh, both seem to be expensive for what they’re doing. The others all have something or the other that I don’t like. Logitech’s Wireless Music System for PC and Wireless DJ, for example, aren’t contenders because Logitech’s wireless technology is RF based and runs a realistic max of 100 feet when there are no barriers (signal won’t carry in my concrete laden home).

I recall buying a D-Link DSM-320 a few years ago for $160 and that did video, audio and images. So, for $200 and $300, respectively, these two boxes actually do a third of the DSM-320.

In the interest of disclosure, the DSM isn’t that great. The video’s temperamental, but the audio bit is fine as far as playback is concerned, but it’s not the greatest at finding stuff. Ultimately though, the only real drag is that it’s needs a TV screen in order to see anything.

In a perfect world, where I could go out an buy whatever I felt like, I’d get the Sonos system for every room in my home. It’s really, really, REALLY nice, but nice costs serious money — $999 for two-room remote setup and $350 for every room after that.

I’d be curious to know if there’s something out there that streams music from a network, doesn’t need an external display and doesn’t feel like it costs too much for what it’s doing.

After convincing a couple of friends a while back, I finally got around to taking my own advice and buying a pre-modded XBOX to use as a media centre. I already have the D-Link DSM-320, which is really a painful device to teach non-techies to use — hell, it’s painful for me to use as well! Though I should, I probably won’t retire the DSM-320, because it works fine (i.e. it’s not broken, though it’s far from fun to use) and I don’t like not using stuff that still turns on without blowing out smoke.

I’ve got a six year old daughter that was really psyched about it yesterday, but she played three games (Spyro, Open Season and Ice Age II) and then decided that hitting a football with her cricket bat in our driveway was more interesting — oh well, so much for the kids following in their father’s footsteps.

I’m in the process of installing all the homebrew stuff on it, which’ll allow me to use XBMC to listen/watch all of the media that’s piling up one the my hard drives and DVDs. This part seems to be straight forward, but electronics and I always manage to complicate things so that the task crosses over to being complex. Fingers crossed!