apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Or you could just buy a PS3, insert a 500GB HDD, store all your music and movies on it or stream all music and movies from your PC. PS3 has the benefit of having a blu-ray player and you can run all your music and video to your Amp and speakers via 1 cable

I have a similar setup (minus the Airport).

But I've been looking for ways to do Hulu to my TV. Since they didn't announce it this week at E3, can you suggest an easy/inexpensive way to get Hulu from your computer to your TV? Looked into Boxee, just not sure if there's anything better.

Hulu will play via Xbox 360 using PlayOn Media Server running on Windows (it works under Bootcamp on Mac, but has ip/port issues under Parallels).

Or you could just use Medialink for PS3 or Connect 360 for Xbox 360 by http://www.nullriver.com/

I use both and they work fine but you must disable energy saver when you plan to be streaming for a long periond of time.

yessssss!

i find my Airport to be very sensitive to interference and decided that the joy of wireless audio was not worth the nuisance of interrupted audio...

I have 2 airports and I love them. One was sensitive to the microwave about 3 feet away so I ran a LAN cable through the attic and it now provides completely nuisance free sound. I wasn't upset with the airport. Practically any other wifi device (2.4Ghz) would suffer the same fate.

The other is untethered and doesn't seem to have a problem, although it is closer to a router.

If you have a strong signal or can go wired I say it is worth it if your an itunes junkie. One of the other nice things about the airtunes / itunes combo is it lets you play synced music in multiple locations. If you have an iphone or ipod touch you can use it as a remote to change songs, see whose currently playing, adjust the volume, etc.

So what network input does it have? And where is it?

man i need someone to come over and hook up my place.

currently struggling with redoing the whole home theater thing, now i've got to address the whole 20ft audio cable draping from my computer to the AV receiver. spent 2 hrs at B&H the other day... this stuff is like math-panic. my head is ACHING from looking at tangles of cables.

oh, yeah, and i'm looking into media extenders if you want to address them in a post, eh? eh? my computer isn't THAT far from my AV receiver, but i don't really need to add some huge dramatic system to connect wirelessly or stream music. i WANT it to be wireless since i work from home and listen to music on the surround system ALL DAY LONG, but i really don't know my options. guy at b&h told me to look into linksys media extenders, but they seem to be for things on different levels of a house, not 10ft away!!

is it possible to have the express hooked into the router but also have another "hard wired" connection to the router?

It's nice to always have the wireless capability but for watching movies it would be nice to have the ability to plug directly into the laptop without having to physically disconnect the wireless. Does that make sense????

Like people have mentioned, wireless can be spotty at times.

@art: If your laptop is tethered to your router, and your router has a wifi setup then you're probably set. Put the airport express within the wifi range and only tether the laptop when you need/want to.

I have three airport express stations in my house; as I have a significant existing investment in stereo systems and didn't like the Sonos or other streaming audio alternatives available. The combo of an iMac, three airport expresses and an iPod touch running the iTunes remote software has kept me mostly happy. The significant pain (there's always something) is that iTunes and Airport Express won't handle FLAC audio content, leaving me to 'make due' with 320MB streams.

The combo of XBox360 Connect and an iMac in the office has further added significant utility to the setup in the bedroom, where the 360 serves duty as a media streaming device for Netflix and my personal collection of ripped DVD's.

@ErikTheRed: Hulu is out unless you choose to go with an AppleTV or wish to run Windows. If you do have a Windows box (or an emulator as Trent mentions) then the playon software will work fine.

@Trent: It's really disappointing that XBox360 Connect hasn't grown its feature set to compete with playon. Maybe once playon releases a MacOS client it will get better.

I've been using an older AirPort Express for a couple of years to stream audio to my h/k surround receiver. I seldom have connectivity issues - maybe once every six months, for a moment, there's a dropout.

The secret for me has been to connect the AirPort to the switched power outlet on the receiver, so it only comes on when the receiver is on. If you leave it on constantly, it seems like connectivity issues eventually develop (although power cycling it always resolves them). But since I only use it for audio, there's no point in having it on when the receiver's not on.

I also don't use iTunes. I use the wonderful, far more powerful MediaMonkey, which supports open source lossless formats like FLAC and lossless streaming, as well as lossy formats like .mp3 and .AAC. There's a plugin for MediaMonkey (and Winamp) called the Remote Speakers Output Plugin that allows it to work with an AirPort Express. So you aren't just limited to iTunes and whatever audio formats Apple has seen fit to support (although it's easiest to get it working with iTunes, obviously - just plug and play).

I will say, having tried several other media receivers, the AirPort Express is by far the best of the bunch. Its built in D/A converter and analog amps aren't the best - though they aren't bad, either - but it has an optical digital output that I just plugged into my h/k receiver, which has a wonderful D/A converter of its own.

The newer AirPort Express is much faster than the older model that I have, and has greater range, so I'd imagine it would work even better for most users. And the great thing about the AirPort is that if you ever do replace it with some other solution, you could always turn around and use it as a wireless print server, range extender or portable access point. It's a very flexible little gadget that's likely to provide years of service in some role, and I found it easier to setup than any other wireless device I've utilized. It's worth the (slight) price premium it commands.

Oh, and I think Belkin makes a little matching stand for it to plug into. I bought one and have it sitting on top of my television, where it gets great reception and looks kinda cool.

I wasn't aware of the MediaMonkey plugin. I'll have to go look into it. Thanks for the tip.