Gordon Laing

As somebody who rarely tunes in to the radio, I was a little taken aback recently to realise that I owned six boxes capable of receiving transmissions.

Curiosity aroused, imagine my surprise to count no fewer than seven devices which could play CDs. Before you consider me spoilt or foolish, take a moment to count your own, not forgetting to include PCs, alarms, portables, ghetto-blasters and in-car units.

The point of this exercise is not to illustrate consumer greed, but the fact that we commonly listen to audio throughout our homes, as well as in our cars or even when out walking.

The story's similar with TV: we watch it in lots of places. It's these very traits that the IT and consumer electronics industries are banking on as they prepare to sell us new multi-room equipment.

Of course, with radios, CD players and TVs located throughout our homes, you could argue that we've already got music and video wherever we want them.

The big difference with forthcoming products, though, is their use of existing and growing media collections on our PCs, such as mp3 music, digital photos and even videos.

Rather than playing media directly from PCs though, we'll access them across a network using cheap, friendly, client set-top boxes in every room.

With a proper Ethernet network as the backbone, multiple clients could simultaneously play the same or different files, leaving the PC out of sight and earshot.

At this point you'll either be punching the sky in joy or, more likely, wondering what all the fuss is about. I must admit to being in the latter category, having resisted the urge to rip a collection of CDs onto my hard disk or wait an age to download videos from the web.

Clearly the entire networked media sharing exercise is pointless without a media collection in the first place.

But then I realised that I actually did have a significant media collection on my PC. As a digital camera owner for three years, I'd accumulated over 2,500 photos, and that's even after deleting the embarrassing ones.

The trouble with digital cameras, though, is that you rarely end up seeing your images. You could print or email them, but generally leave them on your hard disk.

I like making TV slide shows of my photos, but each involves copying a handful of images back onto the camera then connecting it to the set. I can rarely be bothered.

Then Windows XP came along, delivering instant slide shows from my entire collection; photos I'd long forgotten about flashed up on my screen.

I was hooked and can certainly see the appeal of easily viewing the same collection from any TV in my home.

Sharing also changed my viewpoint on having a PC-based music collection. The time taken to build a significant library can easily be justified if you're able to reuse it on various portables or in-car systems.

So, despite my original scepticism, I've now come round to the idea of building a media collection on my PC and accessing it around my home. But for the concept to work, you'll also need affordable network media players.

The good news is this market is set to explode with companies like Sony and Philips already demonstrating set-top boxes with Ethernet capabilities and AV connectivity to a TV or hi-fi. Simple built-in operating systems then navigate media collections on a networked PC and stream them as required.

This is pretty much all they'll do, though, and they're also likely to cost around £300 each, a price which today buys two, or even three, DVD players that can also spin CDs and often several other formats.

Of course, they can't stream your networked media, but ultimately the price has to be right if you're supposed to buy several units.

The really annoying part is with built-in mpeg decoders and AV outputs, every DVD player could actually double as a networked media player with little modification. All it would need is an Ethernet port and sufficient nous to go looking for networked files. Digital set-top boxes are also in the same boat.

This is why, despite committing to building a media collection, I'll personally be holding back on buying dedicated client boxes until they either offer greater facilities or simply become more competitively priced.

Ultimately, I'm fed up with buying duplicate facilities and I'm on the lookout for a single, cheap device which will do it all. Almost unbelievably, I think I've found it, sitting right under my nose.

I won't win any friends at Microsoft for pointing this out, but its Xbox console can be fairly easily modified to become a networked media player, while still offering decent games and DVD facilities. Best of all, at just £129, this truly is a device you could afford in several rooms.

I know it's breaking the rules, but a modified Xbox really is the closest thing to being the perfect networked client.

Certainly, if Microsoft officially equips this or the next Xbox with media-playing software, I'd say it's got the market truly cracked.

Until Microsoft does the right thing though, the only way I'll be listening to music throughout my home will either involve my soldering iron or getting to know more radio shows.

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