Interestingly, the rise of broadband to the home has change ways in which people can now entertain.
for example in the pass you buy a stereo to play music, dvd player or vcr for movies, console for games and no option to look at family pictures. Now with the Internet and personal computer, you can do all of the above in one place with very good quality.
The two competing options are the Xbox and the pc running windows or linux. For PC, microsoft has a media version to fit this purpose, see http://www.xpmce.com/ Linux has several such as freevo and MythTV.
The xbox has many options, like http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/ and others. you would need to modify an existing xbox with large harddrive and boot rom etc. This can be found at various sites using google.
In respect to cost, $500US could get you a reasonable PC or modified xbox with 160GB hard drive, Tv-out card and remote control. top of the line will run from $1000 to $2000.00 but can be less if you get creative.
The interesting thing is there are numerous online sites that sell membership to get the latest movies and music. when I say latest, I mean before its selling on DVD etc.. most membership run for $50US for over two years at a time.
With this approach, you really do not need movie channels on the cable which means you pay off the above cost in a very short time if you are a movie lover. For music, all you need is a good set of speakers and you jamming. With many option of software, you could run a good party using this setup.
As I am in the process of setting this up, I would love to see if we could server the video over my home wireless network to a notebook or tablet PC. I tried to evaluate whats the best option and it seems the PC with either Linux or windows is best. The xbox would win if I was a gaming person but I am open to getting one for later use by the kids.
I will later show more interesting stuff with integration etc. Maybe add Voip into the mix with WLan phone etc..
