Now that I have the Media Extender in place, I am puzzled. The extender essentially only synchs up with the Media Center on my PC, giving me "remote control" over the content that’s been harvested on my Media Center. That’s kind of cool.
What is does not do is allow me to stream other content on my PC that lives outside the Media Center. That’s not so cool. With my $90 RCA Lyra, I can stream audio of ANY kind from my PC to my home stereo. With the Media Center, I cannot stream Rhapsody, Capital FM from London or one of those short videos from Amazon or some funky videoblog. Again, not cool. This is not to say there aren’t some interesting features to Media Center that I can view on my TV—the raw feeds from Reuters are amazing. It just seems like a very narrow view of the world.
That leads me to another step in this process—I am going to need to get a more "vanilla" audio/video streaming device (like the one from Linksys) to allow me to stream ALL content from PC to TV. Sadly, I will not be able to hook it up to my big home entertainment center; I will have to use my auxiliary home media set-up in the bedroom. I might also have to spring for a new TV—that one is more than 15 years old.
