Digital Trends

The Battle for Your Media

At this year's keynote speech, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that the company has sold more than 1 million media center PC's in 2004. This has to have attracted some attention because this year we saw a plethora or companies introducing new products which stream media content from your PC or their own media server, to your television. Are you stuck with a Microsoft product in order to do this? Don't count on it.

Thomson owned Acoustic Research announced a new streaming media device which will search your home network for media content and display it on your television in high resolution. We love the polished aluminum look and the fact that Thomson's goal was to make this product look good in your audio rack.

If you do not want pictures and video streamed throughout your home and would prefer only music, then Philips has the answer for you. As part of their Streamium line of products these new audio receivers will stream music to any room in your home using your existing network. They look great and sound even better.

This is the base station and media server for this Philips system. From our understanding, up to 4 receivers can be hooked up to the base for broadcasting music. Its on-screen menu was very simple to use and music was categorized by Album, Artist, and Genre. The system also supports UPnP.