More ways to avoid buying a Media Center PC

Here's the scoop on two more products that help in my quest to not only connect more devices to the home network, but also come up with ways to record TV shows without having to buy a new Windows Media Center PC.

The Diamond Xtreme TV PVR600 Power Pack bundle includes an external TV tuner that connects to a cable line and PC in order to record shows -- and the Buffalo Link Theater is a networked media player that can wirelessly stream music, photos and videos (including recorded TV shows) from a PC or network drive to a TV.

The Diamond PVR600 is a small box about the size of a PDA, which bridges the cable line and a PC (Windows 2000 or XP on the PC is required). The cable line goes into the PVR600, and then a USB 2.0 cable goes from the PRV600 to the PC.

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Here's the scoop on two more products that help in my quest to not only connect more devices to the home network, but also come up with ways to record TV shows without having to buy a new Windows Media Center PC.

The Diamond Xtreme TV PVR600 Power Pack bundle includes an external TV tuner that connects to a cable line and PC in order to record shows -- and the Buffalo Link Theater is a networked media player that can wirelessly stream music, photos and videos (including recorded TV shows) from a PC or network drive to a TV.

The Diamond PVR600 is a small box about the size of a PDA, which bridges the cable line and a PC (Windows 2000 or XP on the PC is required). The cable line goes into the PVR600, and then a USB 2.0 cable goes from the PRV600 to the PC.

The Power Pack bundle includes a copy of SnapStream's Beyond TV Subscription Edition, personal video recorder software that includes an electronic program guide (60 days free, then you  need to buy a subscription). The software acts like a Tivo or other PVR, and the interface has that TV feel to it (the bundle comes with a remote control, but I just used the keyboard to find a show to record).

My biggest problem with the Beyond TV software is you cannot change the location of where the recorded shows are stored -- you have to save them on the hard drive of the PC on which the software is installed. It would be a lot easier to directly record to a network-attached storage (NAS) drive, the central repository for all my multimedia. Since a 30-minute program is approximately 1G byte (980M bytes for an episode of "Cops" I recorded), recording a lot of shows will quickly fill up the hard drive of a PC. Copying the 980M bytes from my PC to the NAS device took about 7 to 8 minutes -- again, if I could eliminate this step it would have made me happier.

Once on the network drive, my next step was to set up the Buffalo Link Theater . This device looks like a DVD player or other home entertainment component (the Link Theater includes a DVD drive), and can connect to a TV via composite, S-video or component video cables. The system can also be connected to a home network via wireless (802.11g) or wired Ethernet. I connected the Link Theater to my 802.11g wireless network, which had to have WPA security disabled because the device only supports WEP. That could be a deal-breaker if you insist on having WPA-enabled security.

Once connected to the home network, the Link Theater will play music, photos or videos from any PC that is running a Buffalo client. In addition, the Link Theater will connect directly to a Buffalo LinkStation NAS box. Fortunately I have such a box and could connect the LinkStation to the Link Theater once I updated the LinkStation's firmware.

The streaming quality of the Link Theater box, even over the 802.11g network, did not disappoint. The system played music and videos flawlessly without any jitter or latency over the wireless network. We've seen other media players that aim to stream video and music over a wireless connection, but in practice they tend to be jittery. This one wasn't.