As a follow up to Jay Rolls’ earlier post about “slinging” content around the home, I set out today to learn more about the different ways companies are bringing media into the home and the different options for sharing that media between interconnected peripherals. One approach is to implement a shared media vault—essentially storing all media on a centrally located hard drive shared over a network by any televisions and computers in the house. Maxtor, HP, and Microsoft all offer these solutions—and those are just the companies I stumbled across.

Another approach is to network between the digital set-top box and the home computer, allowing a two-way viaduct of television shows, movies, audio, and personal files. There are several ways to network, including the 802.11 wireless standards, powerline networking, and traditional hard-wired connections. Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, Apple, Microsoft, RCA, and Toshiba offer this type of sharing, and those are again just the companies I stumbled over.

The message here is that options abound for creating the ultimate media system, and many of the components are already in place. Where the consumer must make a decision is in how to implement such a network and how to tailor it to his individual needs.