I am real new at this and have a few questions.

i have a 1080p lcd tv, athlon 64 laptop xp home edition, network drive and netgear eva8000 whish has its issues.

my questions are:
does a media extender work without a media center exdition of windows?
what can be streamed to the tv? Just video or surfing the web?
can the eva8000 be used?

anthony

If your media client (i.e. Popcorn Hour, HP MediaSmart Connect X280N) is UpNP/DLNA compliant, you do not necessarily need Media Center installed on the server to stream media you already have available. You can stream audio/video/pictures without Media Center and any that are available on your server (your computer).

If you want to do Live Television, you would need Media Center (or another third party application that works like Media Center, in example GB-PVR).

For browsing the web on your television, you would need either Media Center with a plugin (i.e. MCEBrowser) or a third party application that allows you to do that (i.e. GB-PVR). Personally, it is not a great experience and is not very desirable to me, however, your tastes may differ.

You should look at your specifications for your equipment, the specifications for your potential media client, and your server capabilities prior to making any decisions.

I would suggest your browse these forums and read the messages. You will eventually find the right choice, but you do need to research these things first.

It sounds like you might want to google some keywords (i.e. UpNP, DLNA, Media Streaming, or actual device names). The results should yield some decent wiki's for beginners (good introductions).

Regards