Summary

What follows is a review of the experiences I've had with various home network media sharing setups, in what I'm calling my "Home Media Networking Quest".  Specifically it focusses on describing the pros and cons of the various software and devices available in an attempt to establish a baseline understanding of what works and what doesn't, and why - to aid in the quest to achieve Home Media Networking utopia.

My Requirements

• Must stream to Xbox 360, WMP 11 on Vista and Windows 7
• Must play Xvid/DivX-encoded AVI, MPG/MPEG (1 and 2), MP4.  I will accept having to "trick" H.264 media by changing the file extension to AVI, which seems to be common in some cases.

Optional Requirements

• Streaming to PS3, Wii, Mac OS-X, Linux (Ubuntu) iPhone, "Other" Mobile OS
• Presentation of Internet Feed media such as Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, etc.
• Would prefer the solution to play MKV files, as most of my High Def stuff is in this format.  I'm not against converting to MP4/H.264, and am already expecting to due to lack of support on the Xbox 360

Assumptions

• The 4GB barrier.  Most setups have an issue when the source file is larger than 4GB.  Although I dream of finding a setup that supports larger files, I'm not holding my breath.  This seems to be a limitation built into DLNA somewhere.  When I find out where, I'll post it here.
• Not expecting this to work with any DRM-protected content
• Not expecting this to work seamlessly with my iTunes library (I have one, one a Mac, syncing to my iPhone)

Current Standings

My current opinion on "what's best" are, with #1 being "the best": 

1. The Proprietary Appliance.  Have not tried it yet, but it's #1 in my mind.  Purpose built.  In theory, you can't go wrong.
2. Windows Home Server.  Almost like an appliance, but can be cheaper due to commodity hardware.
3. Windows Media Player.  Slightly more cumbersome and not as purpose-built, but it will do the job.

Right now I'm using a spare older laptop (1.6 Ghz P4 with 2 GB of RAM) as my media server, running Windows 7 with Windows Media Player streaming enabled (option #3 above).  It's got a bad battery and a bad screen, but it works well enough for the moment as a temporary solution.  I have a 1 TB external drive connected via USB with the media on it.  This drive is intended for a more permanent home as an internal drive in a "proper" media server - whether that ends up being an appliance or a WHS box.  It's taken me a couple of days to try out some of the various options below and record my experiences with them, then settle on this as an interim solution and get the whole thing up and running to my satisfaction.  Some of that time was spent building the network itself, and troubleshooting (why did I uncheck Client for Microsoft Networks, anyway).  In the end I'm happy with what I've got as an interim solution, because it satisfies the majority of my requirements.

The Solutions

TVersity

TVersity has alot of promise, but fails to deliver.  I've never been happy with it, even though it's blown me away in principle.

Pros:

• Real-Live transcoding.  Means I don't have to convert videos to formats supported by each individual player
• Internet feeds.  Youtube, Hulu, and other RSS feeds, means I get access to a huge array of content
• Built-in web player.  Means I can access from pseudo-supported devices, such as Wii and Mobiles

Cons:

• Setup.  It doesn't work under so many different scenarios, it's ridiculous.  I don't think it's entirely TVersity's fault, though I think there's more they can do to improve this experience
  • Limited OS support.  Windows only.  Linux would be a great start, for those looking to do this on the cheap.
  • Limited OS support.  Did I say that already?  But wait, it doesn't like UAC, so if you do, Vista is out.  XP seems to be the best and only option for TVersity
  • Firewalls.  Thought it adds itself as an exeption to the firewall list, I've spent hours poking around at a TVersity install under Windows 7, and it just isn't letting me get to it.  Maybe this is a Windows 7 problem, or some other problem.  But I'm frustrated.
  • The TVersity clients.  Both the web client and the flash client are, in a word, crap.  I appreciate that they are there, but they don't seem to be doing any development in this area.
  • The Navigation.  They seem to tout their tags and heirachy, but I find it annoying.  When a menu lists there are 3 items inside, it might only be 3 folders, all of which might be empty.  If I see a number 3, I expect there to be 3 playable items inside, even if they're within subfolders.
  • Weird connection errors.  Sometimes it tells me that the Internet connection has timed out when accessing the TVersity console.  Sometimes I can't access the console because it says "another instance is already running".  Just weird stuff.

Windows Media Player 11 (WMP)

I run mostly Microsoft stuff, but making things easy for the end user is not always their strong suit.  They seem to have gotten this right.  It just works.  There are, however, a number of drawbacks to this setup.

Pros:

• It just works.  I shared out on one computer and was watching on another, and in Xbox 360 in minutes.  Not a problem.

Cons:

• I'm not sure whether this will play anything other than AVI and WMV (for video).  I need MKV support.  I'd also like to see whether files larger than 4 GB are supported.

Boxee

Pros:

• Clients for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
• Supports Internet content such as Hulu and Youtube.
• Social Network integration.  Not sure if this is a Pro, but the others don't seem to have anything like it.
• Source Code Available.  I would never use this, but again, this seems to be unique to boxee.
• Brilliant TV-friendly interface.  Brilliant.  Which means, this is a client more than a server.

Cons:

• Couldn't get it to stay running.
• No way to browse folders for media - have to type it in.  What is the "special:\\" URL anyway?.
• Doesn't seem to be a server - only a client.  Of course, really no way to know since it keeps crashing.
• I did manage to get it to play a local WMV file (note: LOCAL), but the video quality was horrendous.

Orb

Tried this once before and couldn't get it to work.  Caught a thread on it recently and think I need to give it another go.

Myth TV

Haven't tried it and don't know that much about it.  Seems very extensible, but perhaps a client/local-only solution with more of a DVR focus.

Sage TV

Haven't tried it, but I am considering that an end-to-end solution like this might be the best way of all to go.  The only hurdle is the price.

FireFly

I haven't tried this either, but I've read that the HP 587 uses Firefly to enable Mac support, so it's probably worth a look.

iTunes

I don't use this yet.  Haven't tried it yet.  But Apple seems to be poised to push large into this space.  They pretty much already have, but in a very MAC-centric way.  My mileage may vary once I try it.  My issue has always been in pushing to the Xbox360, but third party plugins such as Rivet seem to have solved this. 

Windows Home Server

I haven't tried this recently, but have before.  I'm pretty excited about this outing from Microsoft.

Pros:

• It just works.  Sounds alot like WMP, doesn't it?
• Supports file shares also
• Great data redundancy options for replicating across drives
• Backs up files from client PC's using an agent
• Plugins
• This is a dedicated server - doesn't require an underlying OS.  This has the benefit of no hidden pricing plus appliance-like funcationality.  It also carries with it the unfortunate con listed below: "Drivers".

Cons:

• Same limitations as WMP in terms of supported formats
• Doesn't support Internet media such as Youtube or Hulu
• Costs money
• No transcoding, so you have to pre-convert your content to be compatible with the majority of your devices.
• Drivers.  It's based on Windows Server 2003, so you might have a hard time finding drivers for your particular mix of hardware.  Fortunately most XP drivers work in 2003, but it's not guaranteed.  This is a fairly uncommon and unique problem, so it's more of a risk than an outright con.
• Difficult to find the right commodity hardware, if you're going this route.  I mean, I'd prefer a slick small form factor to tuck in a corner.  Not a "desktop" in the corner.  Good luck finding something slick and small without going to HP's or Acer's appliance based on WHS.

WHS Appliances

I haven't tried these yet either, but my thought is: stay away.  Especially when it comes to HP.  HP likes to break things to make them "HP" branded, or "HP" functional.  And "HP" functional is almost always a bad thing straight away, plus it makes it impossible to upgrade the software components from the third party - in this case, it would make it impossible to upgrade or update WHS from Microsoft - instead you would have to wait for HP's re-packaging of MS's update.  This might take months, and it will almost certainly suck, and it will definitely be incompatibile with some plugin.  No thanks.

Proprietary Appliances

I'm totally stoked to try an appliance.  They seem to be "the right solution", but the price point seems also very high.  Again, my mileage may vary once I try one.