Streaming Video for Cheapskates

In our previous Solutions story, "Stream Video to Your Living-Room PC", we covered how to stream movies from services such as Netflix's Watch Now, Vongo, and others to your living-room PC or set-top box for display on your TV. Well, what if you don't have a living-room PC or a set-top box—and don't want one! Maybe it's the price that's holding you back, or the fact that you just don't want yet another box to configure and keep in your entertainment center. Since set-top boxes and media center PCs are still mostly niche products, we're guessing there are a lot of you out there.

But watching a video streamed from your PC to your TV would still be nice, right? You could burn DVDs, but that's time-consuming, and your feng shui proclivities dictate that you avoid having a bunch of DVDs you'll never watch again cluttering up your home. Well, for the penny-pinchers, the minimalists, and those who have older equipment, there are still ways to watch PC video on your TV, many of which cost less than $100. Don't expect HD picture quality—or even DVD quality for that matter—but in most cases the video signal is quite watchable.

Read more here.

Inside Windows Server 2008

Eleven months left in 2008, and the year's recurring tech theme is already resounding loudly: Windows Server 2008. Get used to it, because you'll be hearing it over and over for the foreseeable future. The new server OS promises a load of fresh goodies for Microsoft-platform devotees, with more stuff to follow. Does this really apply to small and midsize businesses? You bet, and as ever, there's good and bad.

Read the rest here.

Connect Linux to a Wireless Network

Improvements in the latest Ubuntu release, version 7.10, include better hardware installation, enhanced desktop search, NTFS -support (which I'll cover in the next month's Linux Solution)—and much better wireless networking. You could certainly connect to a wireless network with earlier versions, but wireless networking just seems to work better with 7.10. In addition, it natively supports Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) security. With that in mind, let's turn now to getting Ubuntu working with an existing wireless Windows network.

Read the rest here.

Jimmy Ruska's Video Tutorials

Jimmy Ruska's Video Tutorials