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Sony Vaio PC Plus RoomLink

If a PC-centric approach to Wi-Fi entertainment is more your style, Sony offers a solution. With personal video recording and audio jukebox features, the Vaio PCV-RZ36G ($2,099) is about as A/V-friendly as a PC can get. Combine it with Sony's wireless PCWA-A500 router ($349), wireless PCWA-DE50 Ethernet converter ($199), and RoomLink Network Media Receiver ($199), and you'll have everything you need to wirelessly distribute both audio and video in your home.

The Vaio is a decked-out desktop PC with a 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor, 160-GB hard disk, and a recordable DVD drive that supports the erasable DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats as well as the write-once DVD-R format. Its software bundle includes SonicStage for MP3 encoding, creating music playlists, and burning CDs as well as Giga Pocket PVR for recording cable, satellite, or broadcast TV in TiVo-like fashion. It also has FireWire and USB 2.0 ports for connecting a digital camcorder and Adobe Premiere LE software for editing your home movies.

To send audio and video stored on the PC to other rooms, you connect the Vaio to the wireless router, which broadcasts data using the 802.11a Wi-Fi standard - a version five times faster than the more common 802.11b, making it better for sending video. The signals are picked up at the remote location by the Ethernet converter connected to the Ethernet port on the RoomLink receiver, which feeds video to your A/V system or TV through composite- or S-video outputs and audio through stereo analog or optical digital outputs. Range varies, but it is said to average around 30 to 50 feet.

You need some computer know-how to get Sony's Wi-Fi solution up and running, but it offers a considerable reward for your efforts: wire-free access to audio and video. You operate the RoomLink receiver just like a normal component. It comes with a remote control so you can use your TV to browse lists of photos, songs, or video recordings stored on the PC, and your selections are streamed instantly from the hard drive. And with both the computer and the necessary peripherals coming from one company, the odds are good that all of it will work together smoothly.