If you follow this blog at all, you’ve probably read some of my exploits in trying to find a perfect home theatre solution that blends discless DVD playback with the latest streaming video trends. Last year I jacked a D-Link DNS-323 NAS into my home office network with 2 TB of storage for ripped DVDs, and have been alternating between the Apple TV and an HP Windows Vista box to watch them.

Unfortunately, this isn’t quite as seamless as I had first hoped.
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I’ll admit it: I’m a whore for software updates. I’m always the first person I know to buy new OS upgrades. Adobe keeps getting my hard-earned $$ for every Creative Suite upgrade (at least since CS2, anyway). I spend my evenings with iPhone in hand, clicking on the App Store every so often to see what’s been updated that night. I visit Versiontracker.com almost first thing every morning, and several times throughout the day, to see what’s new. And I get a little tingle whenever I open some piece of freeware or shareware that pops up a notice about a new update, even if the list of changes have nothing to do with me.

But a funny thing has happened recently… I’m starting to skip some of the paid updates.
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I guess Wednesday is the new Monday, because yesterday kind of sucked! In addition to Apple CEO Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence until late June, we’ve got the deaths of Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan to be depressed about.
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I was as shocked as the next guy when I read last night’s news about how Apple will pull out of Macworld Expo after next month’s shindig, and the double whopper (with cheese) that Steve Jobs will not be doing the keynote address we’ve all come to know and love.
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OK, so almost 2 years I blogged on MySpace about how I didn’t need an Apple TV (a post which is mirrored here, for those of you brave enough to click back far enough in time). Long story short, now I (finally) have one. What changed?
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(Image courtesy Amazon.com user Y. Chang)

Got a little sidetracked here lately with life so I didn’t get a chance to yap about setting up my new NAS (network-attached storage). Jump back a few posts to catch the details of how I arrived at this particular setup, and forge on to hear my thoughts on how it all worked out.
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OK, enough with political opinion, it’s time to get back to the good stuff. 😉

I’ve decided to update my home office network, which for the last 2 years has consisted of an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station with a Western Digital 500 GB MyBook hard drive attached to it. This setup has served me mostly well, being able to store software updaters and other files that I need to share between my main MacBook Pro work setup, my Mac G5 editing system and even my home theatre’s HP Windows Vista box in the living room or the wife’s Powerbook G4 in the kitchen. But now I’m ready to do even more with my network, and here’s why.
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Apple’s iPod turns 7 today, although it seems like it’s been with us forever!
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Last year at this time, I first discovered the Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player. As anyone who reads this blog probably realizes, I’m a bit of a gadget nut but most of my media-playing allegiance has gone to Apple’s iPod and iPhone. (I skipped the Apple TV originally because I’m more of a renter than a buyer these days, which has since been addressed. My living room still is without an Apple TV.)
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So Apple held a big event last week to announce this year’s iPod lineup. In case you haven’t heard, they overhauled the iPod Touch with some stuff it should have had all along (like a speaker) and a new line of iPod Nanos in some tasty colors.
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