Home Networking: The Missing Manual

Chapter 8. Fun and Games with Your Network

Sure, your home network lets you share your Internet connection, exchange files back and forth, and print to your heart's content. But you can do all that at the office. Welcome, at last, to the fun part of home networking—the gadgets, add-ons, and recreational options that you've probably heard about or seen if you've spent more than 10 minutes in an electronics superstore recently.

Now that your network is up and running, what you can do with it is pretty amazing:

• Play your PC's music on your stereo. Instead of listening to your music collection on your tinny, tiny computer speakers, you can find a product that lets you blast those audio tracks through your home network and out the speakers of your state-of-the-art home theater system.

• Display digital photos on your television. You can use your network as an escape tunnel and free your digital photo collection from the cramped confines of your computer's monitor and project them in all their glory on your television screen.

• Add storage space that all your network PCs can use. Music and pictures are fun, but they chew up a lot of hard-drive space. Your home network can ride to the rescue here, too, by giving you an easy outlet to quickly and easily add storage space that any computer on your network can use.

• Play video games across the network. A home network brings your gaming experience to an extreme, supreme level. Most game consoles sold today, like the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation ...