The new Linksys Wireless Media Bridge WMB54G is a wonderfully simple solution to a big need -- sending audio from Media Center to a stereo amp across the room or even across the house. I'm already coming up with reasons to buy several!
Rather than try to PULL the audio files from MC via UPnP as "media players" such as Netgear MP101NA do, this Linksys system PUSHES the audio output via the Windows sound driver to a remote device that connects to the stereo amp. The connection can be wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11g. In my house it works fine, sounds good, and doesn't seem to have any cranky network/interface problems.
However, MC 11.1.121 doesn't seem to work with the output switching feature of the Linksys WMB54G, done via a little system tray icon that selects either the PC's speakers or the remote WMB as the audio destination.
In my experiments on multiple PCs, MC ignores the on-the-fly audio output switching done by the Wireless Media Bridge, while other Windows audio sources I tried DO make the switch on-the-fly. It seems that MC 11 locks onto the audio driver that is active when MC is started, and ignores any dynamic change of the audio driver. The only workaround I found is to restart MC after each driver switch.
I'm hoping there's an option I overlooked in MC 11 that can support dynamic driver switching but if not, I'm hoping the JRiver wizards can devise a solution.
-- John