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[JustinChase]

I have all of my music, pictures and videos on an external drive.

Currently it's hooked up to my laptop (main machine) via USB, and shared on the network as a shared drive so my wife can see it.  My laptop is hooked up to my home stereo via a RCA cable.  I have no easy way to hook up the video to the TV as it stands.

My questions are:

Is there any way to hook up the external drive directly to the stereo and to the TV without going through my laptop?  I know I could set up another dedicated machine and hook that up, which is certainly an option (maybe the best).  However, before heading down that path, I just wanted to inquire if there were other methods to do this.

Additional considerations:

I have 2 printers that I share on the network, one is hooked up to my laptop, and the other to my wife's laptop.  I'd like to centralize them, along with the external drive, so that they are both available (along with the external drive) to either machine, no matter who may be connected to the network at the time (we both take our machines to work at times, leaving the other without a resource).

If I am able to centralize all of this, including the external drive, so that it's all always available, having the ability to hook that "system/box/whatever" into the stereo might be the best solution, if possible.

Hopefully someone out there has done this and can point me in the right direction.

Thanks

[mesue]

What you want is called a NAS (network attached storage). Some of them include a print server, or you can buy that as a separate device. The one I use is the NetCenter from Western Digital and it has two USB ports in it for sharing printers or additional drives.

You'll still need a computer on to serve media to the stereo. I use squeezebox and TiVo for other rooms but still need the software running on my PC in order to use them even though all my media is on the NetCenter. Apparently some NAS drives can be configured to run software, but I don't have any experience with that.

[johnnyboy]

Your other option is to buy a really old cheap laptop - you can get reasonable spec from ebay these days for older ones.
Then just use that as your server for this and whatever else you choose to add to it.

[JustinChase]

Thank you both for the suggestions/ideas.

I have spend WAY too many hours researching NAS boxes and conversion of an XBOX to use for my needs.  Unfortunately, neither solution seemed to provide the "silver bullet" of allowing me always available storage AND direct connection to my home stereo.  The XBOX solution seemed pretty close, but in the end the USB 1.0 connections, and limited room for hard drives lead me to continue my search.

the suggestion for buying an old laptop was a good one, and that got me thinking about something I had kind of forgot about in my search for the perfect easy/simple/cheap solution.

I had considered simply building an HTPC to take care of all this, but I just can't justify spending over a grand to do that for this simple purpose (yes, it has many other advantages, but none that I "need" right now).

So, I thought I'd just take a look at what Dell might have available in the form of a cheap box.  Turns out they will sell me a functional tower (all integrated sound/video) for just over $300.  That is almost as cheap as the XBOX solution, but with full functionality.  So, I think that's the way ahead for me.

Thanks again for all your help, it ended up getting my "needs" resolved in the end.

[MrHaugen]

What about visiting your local school (preferrably technology teaching) and ask if they have an old computer? Can probably get one for free. That would be the cheapest. Over the last 3 years on my school I got about 5 computers and 5GB RAM