A few things to keep in mind:
1. As far as I am aware, DLNA does not support synchronization - and that's one of the things holding me back from buying DLNA devices right now.
2. Unfortunately AirPlay/Airfoil are far from a perfect solution - though it may work depending on your requirements.
My biggest issues with Airfoil are that:
• It keeps the AirPlay connection active all the time and holds onto devices.
On more than one occasion I have forgotten to disable Airfoil, which has left other people unable to stream to the device.
When I last contacted Rogue Amoeba, they said that they were looking into an option to drop the connection if it has been idle for a certain amount of time. (though I don't know if this means it has to be manually started on the PC the next time)
• If you intend on using its virtual audio device as a Zone you can play to in Media Center (rather than its hack to capture audio from the program via DirectSound) every time you launch the app or enable AirPlay streaming, it takes control of the default sound device. This means that
all system audio gets routed through it.
Rogue Amoeba don't seem to have an interest in fixing this. All they need to do is provide an option which does not change the default audio device when their virtual audio driver is being used.
The best "solution" I have found is to use
AudioSwitch which lets me quickly change the default audio device back without having to open up the control panel.
(note: AudioSwitch's tray icon
does not update if another program changes the active device)
• The program refuses to start minimized in the tray.
If these three things were addressed, it could be a well-integrated solution which requires no user input to work.
(an even nicer solution would be having AirPlay support built into Media Center...)