SmallNetBuilder

Setup - more

Like most PCs out there, mine is not Viiv certified, so I went with the standard install. The installation went smoothly, but I was a bit annoyed to have to reboot when the install was complete. When the reboot finished, I entered the media server configuration menu to choose which directories I wanted to serve up to the LinkTheater (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Server configuration

The basic idea is that you pick out the directories that include your multimedia, and the server will index them for serving up to the LinkTheater. I found that this indexing could take quite a while, depending on how many files you have. Once I had this running, I turned back to the LinkTheater for playback. Figure 5 shows the top-level menu.

Figure 5: LinkTheater top-level menu

As you can see, the basic menu is fairly spartan with little visual appeal, sort of reminding me of the Windows 3.0 days. Under the "Browse Media" sub menu you'll find a selection of all of the media servers present on your network (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Server Selection

In my case, I had quite a few to choose from. For some reason, the LinkTheater install loaded two different servers, the "Buffalo Media Server" and the "Mediabolic Media Server." I was already running Windows Media Connect, which is a standard Windows UPnP AV server compatible with the LinkTheater. I also had several more UPnP AV servers running on NAS devices on my LAN that I could use. I checked out the various servers and for the most part, the LinkTheater responded the same with all of them. Figure 7 shows the options once a server is selected.

Figure 7: Media Server Main Menu

The top-level menu will vary a little depending on the server you're talking to, but in all cases, the menu is very basic.