We love network attached storage (NAS) – sharing hard disk space on your network without using a full-blown computer as a server. By using a NAS device to store your media, you can have access to media, files, photos from any computer on your home network with increased reliability and speed with the added benefit of lower power consumption.

In our recent article, Help, My Hard Drive is Full!, many of you requested a review of the D-Link NAS, the DNS-323. At the low-end of the NAS market, the DNS-323 is a decent offering for home use. We take it through its paces.

Read more for details.

Leveraging their own file distribution protocol, BitTorrent has entered into what's becoming a very crowded movie download market.

What we found in an initial review of BitTorrent Entertainment Networks is a service that offers reasonable download speed and good pricing. While it has potential when the movie selection is fresher, with the current selection and DVD-only quality for mainstream selections, it leaves us wanting more.

Read more for our review. 

We recently gained access to the Netflix Instant Watching movie streaming service and put it through its paces.

Overall, we're pleasantly surprised with the service and think it's a great first step by Netflix.

Read more for details of our first look.

Does this sound like you?

• A seriously messed up iTunes music library.
• No time to rip that teetering stack of CDs.

Join the crowd! While CD ripping can be a DIY project, it's no small undertaking when you have a large music collection. If you have only a handful of CDs, you can rip them yourself with iTunes or Windows Media Player knowing that your results will vary depending on the software you use and your attention to detail. In the real world, however, you're more likely to have 300+ CDs to rip. Even with a speedy drive, it's tough to sustain a rate greater than 6 CDs-per-hour. So, unless you have at least 50 hours to kill PLUS the additional time it takes for metadata editing and grabbing the best album art while ensuring it's properly embedded in the MP3s, it's time to consider one of the many ripping services available.

That said, all ripping services are not created equally, and the best services charge about $1.50 per CD. We had no trouble finding a TechDigs.net staffer with one of those teetering stacks of CDs waiting to be ripped, so we decided to put the three leading national CD ripping services to the test: Get Digital, ReadyToPlay and Riptopia.

Ripping is an art and getting it done right pays off. Read More for the review results.

Oppo Digital just released its latest upscaling DVD player, the 1080p-capable Oppo Digital DV-981HD. We got one in and took it through its paces. Overall, Oppo has done it again – their latest upgrade is another success. With a street of less than $230, the DV-981HD is a worthy contender if you're looking for a new upscaling DVD player.

Read more for details.

Microsoft's highly successful Xbox 360 game console has expanded beyond gaming into the home theater arena. Last week Microsoft launched Xbox Live Marketplace Video Download Service in both HD and SD formats. With this new download service, anyone with an Xbox 360 can use it to download both movies and TV shows to watch on their TV or HDTV. With this launch, Microsoft has essentially beaten other services to the punch when it comes to HD Internet movie downloads to a set-top box. In general, we think their move is smart and the implementation is reasonably satisfying.

Read more for details and comparisons to other movie formats. 

There are quite few calibration tools available, with the most common being DVD-based. Like our recent Monster/ISF HDTV Calibration Wizard review, The Ultimate DVD - Home Theater Fine Tuning Made Simple is targeted to the novice home theater enthusiast. With an average street price of $14.99, The Ultimate DVD does an adequate job of basic calibration of both video and audio. Menus are more cumbersome than necessary for such a basic tool and may frustrate novice users.

Read more for details.

There are quite a few calibration tools available. The most common are DVD-based tools. While calibration tools appeal to various user levels, Monster's DVD is targeted to the average home theater enthusiasts. Overall, we like the Monster/ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) HDTV Calibration Wizard DVD, especially for novice users.

Read more for details.

Netgear products have a long-standing position in my network. I'm especially fond of their ProSafe line of Ethernet switches. So when Netgear announced the HDX101 200Mbps Powerline solution for bridging unwired rooms in a home, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't work – unless by coincidence the rooms use the same power circuit in your home. Even then, it doesn't measure up to its own specs or to competitive technologies such as WiFi. For high bandwidth uses like HD video, it's out of the question.

Read more for details.

As a kid, my family often visited friends who had a classic Wurlitzer jukebox stocked full with vinyl records. Like a moth to a flame, I was instantly in front of it queuing song after song. I stood glued there for hours, mesmerized with the music and the mechanical motion of 45s flipping onto place. With hundreds of tunes to choose, I created my first playlists by simply pushing buttons. What an amazing concept for my young mind!

Fast forward to present day. Sonos actually one-ups that old Wurlitzer. No, the Sonos doesn't have a cool gothic structure with shiny chrome and bubble tubes, but I'll give it up for easy access to millions of songs, podcasts, audio books and Internet radio playing in multiple rooms. That's something the Wurlitzer could never do.

The Sonos Digital Music System is well-known as a multi-zone system that nicely fills the place beyond stand-alone network music players and iPods. What's new is that Sonos has added the Rhapsody music service. We put the Sonos through its paces including a computer-free setup, listening to Internet streaming music only, and letting it hit our network with 5TB of disk space on Windows and Mac computers and a 2TB network attached storage (NAS) device. We listened to lossless, MP3, Audible, various podcasts, Ogg and more. After a week with this system, we covet it and don't want to send it back. Sonos has really nailed the integration and experience. We give Sonos our top marks.

Read more for details.