I rebuilt our media server this weekend. After a struggle reinstalling Windows XP Pro, my problem turned out to be due to the fact that I was using the correct Windows XP license key with the incorrect install disk. Once that was out of the way, I downloaded all the Windows updates, yadda yadda yadda, and I installed AVG antivirus. (Although I've heard that Microsoft security essentials is quite good - maybe I should've tried that)
Next up was attaching the external hard drive that I've just repurposed. It used to be a semi-permanent backup, but I burned the backup data off onto seven DVDs and I'm now going to use that hard drive to hold all our music and photos. The two hard drives on the server will do for video storage.
You see, we've got a Playstation 3, and we use it for pretty much everything. We haven't had cable TV for years now. First we became addicted to the TiVo, then we started streaming shows from my PC into the HD TiVo, then we ditched the cable entirely when I repurposed my old computer into a media server. Now, we rent blu-rays and stream video from Netflix, we download our TV shows and stream them from the media server into the Playstation, and I've ripped all our CDs - we stream them from the server into the PS3 too. Overall, we've been pretty happy with the situation.
For the past couple years, we've been using the free version of TVersity as our media server program, and it's worked great. But with the recent announcement of Hulu Plus, I've begun thinking more about the ability to stream Hulu to the PS3. It's still unclear whether Hulu Plus will require a Playstation Plus subscription ($50/year) in order to function on the PS3, but if it doesn't I still may try it out. $10 per month doesn't sound so bad if we'd be able to access Hulu's full library. The ads would certainly bug me - since our first DVR I haven't seen an ad at home - but if it bugged me too much, we'd just drop Hulu Plus.
In the meantime, I decided to try TVersity Pro, which says that for a one-time $40 fee, you can stream Hulu and YouTube to your PS3, as well as online video from NBC, BBC, Comedy Central, and other TV networks with online content.
To make a long story short, it doesn't work. I reinstalled TVersity Pro and the related codecs four times and spent a lot of time on their forums. At this point, I'm just ready to be done. Thankfully, TVersity offers a 30-day money back guarantee. I'll be asking for a refund today. I may even check out PS3MediaServer.