Barb Gonzalez

There is a growing number of media players, media streamers, and other devices that can access Netflix, Hulu, and your own saved media to watch on your TV. The first step in deciding which one to buy is to know why you want it. Do you only want to stream video and music from the Internet? Do you want to watch Netflix or Hulu, or do you like to find unique videos and video podcasts? Have you saved music, photos, and/or videos on your computer that you want to stream to your TV?

Perhaps you just bought a media-streaming device or a smart TV that connects to the Internet to stream movies and TV shows from online providers. Where will you get your movies? Is it better to buy, rent, or stream them from monthly subscription services like Netflix or Hulu? If you buy movies, should you download them to your computer or save them to an online cloud service?

Physical DVD and Blu-ray collections may soon be a thing of the past—the trend is clearly toward streaming movies from online sources. Walmart and the Hollywood movie studios know this, and they've responded by announcing the Walmart "Disc-to-Digital" service. I've been focusing on streaming media for a number of years, and I'm extremely excited about this forward movement by retailers and Hollywood movie studios.

While home theater enthusiasts may not have given much thought to routers and other home network devices in the past, it’s time we started to pay attention. Whether we are streaming a high definition movie from Vudu, or everyone in the house wants to stream to their own TVs, the router must be able to handle the demand. Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, and Belkin all showed new routers that are capable of streaming several high definition mov