I've just taken delivery of a widescreen LCD HDTV. It's blown me away compared to my worn CRT TV with bad ghosting and colour bleed.

I have iMacs and an AEBS 11n model. I use only 802.11n at 5GHz and will NOT compromise this as the other band is too full.

Now, with this HD goodness I have acquired I want to really branch out:

Extensive CD collection. I want to load the lot onto an external HDD connected to the AEBS. No brainer.

I will purchase some speakers for surround sound. Fairly clueless here.

I presume iTunes would be best to play my music plus don't want to buy software.

I want the audio to appear in the new speakers I will purchase. No idea what to do here.
I want the iTunes Visualiser to appear on my TV but I still want my iMac screens to be usable for other apps at the same time. You may choose to laugh about my love of Visualizer....

I also want to play SD DVDs on an iMac and choose to send the picture and audio to the TV. The TV has many input connectors, amongst them HDMI, D-Sub 15 pin and component. I want to avoid HDMI. My iMacs have mini-DVI output jacks and Apple did NOT provide adaptors.

That's about it. Seems I need an Airport Express for the speakers but it doesn't do 802.11n. Apart from that thought I'm stuck.

Any and all suggestions thankfully received. I'm fairly broke by the way!

Edit:

Just a thought. I have Tiger and have decided not to move to Leopard soon. Too many issues.

Maybe appletv.

Will stream 11n and will stream music and movies from your iMac iTunes.

But you will need to convert your DVD's and I'm not sure about the iTunes visualizer.

I'm sure there are other ways that others will suggest.

I've had a look at the Apple TV. Looks like I can't use it to play a DVD disc in the iMac slot on my TV?

I think the Apple TV can be used to play CDs NOT purchased through iTunes. i.e. my own CD in the iMac slot or a copy of that disc stored on an AEBS drive?

People are complaining that Leopard has crippled Apple TV capability previously available under Tiger. It's not a bug, it's deliberate.

But speakers must be hard wired into the Apple TV.

Seems a lot of money to spend for what essentially is a dumbed down router in my case.

There is no difference with the apple tv on leopard or tiger.
The Apple tv can use the speakers in you tv or you can hook into your amp. The speakers do not connect directly into the apple tv.
Apple TV will play anything that can be put into itunes. You can convert DVD with handbrake without a loss in quality.

If you want to use 11n then perhaps this is one of the only options.

If you want 802.11n, then AppleTV is your only answer. It's actually a fair bit better for wireless music in the living room IMHO than the AirPort Express, as you can browse your library via the TV on a big screen, where as with the AirPort Express, you need a computer where you want to listen.

You'd need to have your TV on to use it, and the AppleTV plugged into the speakers you want to play music out to. The computer with the music also needs to be on. Plug the AppleTV into your LCD via HDMI and into your amp via optical.

To watch DVDs - buy a DVD player and use that.

If you sync your library with the computer, the computer does not have to be on.
Also, once you press play on the apple tv, you can turn the tv off (if the sound is coming through a receiver.)

Okay, thanks for the replies. I guess my thinking is evolving a bit as I do more research...

(BTW, I went to http://handbrake.fr/ - the app is great)

The Apple website was actually unhelpful for me but research here and elsewhere indicates the Apple TV is just made for me.

Cost is the issue at the moment.

Seems the Apple TV totally drives, via the TV screen, the selection of music/video. My hunch is that Visualizer from the iTunes within the Apple TV should be a goer but could easily be tested at my local reseller. (Oh the humiliation - I just know the salesperson will have a great laugh behind my back!)

Provided I point the Apple TV to the shared music / video folders then no problems.

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The other tact involves cables from the computer nearest to the TV. I assume System Prefs will allow me to point the App playing the video, for example, to the TV screen while other computing remains on the iMacs built in screen?

That computer is an important gaming machine so lagging might be a show stopper.

A mini-DVI to D-Sub 15 adaptor (iMac to TV) and a very long cable (yep, degraded signal) is the cheapest stop gap until I find more money I think.

Out of curiosity, what's your favourite iTunes visualiser theme?

LOL. Okay, my number #1 preset is None/Tripping Hard/Basic.

Depends on what I'm playing really, plus it's a massive time waster for me. Sit down to tweak a preset and before I know it, wham! Half a day gone LOL. A real time trap!

Not so -- MediaGate, D-Link and Mvix (to name three) all have media players that are both Mac OS X friendly and support 802.11 draft-N (don't forget there are three disparate and mostly incompatible 802.11n 'standards' in the market).

Lilith, if I were in your shoes, I would be considering the purchase of an Mvix MV760 or MV780 (the latter has HDMI output) and shifting your media content to it, rather than trying to rely in streaming material from your Mac through the media player.

The AppleTV would be a suitable choice, though, if you plan on buying (or renting, whenever that service gets here) movies / music / TV shows from ITMS. If not, the Mvix has more outputs than you can poke a stick at, supports more video-playback and audio-playback codecs than the AppleTV by a long mile, and is actually fairly stylish in looks. It also functions as a NAS (Network Attached Storage) unit, and can expand its storage just by plugging in another USB external hard drive.

Ta Brains, having a bit of a look see at the manufacturer's website now. http://www.mvix.net/