I would suggest that for media storage you buy yourself a NAS box. I have three Icy box 4220 all loaded with a pair of 1TB drives. They're relatively cheap, quiet and easy to administer through a web browser.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=HD-029-BT
These three boxes contain all of the movies, music and photos and they are all switched on 24-7. In addition there is a work PC in my office, three media streamers (lounge and bedrooms), and three laptops. All of these PC's can access all of the media as the NAS boxes are setup to share their drives so its just a simple networked drive connection. The game consoles and even the TV are also connected to the network and have access to the media boxes too.
As for network connections. I have a BT HomeHub. This provides wireless and is connected to three other network hubs throughout the house. The NAS boxes, computers and other equipment all connect into these hubs. I do network maintenance as part of my job so all of the cables are chased in behind walls with only the wall mounted sockets showing in the rooms where they're needed. All my laptops connect wirelessly.
With modern equipment it really is as simple as plugging it all together and off you go. If you have a broadband router then you probably already have the necessary DHCP server to assign addresses to everything and you won't have to touch it or know anything about how it works. It does get a wee bit more technical when wireless is involved but most providers supply a network setup disc with a wizard application to make things easy.
Some things to note.
1) I have never found powerline network connections (sending the network through your mains electrical wiring) to be very reliable and tend to shun it. It really depends on your house. Ours is relatively old now and the wiring probably is nowhere near as good as new builds. Powerline adapters also tend to want to be plugged directly into a wall socket and not into surge protectors or multi socket adapters.
2) Don't entrust all of those precious digital photos to a single hard drive. My NAS boxes are all set up to synchronise their photo and music libraries between themselves. That way if any one drive fails I still have two copies left. As for the movies, well I have the original discs. it would be a pain to rip them all again but not the end of the world.
3) For a beginner I think the NAS solution is better as the setup is all done through wizards. With a file server PC you would have to delve into the OS to set these things up manually.
4) The NAS boxes I have linked also provide a print server so you can share a printer across your network.
5) Wireless is useless for video streaming but adequate for music.
If you need any help explaining things or setting up then feel free to pm me.
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Originally Posted by johnmartin
As you say, wireless is hopeless for video streaming, which is why powerline or cat5 or 6 cable is the choice - the 200mbs units are pretty vital for HD streaming though, the 85mbs work OK with lower quality. Even 100mbs network hanging off cat5 cable will cope no bother with HD. 
