iOS/Mac: Whenever I plug my MacBook into a TV to share, say, a video with my friends, I end up on the floor, squatting in front of the laptop, while everyone else sits back and enjoys themselves. Since I occasionally use my Mac to manage the streaming media in my home and often find myself connecting it to some big screen via its HDMI port or through something like a Chromecast, a remote control would be a lifesaver.

Austin Andersen wanted a media centre with no visible wires, plenty of storage and good airflow for the electronics. So he built this using Besta shelves and cleverly used speaker fabric in place of solid doors.

There's no shortage of ways to repurpose an old PC, whether you're just trying to make it work again or turning it into something else entirely, like a home server. Laptops, are special though -- due to their small size and all-in-one nature, a bit of DIY work can turn a laptop into just about anything. Here are some options.

Even if you're a Windows (or Mac) user, knowing how to use Linux is a valuable skill and it can run a bunch of awesome things in your home -- even if it isn't your main desktop OS. Here are 10 ways you can use Linux even if you're not ready to go full Ubuntu.

Everybody loved the OUYA until it came out, and then they realised it didn't quite live up to its promise of becoming an inexpensive, independent gaming platform that rivals the big consoles. Regardless of what OUYA becomes, it is a great device when approached from the right mindset. Here's how I made the best of my OUYA and came to love it.

The awesome Plex streaming media centre is getting a massive update for its Windows and Mac apps. The newly dubbed "Plex Home Theater" adds HD audio support and Airplay streaming (so you can stream wirelessly from compatible devices).

Whether you've built yourself an XBMC machine, a Boxee box, or a Windows Media centre PC, here are our ten favourite ways to turn a home theatre PC into a media-watching powerhouse.

The Boxee team unveiled its upcoming beta release today. From the outset, it looks a whole lot more pretty and user friendly. Native search powers, media queues, much improved looks, and easier navigation are coming to computer-connected TVs soon.

We give a lot of attention to XBMC here, and with just cause. It's an open-source, cross-platform, highly-customisable media centre solution that outperforms just about every commercial option out there. Here's how you can make it even better.

Ask anyone who runs the eye-catching Plex media centre on their Mac about Snow Leopard, and you might see them wince. A new update fixes that painful Apple Remote incompatibility and also improves audio for those without 5.1 sound systems.

Media centre Boxee lets you access a lot of web video sources, but what about that clip your friend emailed you earlier today? Boxqueue is a bookmarklet/webapp combo that feeds bookmarked clips into your Boxee feed.

Windows/Linux: Clean, straightforward media centre Elisa has grown into something else—namely Moovida, a similar but more advanced and TV-focused media centre. Take a look at what's new in this brief screenshot tour.

Last week, SBS upgraded its digital transmitters around the country. The practical consequence? The station can now differentiate its broadcasts for different regional areas, offers full 720p resolution on its HD channel and now has a seven-day EPG. The downside? You might need to retune your set-top box, digital TV or PVR/media centre software to match the new requirements. If your equipment gives you grief in this respect, the SBS how-to linked below has contact details for most TV manufacturers.
SBS Digital Upgrade

If you're that rare breed of Windows user who also owns an Apple TV, you can max out its potential with the free Boxee media center by creating a USB stick from Windows—a hack previously possible only with a Mac handy. The atvusb-creator site now offers a relatively stable, command-line based XP/Vista tool that creates an image, offers the tool to copy it to your USB drive, and works just like the Mac-created version. Check this forum post for more detailed instructions—I'm loading Boxee on my ATV right now, and I'll share the results in another post.

Popular media centre application and XBMC-spinoff Boxee has opened its alpha to all Mac and Linux users and is ramping up invites for the Windows private alpha, meaning that if you've been dying to try Boxee, you should be able to do so sooner than later. Apart from that, Boxee has also released an update supporting MTV Music, Joost and BBC iPlayer (UK only), along with more bug fixes and improvements.

Windows only: Open-source application XBMC has received all of the attention in the media centre arena lately, but it still can't replace your TiVo. MediaPortal can, and it just hit its official 1.0 release. MediaPortal is a Windows-only media centre application that was originally spawned as a fork of XBMC almost five years ago. Today the application has been entirely redesigned, and apart from offering much of the same functionality of other popular media centre applications, MediaPortal works with hardware TV tuners to add DVR functionality to your PC. We showed you how to roll your own DVR and media centre with MediaPortal a couple of years back, but now the full featured MediaPortal is better than ever. As an added bonus, now that MediaPortal has hit that official 1.0 release, the MP developers are starting to ramp up for MediaPortal II, which aims to bring a better design and more stable architecture to MediaPortal. MediaPortal is a free download, requires .NET 2.0 or higher. I haven't used MediaPortal extensively since we last covered it, so if you've got more experience with it, let's hear your thoughts in the comments.

MediaPortal

The past ten years have completely changed the way we listen to music, watch movies and television, and take photos, and one thing is abundantly clear: The future of your media lies undeniably in the digital realm. Now you just need to find the perfect media centre application to pull it all together. Photo by Aaron Escobar.

Mac OS X only: The latest version of the free Plex Media Centre for Mac now includes iTunes and iPhoto support, iTunes visualizations, TV theme music, and the ability to play songs you've purchased from the iTunes Store. This tight iTunes/iPhoto integration comes in part from the Plex Media Server, which makes your songs and photos show up inside Plex while running in parallel. The Plex developer explains: The Plex Media Server is a standalone program that runs alongside Plex (or alone on any machine, it's a Universal Binary). It serves up media from your iLife applications (iTunes and iPhoto today, Aperture and Lightroom shortly). Plex communicates with the Plex Media Server on the local machine, on your local network, or even across the world over the Internet. This means that you can play your friends' iTunes playlists or browse their podcasts or photo albums.

The Plex Media Centre is a fork of the XBMC project, which also offers a Mac version. In fact, XBMC Atlantis' Mac version also includes iTunes and iPhoto support; compare our Plex screenshot tour to the Atlantis tour to see the differences between the two projects, which share the same code base. Plex is a free download for Intel Macs running Leopard only. Plex

Mac only (for now): The ATV USB Loader, a free tool to boot third-party software on an Apple TV unit, has updated to include the slick media centre Boxee amongst the booting options. We liked Boxee's new looks and social flair when it was available for Macs (and, later, Linux), and the Apple TV implementation looks just as crisp. By loading Boxee, Apple TV users get access to nearly any kind of unrestricted video or audio files, can send recommendations to friends and stream Last.fm tunes, and do nearly anything else in the (currently invitation-required) Boxee. Of course, ATV also maintains support for Xbox Media Centre. If you've grabbed Boxee and tried it out on Apple TV, share your likes and wants in the comments. ATV USB Creator