With home media streaming devices growing in number the features available to consumers shall continue to increase. This really is why I have decided to write an article on the importance of selecting the best device to suit your needs. By looking at the media streaming device it may appear which it has Wi-Fi capabilities accompanied with the ability to stream Netflix and Pandora so you assume you are all set. If those are the only features you are after then that is great and also by all means make the purchase. My only regret could be that there probably is a media streaming device available at the same price point that will offer more features. Therefore media streaming devices are capable of doing much more than Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Three aspects that I will cover in detail are supported media file formats the device can read, significance of USB ports, and automatic media categorization.

The biggest challenge used to be finding a media streaming device outside your PC that offered the ability to play your entire media collection. Now consumers have numerous options available allowing a multitude of selections. For this example I will compare both the Boxee Box and Roku supported media file formats. With both the Roku and Boxee Box offering a great selection of application and also the capability to stream Netflix, there is still a large gap with the number of supported media file formats built in. The Roku offers only 3 supported media file formats versus the Boxee Box at 21. This is a huge gap in supported media file formats and if you have a personal media collection there's a high chance the Roku can not suit your needs. One more noteworthy point is these supported media file formats can't be updated. As nice it will be like it really is on your PC going to a site and installing a file, these devices do not have this ability. Both Boxee Box and Roku are excellent products, but at the same point it is up to you to determine which is an even better fit for your house media center.

Most devices these days offer USB 2.0 ports that may work okay for almost any home media collection. Something to take into account will be the number of USB ports that the product offers. When I first started my media collection, prior to the invention of NAS devices, I used to keep movies and music on just about any storage device I could find then plug it into my computer. Fortunately with today's technology you'll find NAS devices to help us keep our collection all in one place on our network. If you are free new movie to the hobby you would probably look-at eight terabyte NAS and say that is crazy I could never fill that up. Well... Let me just say you could get there sooner than later. So getting back to my original point you probably will purchase an external hard drive to start your collection. If you have only one USB port you will find yourself spending countless hours transferring data to a bigger drive when it fills up. With a second or third USB port you can just plug in another hard drive without interruption. The obvious answer is to purchase a NAS device with expandable bays, but this really is a costly expense and if you're just getting your feet wet with the hobby this option might not be realistic.

Something Boxee and XBMC have done extremely well will be the capability to categorize your media collection. Let me give you an example that explains what I am speaking about. Within your media collection you've got The 40-Year-Old Virgin on your storage device. Once you direct Boxee or XBMC to that file source it shall detect your movie and add it under the movie section. Once within the movie section a picture will be applied of the movie cover with information about the movie and often trailers. As your collection grows each movie will be added giving you the ability to categorize to your liking. The benefit of automatic media categorization is the fact that you do not have to search through files to discover what you want. With this you've got the capability to provide your collection a visual appeal accompanied with information which is imported from different sources on the internet.

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