[Kistle]

Ahh....one of the wizards chimes in! Thanks Monkey.

First, I believe what I am trying to do is possible, as there are a lot of people on the Directv forums that appear to be making it work. That said, there are A LOT of chumps like me that seem to be having LOTS of problems getting it set up correctly.

Second, you ask a VERY good question about whether the DVR can actually see my laptop. You know what, I think you are right...as I think through this, it actually may NOT be seeing it. Here is EXACTLY what happens. On the Directv DVR, I click Menu (on the remote). When I do, there is a selection called "Music, Photos & More". This menu selection is apparently (from my Directv forum reading), only visible when you have a valid connection from the DVR to the internet (which I do). Then, when you select "Music, Photos & More", there is only one menu item called "Computers". When I select "Computers", I see a selection for "Belkin Play Media Server". My router is Belkin, so that must be what it is seeing. But now that you mention it, I don't think it is actually getting to my laptop. Then, when I click on "Belkin Play Media Server", there are three menu items (Music, Pictures, Video). When I click each of these, it says "no files found in this folder". By the way, in my Windows Media Player, a "Belkin Play Media Server" sub-Library also shows up, but there are no files in the Music, Pictures or Video folders. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add files to these folders.

So, after some more forum reading, a lot of folks suggested installing TVersity, as a media server that can transcode the various formats that media is stored in and serve it up to the DVR making the format transparent. So, I installed TVersity, and it seems to work fine...i.e. it located all of my media files on my laptop, and created pointers to them in a nice organized fashion. But again, I can't get the DVR to see the TVersity media server on my laptop, and I don't know if I need to do something to TVersity to "enable" seeing it. It says that it "shares" automatically upon startup, and I have also tried to "manually" tell it to share, but it doesn't seem to "connect" to anything.

Oh, and by the way, I said previously that the DVR was showing in my Windows Network view. Now I'm not even sure that is the case. What shows there is again this "Belkin Play Media Server". What the heck is that, and what is it referring to? My router is Belkin, but what does it mean "Belkin Play Media Server"??

What additional information can I provide that might help us work through this?

Thanks in advance!!

JA