Cheap whole house MP3 access

["Stainton-James, Mark (London)" <stainmar@xxxxxxx>]

I have the same MP3 requirement as many of you, to listen to MP3's anywhere
in the house, however all of the solutions I have seen seem to have
limitations either cost, functionality or both.

My requirement is simply this. From any room I wish to be able to choose an
MP3 track from a 'central library' and play it.  The problem I have with
the
DDAR is that the display is so small, that selecting a track or viewing the
current track becomes difficult (unless you have a handy pair of binoculars
close by).

My thinking is that I have a spare machine I could use as a dedicated MP3
player (connected to the LAN) and if I could find a simple enough mp3
player
software (chunky and easy for everyone to use) then I could output the
screen display and Audio to the TV, and use the house AV distribution to
provide the visual interface, audio could also be provided by the TV
(quality not great but acceptable).  Control of the system could be
achieved
using a USB remote receiver attached to the PC.

Questions:

Is anyone aware of some decent simple chunky MP3 software that would work
well using TV resolution?

Does anyone have any experience of the IR Media Remote manufactured by
www.keyspan.com <http://www.keyspan.com/>  - UK
reseller www.ammicro.co.uk
<http://www.ammicro.co.uk/>