Help with my son's Tyranny!

Hi not sure if this is the right place but here goes.

I am the proud owner of a two story 2500 SF. house. My son inhabits the north eastern upstairs bedroom and is asking me for help setting up his computers. He came to me with a list of materials and demands and I'm wondering if you can help me come up with a solution. He is 17

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"Hey BuB i need a new computer/Entertainment set up!
My materials!
One Aluminum Macbook
One Diy Desktop Computer with Windows 7 (wireless card attached)
One 750 gigabyte hardrive (USB - external)
One iPhone 3g
One iPod Video 30gig

My Demands!
1. I want to take the videos and music I download and buy and store them on a network drive, wirelessly.
2. I want to access and watch/listen to this media wirelessly on both by PC and MAC.
3. I want to be able to, without too much difficulty, watch them on the television in the living room (I.E. Only one file converter or some such not a 10 step process).
4. I want to be able to store files to this network drive from both MAC and PC and recall from both MAC and PC (don't worry about the hardrive format i have "NTFS star" for my mac and can read and write to NTFS formats)

This is all! Help me or Ill tell mom you let the dog run away!"
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Well thats it guys, its a birthday present for him but he likes the drama.
I need as much help as i can get.

My personal assests are the AirPort Xtreme i run in the house, my 1.8 dual G5 and my wife's iMac!

Help me do what i can for him since im pretty clueless on what to do!

Your son set demands?. It should be the other way around in my opinion.

It's a joke mostly.... We agreed on it as a birthday present and then he played it out like this... his mom likes it better that way and lets me get away with spending money on it.

Demands

1. assuming you have a wireless network you could attach an external hard drive to any of your desktops in the house and share that drive on the network. i personally prefer to have a wireless router that has a USB posrt like the Apple Extreme or Apple Time Capsule. actually not sure how much money you want to spend but you could kill 2 birds by getting the 1TB Time Capsule. this is a wireless router with a built in 1TB HDD and a USB port to add more if you wanted.

2. answered in #1

3. without knowing how you have your Living room setup as far as just a tv or a receiver etc... i am going to assume you at least have an LCD in there with possibly a side which would be easier or even a rear HDMI port. so get this to plug into the Macbook to give you an HDMI video out for your tv but the sad part is that apple did not allow sound to pass through so you will need to get something like this to bring the sound over. it is not as much work as it seems once you connect these to your tv and leave them somewhere for quick hook up.

there are many ways to get around the "10 step process" but the easist would probably be to download VLC Player since it can play just about anything you throw at it.

4. when your hard rive is connected to another computer you do not need to worry about having a NTFS writing software for your Mac or the opposite for your PC since it will read/write through the host computer.

good luck with him

Get him to leave home whilst he knows everything!

Step 1) hand your child the help wanted section of your local paper
Step 2) Fashion your best "when I was your age" story
Step 3) Adopt me

the macbook pro is easy- the 13" is the best deal
the windows machine? take advantage of free upgrade to windows 7 deals - vista is awful. yes, you'll need 4 gb ram.
does he really need an iphone and an ipod touch? (Im back to step 3 above)
a backup system is easy - lacie has great networkable backup drives (go for the 1tb while your at it)
for the video and music, I reccommend an apple TV while you're at it - easiest way of getting your stuff to your television and to anyone's computers.

the nice thing is that since everything is wireless, and either apple or apple friendly, setting up a home network will be stupid easy.

Step 3?? please??

if you need more specifics let me know!!!

Thanks for all the help guys. Im looking into solutions along these lines...

Personal opinions aside, whats the question? The list of materials is simple enough just go buy them. And assuming he's 17 and techie enough he should be able to set it up