It's shocking how quickly new technologies are considered commonplace. If someone told you their new system sported a dual-layer DVD burner and 256MB video card, you'd be impressed but not bowled over.

And yet such technologies still represent the cutting edge of what's currently available and are often way ahead of the general consumer market. So it's important to remember we're often early adopters without necessarily realising it.

This is illustrated by home media streaming. Ask a member of the public about transporting photos, videos and music to TVs and hifis over a wireless computer network and they'd probably think you were describing witchcraft. But once again it's a concept most PC users are familiar with and many have tried.

Some might even describe it as being mature - as most of the big networking brands have offered home streaming solutions for some time, and many are on their second-generation products. Surely the hard work of defining standards is now complete and, once the big names jump on the bandwagon, home media streaming will become mainstream.

Sadly we're not quite there yet. While many appliances will stream media, it's only when you install second or third units around your home that you realise there's some work to be done.

Every media streaming appliance comes with software that defines the location of photos, music and videos, converts incompatible formats and streams files to the client. Connect a second identical appliance and it should work with the existing software.

Buy a different model though and you'll need to install new software, often demanding its own network services and newly defined media folders. Buy a third appliance and you could have a very confused system or, at best, one running unnecessary services.

All streaming appliances want the same thing at the end of the day: to know where to find media collections along with some means to transport them over a network.

Ideally this would be standardised, allowing any media appliance to connect to your network and start streaming without the need for software or services. This is something the industry's working on, but how close are we to having it?

This autumn Microsoft should release its Windows Media Connect (WMC) technology, first announced at January 2004's CES show. It's not been revealed how WMC will be delivered, but Microsoft claims to be in discussions with over 50 companies about implementing it.

Intel too has been hard at work with its Networked Media Product Requirements (NMPR), which provides guidelines on getting media appliances to interoperate. Both WMC and NMPR employ Universal Plug and Play for devices to discover each other's capabilities over a network.

In the longer term, interoperability is hoped to be resolved by new guidelines from the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). The DLNA, which includes names such as Fujitsu, HP, Microsoft, Philips and Sony as founding members, recently announced version 1.0 of its Home Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines.

These define which technologies should be used to enable media servers and appliances from different manufacturers to communicate - find out more here.

The DLNA hopes member companies will begin marketing products based on these guidelines by the end of this year, while its official certification programme should kick off in mid-2005.

So in around a year's time, interoperability worries between media appliances should be a thing of the past, but what about the interim? Should new buyers wait for DLNA-compliant devices, or will those supporting WMC or NMPR be sufficient? Equally, what about those who've already invested in media appliances?

Certainly both Microsoft's and Intel's offerings should be sufficient to ensure compliant devices work with each other. Microsoft reckons devices should also be upgradeable to support WMC, and it's testing to ensure WMC will be compatible with devices following DLNA guidelines.

Intel says products developed today using NMPR guidelines will only require a little development to meet DLNA v1. Intel also plans to offer complete DLNA interoperability and add new features with NMPR v2.

As for existing devices, you should contact the manufacturer to see if it plans to release updates for WMC, NMPR or DLNA compliance.

Ultimately it boils down to how much you need interoperability. If you only intend to have one media appliance or are happy to stick with identical models, then you should be OK.

Like the early days of wireless networking though, you may run into difficulties if you have models from different manufacturers trying to work together.

Consequently it's wise to either wait for NMPR/WMC or DLNA-compliant products or only buy those which guarantee an upgrade path.

I'm in no doubt media streaming will be the way forward in the future, but it's important not to get too carried away. Until there's broad support for interoperability and the equivalent of a Wi-Fi certification badge for media appliances, it's crucial to remember it remains very much an early adopter's market.