Was that a collective sigh of relief we heard right there? It probably was, because thanks to homebrew, the Wii's value as an indispensable multi-purpose living room machine has grown even further. Today, we're offered the chance of turning the Wii into an entertainment center in the form of DragonMedia Player coded by homebrew developer DragonMinded - without Linux. You read that right the first time. Look to the full story for more on the WiiBrew multi-source media player project.

Download: DragonMedia Player v0.03 Alpha

Curious to know how Bostjan Cadez came with up the flash browser game Line Rider which is now being ported over to Nintendo's Wii and DS? You'll be getting all that and more as Cadez talks about how he developed the game. Check out his interview after the jump!

In commemoration of its 10th anniversary, Winamp is introducing a new function that allows users to stream music from their PCs straight to their consoles. Matthew Callaway, product director of Winamp, explains that the new function was the direct result of having a user population that has a lot of gamers.

The new function involves a PC (not necessarily yours), a console, an internet connection and a whole bunch of music.

Users need only keep their PC on and keep their Winamp program running. A console can then log on to a specific website they use to log in to the PC and access the music (and video too!) files which they can stream and play.

The Xbox 360 will suffer a bit though. Because of the lack of a browser, it can only stream from a local PC. The Winamp team also plans to make the service available to cell phones with web browsers.

Callaway was once part of the Sega and Electronic Arts, and with the "anecdotal" discovery that many PC gamers use Winamp, GameDaily.biz says, "Naturally, the place to start building new Winamp functionality was by heading to the consoles."

Over at the site of the oddly named Knights of Kaos clan, there's a post that outlines the many available media solutions you can use through the Wii Web Browser.

They talk about BrowseAmp, AjaxAMP, Winamp Streaming Services, ORB Streaming Audio, Wii Media Center X, The WiiCR, and iTunes streaming tricks and solutions you can use in the Wii Browser. They also point out Jinzora, a web based PHP/Apache/Mysql/Flash Music system. They report that one of the founders of Jinzora is currently working on a Wii Compatible frontend skin.

For more detail on the the mentioned applications and a solution for ORB streaming problems, feel free to use our read-link below.

Now that we've established that the Wiimote is somewhat easy to modify for different control uses, what else can use the darned thing? According to this video, the Wiimote can also control a synthesizer.

We've had a couple of different hacks done to let people use their Wiimote differently. On the silly side, there's isnoop's WiiSaber that lets people use their Wiimote to make lightsaber sounds. To control operating systems, the DarwiinRemote is currently being developed by Hiroaki and Ian Rickard to control Mac applications. The WiinRemote, on the other hand, lets you use the Wiimote as a mouse on Windows and has also spawned different ways of using it, such as Winamp control through Wiimote usage which can be seen here.

This next video shows off someone using the Wiimote to control a Nord Lead synthesizer. One thing we wish the video would show is the placement of the lights that help triangulate the Wiimote's position. Heck, is it even needed in this case? We'll definitely need to get out hands on the plans for that device as soon as possible. Mostly because we want to see if we can get it to control our video editing software like something straight out of "Minority Report".