Zarec,
thanks for the quick reply. I use the simple file sharing with VLC for win on the win boxes and it works OK.
was hoping someone had developed an "md client" that could run in a window on a win box to browse the media, etc like the orbiter, but actually play on the win box. another thought is some sort of xline-like backend client, but haven't really explored that.
other option I'm thinking about is a vm to netboot but I anticipate performance issues for video...
thoughts welcome,
again thanks,
joseph