My quest fro a way to deliver computer-based music to my stereo system is at an end.

My quest for a way to deliver computer-based music to my stereo system is at an end. I'm not promising that I won't start down that road again, but I will assure you that this is the last report you'll get of about a product that didn't quite do the job for me.

Of course, something that just misses with my needs or expectations could be perfect for someone else. With this particular product, the PrismIQ MediaPlayer, I'm definitely the odd man out. Dig_It, CNET, and TechTV all named PrismIQ the "Best of CES 2003." But then, those accolades were published within about a week of the show. I'd guess they weren't based on much hands-on experience.

Believe me, I had a lot of that. Much of it was positive and some of the negatives might not have been the fault of the PrismIQ system itself.

The positive part was the fun of beaming MP3 music files from a computer on the second floor to the audio system on the first. The TV screen presented the menu that I had previously established at the PC. The remote did its job neatly and the sound was surprisingly good, certainly the equivalent of MP3-encoded CDs played directly with the DVD player, or WAV-from-MP3 audio CDs played on a regular CD deck.

In this whole experience, by the way, I found that the very worst way to listen was through computer sound card outputs. Noise and distortion hit levels I haven't been called upon to tolerate since calling off my visits to the weight room at Pit Bull Gym. Don't consider for a minute running interconnects from your computer to your audio system. Get the music out of your computer while still in digital form. Convert it to analog at or near its destination.

Getting back to the PrismIQ MediaPlayer, if the sound quality was good and the operability was decent, what was the problem? Well, there were a few.

The first was similar to what I experienced with the Neuros and what apparently is common with media management and playing software. The cataloging software ignores the structures you've created among your music files and slams all the filenames together in one big list.

It doesn't move your files. Your Mozart is still in the Mozart folder, it's just that the media player cataloging software won't see it that way and you'll have to start imposing order from scratch.

I know that this isn't necessary. Kodak's Easy Share photo managing software does pay at least a modicum of attention to where the picture files it catalogs reside on your computer. Pictures in a folder called "Grand Canyon" get registered with keywords relating to the folder name.

One reason that the MP3 cataloging programs (like the Media Manager supplied with PrismIQ) feel free to ignore current structure is the use of metadata that is stored as part of the music file. That data can tag the file as coming from a particular CD, identify the genre, store the track number from the CD, include the artist name, track title, recording date, and undoubtedly a lot more.

Unfortunately, a lot of it is wrong or incomplete. And for MP3 tracks you record yourself from analog sources, no such data is there unless you manually enter it.

All this is no big deal if you've got no more than a few dozen music files already stored. If you've got various hundreds, the prospect of sitting for hours at the keyboard rather than in front of your loudspeakers is pretty discouraging. If I'm going to do that, I might as well just burn MP3 CD-ROMs from my nicely organized files and carry them down to the DVD player.

To be fair, the PrismIQ MediaPlayer does a great deal more than stream MP3 music files from the computer to the A/V system. It can send JPEG photo files, MPEG video files, play Internet radio, allow web surfing on your video display, and display news, weather, and other information that's customized for your interests and location.

I had trouble with the Internet feature, but I've since become convinced that the fault did NOT lie with PrismIQ or its software. It was something I did while installing my wireless network, but I'm not going to turn this even further into a computer discussion by going into details. Let's leave it there.

PrismIQ's Internet features work best with a wireless keyboard that's available as an extra-cost option. That keyboard presents some problems of its own, however. Most of us have a few remotes lying around the listening area, creating a bit of clutter that's almost invisible to us. But believe me, you can't overlook a keyboard on the coffee table.

In addition, it's all too easy to set the keyboard down with a key depressed or set something else down that depresses a key. That sends a continuous signal and pretty quickly drains a set of batteries.

PrismIQ needs to set up the remote (which does have a keypad with phone-type letters on the keys) for the equivalent of cell phone text messaging so that alphabetic data can be sent to the system without the keyboard.

The real deal with these networked media players is that the whole category is a work in progress. Various companies-some from the computer side (such as Hewlett-Packard), some from the audio side (such as Onkyo), and some from out of the blue (such as PrismIQ)--are trying to come up with the killer app in terms of both hardware and software. No one has gotten it totally right yet, in my opinion, but PrismIQ has come a lot closer than most.

And since they're continually upgrading the software (with free downloads of successive versions), the system might just well tweak itself into perfection. And since you're only risking $250 to get on board, PrismIQ looks like a winner (www.prismiq.com).