James, it would all depend your connection as well as your hosts'. You could always try secure copying a file if your host allows ssh access, time that and compare to WebDav speeds. Heck you could probably install FUSE and sshFS http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list and compare speeds with WebDav that way as well.

Uncanny, I just put this in my blog a few days ago:

http://www.latestintech.com/2007/03/23/macfuse/

"Dreamhost.com would give you an even better value than Amazon’s S3 and JungleDisk. If you pay up-front a year of of hosting, 200Gigs of storage space and 2 terabytes of bandwidth Dreamhost will cost you $120."

This does look like a more complete tutorial, rather than just an idea.

You can also do this with a Windows computer, my tutorial can be found here:

http://www.latestintech.com/2007/03/20/sync-windows-directories-with-linux/

No need to install cygwin on Windows. cwRsync will do just fine. More details here:
http://www.latestintech.com/2007/03/20/sync-windows-directories-with-linux/

not yet

Last time I checked gas is still cheaper then electricity.

Is the AVeL LinkPlayer2 Network DVD Players able to play off of a simple shared folder, or do you have to use "media connect" what ever that is? I don't use Windows so it's a pretty important question.