multi room htpc

ntlbell

i was looking at doing this before and had to hold off so i'm back at it again.

I'm trying to find the mos cost efficient and neat way if doing the following.

so what i'm looking for is something like a sonos music system but with the functionality of a full htpc.

so in any given room i can watch video's/listen to music etc from one centralised HTPC

people in different rooms should be able to listen to different music and watch different divx/dvd/blu ray movies

one option was to have a mac mini in each room with centralised storage.

this is exspensive and a bit of a clutter

the other was a bunch of old xboxes with centralised storage, again not very neat and not what i'm really looking for.

so do you think i could get near what i'm looking for ?

if not what's the cloest thing i could get?

decorativejunk

How abt running a virtual server (Vmware ) at central location.. and using rooms monitor to connect to them to watch whatever they want.. with virtualisation every one can have their own desktop space and the central music /video/ pictures locations can be mapped to every virtual environment.

it will be lot cheaper than installing a physical machine . the only draw back would be long VGA cables.. or if anyway we can make is wireless..

I know its not at all a idea solution..but .. just thought....

kaisersose77

i have a pc with windows home server installed on it with all my movies etc (about 15tb of storage). This pc is out of sight and isnt connect to a monitor.

I can then access all this media from all over the house through pc's, laptops, xbox 360, xbox, satellite receiver, archos pmp etc.

If you dont care about eyecandy then you could get the new wdtv's as clients (new ones have ethernet) or pay more and get nvidia ion pc's like acer revo's. Install linux and xbmc on nvidia ion's and they will play 1080p mkv's no problem and they have brilliant interfaces.

When tv support is eventually added then xbmc will be the do it all box for me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJlzCe-pBFs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9qAqYVqVQg

pauliewha

I have sagetv media center on a server pc and 3 sage extenders around the house giving me access to all my music, tv, photos etc. I can have each extender doing different things or watching the same tv recording at the same or at different stages of the recording. My laptop has sage paceshifter whice allows me to have full access to my media on the move. The extenders are good value and the hd200 will play just about format. www.sagetv.com.

stevejazzx

ntlbell wrote: »

i was looking at doing this before and had to hold off so i'm back at it again.

I'm trying to find the mos cost efficient and neat way if doing the following.

so what i'm looking for is something like a sonos music system but with the functionality of a full htpc.

so in any given room i can watch video's/listen to music etc from one centralised HTPC

people in different rooms should be able to listen to different music and watch different divx/dvd/blu ray movies

one option was to have a mac mini in each room with centralised storage.

this is exspensive and a bit of a clutter

the other was a bunch of old xboxes with centralised storage, again not very neat and not what i'm really looking for.

so do you think i could get near what i'm looking for ?

if not what's the cloest thing i could get?

By far the best solution is windows media center.
As good as it is now with win7 it still can't replicate Sonos. Sonos is still pretty unique (the squeezbox doesn't come close either btw!). It can sync music in every room or allow independence, give you access to music services your music library and internet radio without your server being on. TBH the best solution is a main server running media center and either media center exteneders (I prefer the xbox) or client pc's (running mce add on's to allow guide and live tv functions) all this with a sonos system. This can be pricey though but can also be done cheaply if you're system builder.

regular john

I recommend setup similar to kaisersose77 but use mythtv with ion frontends and a decent backend server (this is the workhorse).

This solution allows each frontend to independantly listen to music, watch videos, browse pictures, viewing live tv from the backend.

In my case use this setup with all 3 sat cards into central backend server. It meant I didn't have to run multiple forms of cabling round the house and it allows multiple simultaneous channels on same transponder. I rarely have a recording conflict

Check out MythTV wiki. If you want a simple install you could start with Mythbuntu.

kaisersose77

Looking to do something similar but using tvheadend and xbmc. Just one pc with the tv tuners etc and then everything else is a client. Tv backend support is speeding up on xbmc now and hopefully in a few months its integrated fully in to it.

subway

stevejazzx wrote: »

running mce add on's to allow guide and live tv functions

have you got any detail on this software?

stevejazzx

subway wrote: »

have you got any detail on this software?

Windows media center
Sonos desktop controller
Sonos app for iphone
Media Center TV pack 2009

All standard or did you mean something more specific?

subway

your earlier post just confused me...

i understood you were advising a way to get live tv from a central server out to a client pc using an add on.
i thought you were suggestng to use an extender or a client pc for the same end result

cheers

stevejazzx

subway wrote: »

your earlier post just confused me...

i understood you were advising a way to get live tv from a central server out to a client pc using an add on.
i thought you were suggestng to use an extender or a client pc for the same end result

cheers

Ah yeah I get you -
The live TV is a problem (when streaming to a client PC).
You can set up a recording on server and then watch it on client by navigating the network and clicking on thumbnail of the currently recorded program. This works well for the odd program but obviously is not a solution. Microsoft were suppose to release software called 'softsled' which enabled a client PC to do what the xbox360 can with Media Center but they seem to have changed their minds on it?
Apart from the live though you can do pretty much everything on a client. You can organizes your guide, recordings (now even synced to the right folder in media center via win7) and obviously the pictures and music etc. are all the same aswell as this dvd library or movie library works perfectly on a client not necessarily aswell on an extender.
BTW I believe that on an extender you can now watch (aswell as divx mkv etc) actual .vob (DVD) files? haven't tried the vob files but I believe there is a way of getting them to work via an extender i.e playing DVD files from your server hard drive over your netwrok on the xbox360 media center interface?

slegs

Mediaportal can do server for the TV and the clients can view it live over the network - and its free.

pauliewha

Have a look at sagetv. windows media center is not all that. It cannot placeshift and the extenders are expensive, for ones that are any good. Sage has much greater hardware support re tuners hauppaugue hd pvr etc, there are also many customisations available.