€1,000 to spend on a HTPC - what would you do?

BenEadir

Hi all,

I have a decent full HD plasma (Panasonic Vierra), a great Jamo surround sound system (My opinion anyway) and an Onkyo 805 AV Receiver (which I'm sure I'm not making the most of).

I'm based in Dublin, am sick of NTL and don't want to get into paying SKY over €100 a month for movies, sport, HD, multi room etc etc

I have 3 TV's downstairs and one upstairs plus installed cabling for two more in two other bedrooms upstairs.

Ideally I'd like all TV's to be able to play on demand movies (including HD movies) and other content from a central library of downloaded of recorded movies, documentaries, drama's, music etc and for them all to be able to fed by some sort of Freesat (or is it Freeview/SKY Freesat/FTA?) service which either doesn't have a monthly fee or has a very low montly fee e.g. €20 a month and will support HD channels as they become more common.

On top of that I'd like the main TV downstairs (via the PC hosting the central content library or a seperate Nettop (like the Acer Revo R3600?) to be able to play streamed online content from live sports being (legally) broadcast online to services like BBC iPlayer, Hulu, RTE Player etc.

Have I missed anything? Am I mad? Is this possible? Is it possible for €1,000 especially as I'm a total DIY & IT numbskull?

What would you do if you had my existing setup, wanted to get away from paying NTL/Sky monthly fee's and had €1,000 to spend to give you the best multi room content system possible?

Can't wait for the replies to this!! Please don't get too abusive if I'm on a wild goose chase here.

Ben

FrankGrimes

"Is it possible for €1,000 especially as I'm a total DIY & IT numbskull? "

To be honest, it's the latter part of that sentence I'd be more concerned about than the budget. This can be done and can be done for around €1,000, but it will need time and effort to research the options (in forums like this) and to get everything setup. It's easily worth the investment of time and money though.

Head over the Satellite and Terrestial forums and you'll get info on the FreeToAir options. I'm a newbie in that area (so double-check everything I'm saying before regarding as gospel!) but will be hiring someone to fit a satellite dish and DTT antennae for me (purely cos I'm under time pressure at the moment). No need for a satellite set-top box as the tv tuner car in the Home Theater PC (HTPC) you'll need will do that work. Supply and install should be done for I dunno around €200-250 and after that you don't need to pay anyone and you get BBC (HD available), ITV (some HD available), Channel 4 (not sure about this one) and plenty of others over free-to-air from the UK. Add the digital terrestial test signal for RTE & TV3 and you'll have most of the non-Sky bases covered with no future TV bills.

Then you need a HTPC with a dual tv tuner card supporting DVB-S (ideally DVB-S2 for future-proofing)and DVB-T. Other than that it's just a standard computer though you'll probably want it to be quiet, have a remote etc. See this fantastic guide for more details. €400 should easily get you a decent setup. Software options are Windows Media Center, Media Portal, MythTV, XBMC (no easy live TV support).

Record all TV onto the HTPC and download all content onto it for the time being, though you'll probably want a separate server after a while....this type of stuff does tend to lead to further 'must-have' purchases!

You'll then need to serve the media from the HTPC to client devices at the other 3 TVs. You can buy thin clients, nettops to do this (not possible to stream Live Windows Media Center TV to other PCs out of the box but I think Steviejaxx has a way to address that), or Windows Media Center Extenders (such as an old Xbox, Xbox 360, Linksys extender) to do this. Can be done over wifi, though I always prefer wired where possible.

The computer hardware may end up totalling €1,000, but all in I'd say you'll get it done for under €1,200 including the TV setup.

stevejazzx

Are the upstairs TV's netwroked are there any cat5/6 to those locations?
if not you'd need to use powerline adapter (homeplug av) becasue streamng HD (even media center recorded tv for that matter) wirelessly is a no go, it can be done but it's just not relaible, music etc is a diddle.
Once the netwrok is place you'd need one decent server roughly 500 + media center extenders or clients pc (one for each tv, networked). 2 x xbox360 at 150 = 300. Homeplug av = 200 (for two sets) Install labour roughyl 400 if third party.
You could split out the av from main server to other tv's (you wouldn't have indepedence of course and would need av or cat6 cable going to them so unlikely.