Home Entertainment System

Diggerdunne

Am looking for some help with a home sound system. Am an electrician and have been thinking about it for a while. Have never really wired anythin like this before except in penthouse apts and that was just following a drawing and not known what the cables actually did. Am looking to have music in all rooms and to be able to control them via remote or wall controls. would like to have the tv thru the speakers also and ipod etc.Also be able to control individual rooms.i have no idea about amps or sub woofers or anythin like that Any advise or guidance on cabling and systems or hardware would be greatfully appreciated.

jeepers101

If you're in Dublin there's a wholesaler in Finglas with a very cool system on display. The lads in there know their stuff as well.

Diggerdunne

Thanx for the info. Do u know the name of the place and yeah I'm in dublin

jeepers101

Yeah its REW in Finglas Business Centre on the Jamestown Rd (The last turn on the left before the roundabout as you're heading out of the town)

Clare_Culchie

Digger, as ever, Google has the answer if you ask the right question...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,660013,00.asp
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,644604,00.asp
They're old articles, and tech has moved on significantly, but principles are the same.

You want all your media accessible everywhere in the home, and you're an electrician? You have to keep it wired. Don't go wireless unless you have to. Wired networks carry 1000Mbps, 802.11n wireless cards carry at speeds of 160Mbps max, and you have all these waves buzzing around your house. If you don't mind tracing cable around the place you should go wired, it's the best. Pull up your skirting-board, do some drilling, routing, re-plastering feed the cable under the timber flooring, put two or three network points in different parts of each room (behind each telly, behind the fridge and cooker, behind side-board or cabinet). Have them all feed back to a network hub or switch beneath the stairs or up to the attic. Have your broadband router feed back to the switch (a clever and efficient hub) and plug in a little Windows Home Server(WHS), or NAS (network attached storage), or Apple-equivalent, as your central media store. It doesn't need a keyboard, mouse or monitor, it's just a little box that sits anywhere on the wired network (or right beside your router if you go wireless), and contains all the files you need to share among all your devices. You should consider making sure that it is RAID1 or greater (redundant array of (not-so-) inexpensive disks). That makes sure that if one hard-disk fails all your data is still on the other(s) and safe.

Anyway, once you've figured out how to transmit (Ethernet network) and host (WHS or NAS) your data, you have to decide how you're going to access that media. If you're going for a Windows-based ecosystem, you can have PCs and laptops sharing files to XBox 360s all using the Windows Media Center interface. If you want to go for an all Apple-base ecosystem, iPads, iPods, iPhones, Apple TV's, Macs and all would be sharing your iTunes content. You can mix and match to some extent, but things get tricky with DRM (digital rights management) media, they don't like you sharing across platforms all that easily.

There are plenty of other device in the mix, such as Philips Streamium, Sonos media players, and devices from Logitech and a whole plethora of other manufacturers.

There's loads to consider and countless number of options, but they don't all have to go in at the same time. Build it up slowly so it doesn't break the bank. Just get your wired network down first and work up from there.

All the best

Diggerdunne

Thanx for all that info... Some interesting reading ahead of me. Will do the research and see what I understand and what I need to get started, cheers....

Stoner

have you looked on the home entertainment thread ?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=863


do you want me to move this thread there?

indie armada

was up in rew the other day and got one of the brochures belong to the system jeepers is talking about, think its the sonus multi room they do.
looks impressive and i think sonus do the flush ceiling speakers that can be painted over.

Diggerdunne

Yeah move it there if ya don't mind, cheers...