Post your Setup?

mande01 wrote: »

Meob, I am seriously impressed with your set up man.

By any chance you didn't document your efforts?
Or point one to a good starting point. Unfortunately I have very little money but really want to have sky plus type stuff on our cable connection here in Dungarvan.

Any info would be great.

And again I love you set up!

Der

P.S. do you use an off site back up? or just at the neighbours or something?

sure, you can start here:

http://mediacenterhd.blogspot.com/2009/10/why.html

the blog is a little rough, but you get the idea!

to pipe sky hd into media center (in full HD) , you'll need a hauppauge HD PVR & DVBlink for HD-PVR

http://www.dvblogic.com/hdpvr.php

if you only piping SD Sky, then there are numerous cheaper solutions, and you wont need the HD PVR.

have a look thru the blog, kinda goes thru it step-by-step , feel free to ask any q's

I finally got a solution for converting HD .wtv to .m2ts / .ts for editing as well.

for backup, i do a offsite backup to parents house, just for valuable data, pics / home vids ect.

everything else is duplicated locally.

My setup comprises of Dell Studio xps 8100
i7 870
8 gigs ram
1gig Radeon 5450
Connected to Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
I have two external storage devices
4 bay Drobo with 2 750 gig and 2 1.5 tb drives
A generic 4 bay box with 2 750 gig and 1 1.5 tb drive - no raid system
Creative 2.1 speakers


I use an N rated Belkin router to wirelessly stream movies to a revo 3610 in the sitting room, on a Samsung LN37A550 37-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV. Sound through hdmi

As controlers I use a generic Windows media remote with Eventghost to map the buttons on the xps.
I use the revos wireless keyboard in the sittingroom
Both run the latest beta Xbmc, with wmp-hc as the external player.

shuttle xs35gt
running an openelec release of xbmc off a 30gb SSD
-the shuttle is passively cooled, so completely silent
-boots in about 20 seconds

It streams everything off my unRAID box in the next room over wired ethernet. Intend to rehome the server in the attic, once I get the house rewired next year. Server has ~4TB usuable, though is nearing capacity, but has plenty of room internally for expansion. Collection is mostly dvd rips of episodes, uncompressed in .mkv

hdmi out from the shuttle to the telly, and then coax from the telly to the speakers (my old logitech z5500)

remote is a logitech dinovo mini, which is showing its age (about 3 years old now, maybe more)

umm, I guess thats mostly it

HTPC,

Case, Antec Overture II
Motherboard, S775 Intel G31 DDR2 mATX
CPU, Celeron E3300 2.50Ghz S775 1MB
RAM, 4GB
HDD, Kingston SSDNow V100 256GB & 1.5TB Barracuda 7200RPM SATA-3
Tuners, 2 X Hauppauge HVR3000 & 1 X TBS6981 Dual Tuner

Software,

Windows 7 Pro
DVBLINK TVSource
Hadu CCCam Plugin
XMLTV Gui
Torrent Episode Downloader
uTorrent
SCRU
MediaBrowser (replaces MCE Movies mode)
<meta>browser

Hardware,

DLINK DIR-655
TPLINK GB 8 Port Switch
1 XBOX Elite (Extender mode)
1 XBOX Arcade (Extender mode)
1 DLINK Media Center Extender.
______________________________

I receive all Sky channels (SD & HD) and can watch them on any TV in the house using either Windows Media Center or using Boxee on my laptop, imac or ipad. Its taken me a while to get everything write (especially the epg) but I'm delighted with it now.

The xbox is a great piece of kit imo. Its allowed me to have just 1 device under each TV for all games, music, TV and movies. Now if I could just get it to play BR!

The HTPC is in the attic so the whole setup is virtually silent except for the older xbox.

Basically i'm still developing the system but the idea is single server for full house audio and library management & Laptop to send video over widi to projector

Hardware Spec;
Server PC;
Pentium 4 630 3 Ghz on intel D945GTP board - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.p...+4+3.00GHz
2.5 GB ram (running at 266 Mhz) -
Geforce 6800 GS 256Mb
3.5 TB on two drives connected via USB caddy (to be move internally)
M-Audio Delta 1010lt sound card - 4 stereo phono outputs
House;
Cut 2 phono leads in half and crudely wired through a simple blocks (Upgrade http://www.ebyelectro.com/terminal-block...wless.asp) to speaker cables that run through my house then into two speakers in each room.
Epson projector
Old sony cd player
Netgear router
belkin screencast for WiDi
NTL box
Remote;
SGS and Xperia S running xbmc remote
Mobile;
Lenovo W520
i7 2.3Ghz
8GB ram
128GB SSD
500GB WD black
1080 LCD
Dell D620
Dell Mini 1010

Software
Server;
Windows XP 32 - (to be changed to server 2003 64 if possible)
XBMC (4 separate folders on external drive - Run side by running in portable mode as different windows users outputting to different audio devices- wasn't able to achieve in windows 7/8)
Virtual Audio Cable - to allow switching of audio into more than one room (can use xbmc mutliroom audio plugin for two audio output)
MySQL - to manage single database and share with all devices
Phone
Xbmc remote on android (assign different port for each instance) - minor issues controlling volume and next track etc.
Laptop;
Windows 7 64 bit
XBMC
WiDi - to send video and audio to projector from Laptop

Shed;
Dell t300 (12gb ram and quad core xeon)
TBS 6985
Dreambox
Running DVBLink to feed the rest of the house.
11TBs dedicated to TV rips (about 3.5-4TB free at the moment)
5TBs dedicated to HD Movie rips
Sky dish with octo output feeding the TBS and a couple of recievers in the house.

Main Room
46" samsung
Zotac HTPC running openelec
HD sat reciever (may move elsewhere once I am happy with DVBlink on Openelec)

Sitting Room
Bose Dock and Airport Express for Airplay from the server in the shed.
No TV (not my choice.........)

Main Bedroom
32" Samsung
Sat reciever
WD TV Live (along with the sat reciever due to be replaced by a HTPC using DVBlink)

Mancave / Attic
37" Samsung
HD Sat reciever
Xbox 360
PS3
Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround.

All the above rooms are wired via Cat5e (Cat6 in the case of the shed.)

Portable (all make use of DVBlink)
iPad
Laptop
iPhones


Plans for the future;
Projector for Main Room
5.1 surround for Main Room
Possibility of second iPad (works really well with DVBlink)
New TV for Mancave (it's 720p only) which I'd be only too happy if it was the cast off from the main room if the projector ever gets approval from the real boss of the house.

The DVBLink aspect of things is brand new to the house (mrs is away this weekend and I did it all yesterday) and I'm really impressed by it. Channel changes are a bit slow (XBMC issue as far as I can tell) but apart from that it's very impressive.

Being able to watch TV with the iPad while cooking will hopefully be a large plus that will help get approval for anything and everything else I plan!

Access wrote: »

This thread seems to have died a death over the past year.

I would love for this thread to be more active... with more pics of irish HTPC/mancave/living room setups

Something like the XBMC forums new "post your setup" thread... Here

And the old one... Here

Only prob with the XBMC "post your setup" thread is that it is very "Americanized" with setups that wouldnt look good in an Irish house or apartment. But saying that there is a few UK setups that are very slick and nice looking.

Pictures of backroom and attic setups are great too because they give you ideas of how other people layout cabling to devices and ways of mounting your equipment on walls/racks etc.

If I win the battle and get a projector I'd be only chuffed to post pics for some face rubbing!

For anyone who can if redocorating walls or replacing skirting boards at any stage my advice would be use that opportunity to get Cat5 (or Cat6 if you can afford it in). Wireless will break your High Definiton loving heart!