Getting Started

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jabeard3 Posted: 10-08-2008 4:07 PM

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Hello All - I have some newbie questions.

I am in the early design process of a project to centralize and organize all digital content in my home.

My general requirements are:

• Single repository for all digital content
• Music
• Pictures
• Video (camcorder and such)
• Live/Recorded TV
  
• DVD (including blu-ray)
• Access to simple internet content from any connected device (RSS/Weather etc)
• Ability for each entertainment zone to act independently or as a whole
• Ability to remotely control the process from any internet connected device (iPhone/Windows Mobile/laptop)

My home has the following "zones"

• Main theater viewing room (58" Panasonic Plasma/5.1 surround sound via Denon AVR
• Living room with LCD but no external speakers
• 2 bedroom televisions
• speakers outside on the back patio

I have evaluated a number of different products  (Media Center, Savant, Lifware, Niveus, MythTV)  I believe I have decided on Media Center with extenders, combination of XBox360 and Linksys DMA-2100. Most of the rooms are wired with CAT 5 and I also run wireless N in the house. 

I would prefer to build my own Media Center PC, but I have recently started my own company and find that I have little time to spend on these projects that truly interest me... At a minimum I know I'll have to buy additional tuners and add them as I'd like at least 4, ( have 8 now between the 4 comcast dual tuner DVR's currently in place). Does anyone have any suggestions on pre-configured media center PC's that would get me started, ie dual tuner, blu ray etc.  Is there a limit to the number of tuners that a machine can handle other than the obvious limitations of expansion ports etc? 

Does anyone have any comments on my "requirements" or the proposed solution?  Can 2 media center extenders "watch" the same content simultaneously?  Can  I pause live TV on one extender and then resume from another? 

thanks for any help/comments/suggestions

Jason

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Ian Dixon replied on 10-10-2008 11:18 AM

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Your questions are great and worth a proper answer so I am going to read them out on the podcast next week and discuss the options.

What budget do you have?

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jabeard3 replied on 10-10-2008 4:15 PM

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Ian,

Thank you for the reply.  I would like to keep the cost of the entire project under 4K.

I believe that the components I will need are:

1 Media Center PC (with potential additional components (tuners/blu ray/ audio/video cards)

3 Media center extenders (I already have an xbox 360 that will serve one TV )

a new home theater receiver that supports multiple zones (or a separate stereo receiver attached to a 4th extender for my external spearks.)

I see that amazon has the Linksys 2100 for around$100 after rebate.  

Speaking of the home theater receiver...  should one even be necessary?  I would think that the proper combinations of audio/video cards internal to the PC should be able to simulate the functions being performed by the receiver with the exception of speaker amplification.  I may be missing something here.. but the PC is already decoding the audio/video for playback so can't I export that decoded signal to an external amplifier and do away with the receiver altogether?

Are you familiar with some of the wi-fi based remote controls for MC?  Specifically in my house I have 1 iphone and 2 ipod touches.  I'd like to be able to utilize these potentially as remotes.  My components are all in the basement and I currently have a powermid system to convert the IR signals to RF and then back to IR on the other side of the wall... works fine in theory but the range is a little limited.

Thanks again!

Jason