Hi,
Having just purchased a new house - or rather an old house - I'm looking to add some networking, AV distribution and lighting control.
I'll start with some basic system requirements and see if someone can point me at suitable products for me to go away and investigate. I'll identify likely candidates with what I understand about them and would appreciate alternatives where people can suggest. Pros and cons would also be excellent.
My definition of suitable - means I can fit them. I'm a competent DIYer whose confident routing cables, configuring electronic devices and connecting things up.
The big difficulty I have is understanding what in practise can be done with the different products - and which ones are available in the UK.
I require:
1. A way of streaming music and video around the house from a media server. Something like twonky perhaps.
2. Some devices to receive the media and display it/play it. I currently have a DSM320 - but it can't do my number one requirement and stream synchronously into multiple rooms. How do I do that?
3. A way of connecting multiple TVs upto the terrestial aerial. Options here seem confusing to me.... i can run coax cable round the house and use an amplifier... or I can use something like KAT5 and convert the signals to IP traffic - but does that mean I can watch different channels in every room? Coz that's what I want to do.
4. I'd like to have a number of rooms with the ability to have scene lighting, including the bathroom. I'm not sure I need to link the rooms - unless its a fairly cheap additional option. I'm very wary of X10 - sounds dubious to me using existing wiring and I don't like the idea of having to fault find any crosstalk issues.
I'll be wiring the house with a CAT5 network point in everyroom, probably with two cables as the advice everwhere seems to be put more in than you need. In general I'm happy wiring stuff up, I have a wireless network for my laptop but I reckon we are a fair way away from 1Gbs wireless speeds, and streaming high quality video to multiple sources sounds like it'll quickly into the wireless bandwidth - especially as its shared.
One other idea I've had... my new PC arrives on Friday. That's a windows media centre one, which I plan to use as a Video Recorder.... dumping the output to the media server in the future allowing me to subsequent watch the recordings. Kinda of two phase approach.
Any hints and advice are much appreciate,
reqards
Ian
Having just purchased a new house - or rather an old house - I'm looking to add some networking, AV distribution and lighting control.
I'll start with some basic system requirements and see if someone can point me at suitable products for me to go away and investigate. I'll identify likely candidates with what I understand about them and would appreciate alternatives where people can suggest. Pros and cons would also be excellent.
My definition of suitable - means I can fit them. I'm a competent DIYer whose confident routing cables, configuring electronic devices and connecting things up.
The big difficulty I have is understanding what in practise can be done with the different products - and which ones are available in the UK.
I require:
1. A way of streaming music and video around the house from a media server. Something like twonky perhaps.
2. Some devices to receive the media and display it/play it. I currently have a DSM320 - but it can't do my number one requirement and stream synchronously into multiple rooms. How do I do that?
3. A way of connecting multiple TVs upto the terrestial aerial. Options here seem confusing to me.... i can run coax cable round the house and use an amplifier... or I can use something like KAT5 and convert the signals to IP traffic - but does that mean I can watch different channels in every room? Coz that's what I want to do.
4. I'd like to have a number of rooms with the ability to have scene lighting, including the bathroom. I'm not sure I need to link the rooms - unless its a fairly cheap additional option. I'm very wary of X10 - sounds dubious to me using existing wiring and I don't like the idea of having to fault find any crosstalk issues.
I'll be wiring the house with a CAT5 network point in everyroom, probably with two cables as the advice everwhere seems to be put more in than you need. In general I'm happy wiring stuff up, I have a wireless network for my laptop but I reckon we are a fair way away from 1Gbs wireless speeds, and streaming high quality video to multiple sources sounds like it'll quickly into the wireless bandwidth - especially as its shared.
One other idea I've had... my new PC arrives on Friday. That's a windows media centre one, which I plan to use as a Video Recorder.... dumping the output to the media server in the future allowing me to subsequent watch the recordings. Kinda of two phase approach.
Any hints and advice are much appreciate,
reqards
Ian
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