Hi all

We have just had our house redecorated and I managed to get CAT5E run to every room with the phone cable.  Although my wife doesn't know it yet, that was phase one of my plan to try to get a house wide media system in place.

I already have a Sony XL100 media system.  I am upgrading it to a 1TB drive with Vista this weekend.  I live in the UK and currently record TV through a twin tuner DVB-T setup.

My (short term) objectives are:

1.   TV/Extender in most rooms giving access to live TV, recorded TV, DVDs, music and pictures. (doable?)
2.   Ability to set recorded programs from any room (doable?)
3.   Ability to record from more than one source.. e.g. Cable and Freeview (not doable?)
4.   Ability to control the playback of music in the current room (doable?)
5.   Ability to control the playback of music in other rooms (not doable?)

I realise that Media Centre may not be able to do everything I want out of the box but I hope that it can get me somewhere towards where I'd like to be.  I'm a programmer by trade so am not afraid to customise or even write new applications if worthwhile.

I'm thinking of using the Sony as my hub and then putting a second hand Xbox 360 in each room.

I'd love to hear other member's comments.

Thanks in advance

Dave

Congrats on the progress of your project!

Everything you hope to accomplish shouldn't be a problem, but I'm not sure how you're going to acomplish the last one. Even if you found a way to control the music in another room, when you went in there the sound isn't likely to be synced up with the other rooms (assuming you want it to). You may have to get a whole house audio system for that, which aren't that expensive when you consider that they include 8 channel amps and keypads for each room that allow you to control volume, track, and source. Russound and Nuvo seem to be the most popular at around 2k for a 4 room system.

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Ben
How good can it be, if it isn't HD?
Engadget HD

d33mb33:

Although my wife doesn't know it yet, that was phase one of my plan to try to get a house wide media system in place.

Great comment - I follow a similar philosophy!

Anyway...

1) Yes, doable with caveat around the DVDs. If you're planning on using Xboxes then you can play DVDs locally with them, but if you're looking to stream DVDs from a central source then you're into a world of hacks I'm afriad. Either converting them to DVR-MS or WMV files or using the technique described here: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/258756.aspx

2) Yes, standard OOTB extender functionality

3) Not at the moment. Wait for Fiji. Should be possible then.

4) Yes, standard OOTB extender functionality

5) Not in MCE. Ben has already given a better answer than I can.

 

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MCE2005 (Reluctantly decided not to upgrade to TV Pack - will see if 7MC fixes the issues) | AMD64X2 3600+ | 1Gb Ram | 3x500Gb SATA | Hauppauge PVR150 | nVidia 7300LE silent GPU | Pig ugly big black case | Virgin Media cable | Xbox 360 wired extender

Brilliant, thank you Mark and Ben

It is good to know that I can achieve most of what I want to do with Xbox extenders.

It's a shame that MCE doesn't support multiple sources.  In the UK our cable/satellite providers charge extra for each box that you have in the house.  It would have been great to share a single cable input throughout the house and "top up" with a couple of Freeview DVB-T tuners.

I shall eagerly await Fiji to see if the situation improves...