Multiple sources in multiple rooms

[getdownmonkeyma]

A colleague of mine is moving house shortly and is looking to do the following:

Media Center (dual digital tuner) that can be viewed in living room, kitchen, bedroom and childs room, but how can he choose each source in each room, ie he watches football in living room, wife watches soaps, kiddie watches films. The thing is how does have have it so he can watch tuner 1, tuner 2 or hard drive all in the same room, three sources, switchable in the same room. I can only think of some kind of switcher but not a clue how, any offers?.

Please let me know if I haven't made myself clear!.

[baldrick]

If you have a search around there are people posting on this subject.

A couple of companies/products I've seen mentioned are www.kat5.tv and www.avnex.co.uk

I'm not sure if you're talking about using a Media Centre PC or having a 'media centre' as in a central hub with all of your boxes?

If it's the PC option running Windows Media Centre then you can get Extenders which allow you to access content on the server via a standard ethernet network. These are available in various guises, dedicated boxes, an 'expansion pack' for the X Box (the new X Box 360 is supplied as an extender) etc...

I'm looking into multi-room, multi-source with a server for music and movies etc...

Another product to look at is Sonos. They onyl support audio at the moment but I'm hoping they might move to video in the future.

I must confess although there's alot of info on this site people seem very reluctant to post......I've had items on here for days with no response!?!?!?

[cmw14]

I've sort of done what your talking about I have four rooms (lounge, and 3 bedrooms) each with independant multi-source. Each room has access to independant Satellite/Freeview + streaming video/music from a main file-server. The latter uses CAT5 network and each room has the Pinnacle show center 1000g solution. As I said not sure if that is what your after but certainly each room has what you describe. It was a monster wiring exercise but worth it.

[getdownmonkeyma]

Originally Posted by cmw14

I've sort of done what your talking about I have four rooms (lounge, and 3 bedrooms) each with independant multi-source. Each room has access to independant Satellite/Freeview + streaming video/music from a main file-server. The latter uses CAT5 network and each room has the Pinnacle show center 1000g solution. As I said not sure if that is what your after but certainly each room has what you describe. It was a monster wiring exercise but worth it.

That is EXACTLY what he is trying to do, can you give a little more detail?.


Thanks

PS

It is using a Windows Media Center PC

[cmw14]

Not sure what detail you require so will just list the basics

Sattelite
60cm Sat dish with universal Quad LNB
4xCT100 coax run from lnb to each of the rooms terminating at a patch outlet
Each room has a Amstrad Drx400 SKY digi box with freesat card

Freeview
Televes Dat45, with masthead amp feeds into a 6-way distribution amp. From here 4xCT100 coax runs to the rooms terminating in another patch outlet
Each room has a Thomson Dti-1000

Steaming video/Audio/Photos
Cat5e cable routed to all rooms terminating to a RJ45 patch outlet
8 port 100Mbit switch
Each room has a pinnacle showcenter 1000g connected to the CAT5 network
On the main File server pinnacle showcenter database software and streaming server are installed.

So as mentioned before each person in each room has total freedom to view what ever source be it Sky, Freeview or Streaming media from the file server. One common question is, "can the streaming system cope?", yes I've had all four rooms watching 4 different movies all streaming from the file server without any glitches. I would imagine people do have problems when running wireless as 54Mbit would probably not be man enough.