Newbie help with new house

[squibble]

Hi,

Firstly please forgive me if this is posted in the wrong forum. Secondly I have spent the best part of a week browsing and reading forums and websites and I'm more confused than when I started so please forgive me if answers to my questions are already out there and I have missed them.

I am a total newbie to home automation and home cinema and am neither a techie nor a sparky. I am about to buy a house that is currently being built (wiring will go in in about 4 weeks) and I am really interested in getting to know more about home automation and multi-room home theatre before its too late and all the cabling is in.
My current set up is very basic: A 50 inch Sony LCD rear projection TV (not HD), DVD with Sony surround sound, a Sky+ box in the lounge and a regular sky box in the bedroom using Sky multiroom with a 28" LCD TV. I also use an old media streamer to stream music from my PC upstairs to the lounge over my wireless network. I don't currently have any automation.

In the new pad I would like to configure multi room audio and video so that I can watch sky, DVD, movies from my PC and listen to music from different rooms in the house (potentially simultaneously).
I have read about using Windows Media Center and Windows Media Extenders to achieve this and wondered if this was a good way to go?

My perfect set up would be:

Main Lounge
Home cinema, linked to central bank of music and video

Bedroom
Set up my existing LCD TV and surround sound.
Access the same bank of movies, audio and TV as the main lounge

Kitchen
28" plasma (again linked to central respository of music and video)

Bathroom
Audio speakers linked back to same music source (not sure how you select it)

Office
My PC for work and also would like to keep hard drives and amps in here if possible ... so use this as a hub for the whole set up.

Home Automation
I'd like to do some home automation. After much reading as a newbie I'm steered towards X10 using a plug in for Windows Media Center (Harmony?) as it seems to be the most flexible option, requiring the least disruption and is easily extendable to other rooms and devices. I am loath to get locked into a technology or vendor that could go bust and require me to start from scratch.

Can anyone steer me to articles that migth help me choose the best way to achieve the above? I guess some specific questions would be:

1. Can the PC in the office be the hub for everything (e.g. have hard drives with all my music and videos) and then just put a media extender in each room?
2. Where would I then have AMPs?
3. How does the Sky+ fit in, or is this not needed if I switch to using media center?
4. What other questions should I be asking?

Thanks for any help, sorry this newbie post is a bit retarded, I am just sounding out general approaches at this stage and trying to digest the mine of information.

Sue

[aoi3610]

Hi,

There are several way to achieve your goal, your budget for the conversion / installation is going to be the main thing that decides the way to go.

How much did you want to spend, things can get silly if you know what I mean.

[squibble]

Hi,

I'm not entirely sure on a total budget. The builder will be covering the cost of fitting the cabling so I'd like to get it right first time and have him bear the cost.

I would be keen to break it down into phases such as below then I could budget for 1 and 2 and then add 3 and 4 as an when I save up:

1. Cabling and X10 and c-bus or whatever devices
2. Control room (rack, media center PC, AMP etc.)
3. Lounge (projector, speakers, media extender)
4. Other rooms (add infinitum)

What would be a sensible budget for the stuff required in point 2? I'm not a purist who is going to tell the difference in sound between one cable and another but I also want something that works and is reliable so I guess I'm middle of the road.

Thanks
Sue