[Darren Blake]

Hi all. I havnt really posted on here much since I bought my first home cinema setup more years ago than I care to remember. Recently I've been toying with the idea of taking it to the next level, so to speak.

I currently have what is effectvely a single-room AV setup, but I have run a composite + stereo cable from a spare output on my AVR to a system upstairs. A wireless IR remote control repeater means that I can watch and control anything connected to my AVR upstairs. I can also run my PC through my AVR which is fine for video but the PAL resolution is hopeless for actually using the desktop.

My upstairs screen just happens to be a PC monitor with AV inputs.

Earlier this year I put CAT5 sockets in just about every room in the house. This got me thinking about changing from media files stored on my PC to a central NAS/media server setup. Now, if I had an ethernet media player linked to my upstairs screen I could watch any media on the server. Also, the one I've been looking at (Netgear EVA8000) also allows you to access your PC desktop on your TV - presumably using the higher resolution that the HDMI output allows. All well and good so far.

However (and here's the main poiint of my post) I also still want to be able to watch my existing analogue AV spurces on the upstairs screen. The upstairs system only has one set of inputs, so it can either connect to the media player OR my analogue link to my AVR - not both at the same time.

What I want, therefore, is a box that can take the analogue output from my AVR and stream it over my network. Now at this point some of you will probably suggest the Slingbox / Slingcatcher. The problem here is that as far as I can tell the Slingcatcher can only play media streamed from a Slingbox or from a PC running their server software (Sling Projector) - not from NAS.

Likewise, I don't yet know of a streaming media player that can play stuff streamed from a Slingbox.

I'm quite inerested in doing this but at the moment there I can't quite fnd the right hardware to do what I want. Maybe it would be easier to just get a cheap AVR for the upstairs setup and link both the analogue (AVR) and digital (NAS/media player) sources to that, but they would mean buying even more new stuff.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Does anyone know of anything that might do what I want?

[dwhite]

Sounds like you want a simple switch for your AV input to your monitor. What type of input is it?

[Darren Blake]

The monitor (upstairs screen) has composite, s-video and VGA inputs. I'd prefer to use VGA so I can take advantage of the better resolution (through an HMDI-VGA adaptor, because most streameing media players only seem tohave HMDI outputs). Actuallu, getting more than one inout into the screen isnt much of an issue.

For sound upstairs I have an Aego2 3.1 system but that only has one input.

I'm kind of a "one size fits all" solution kinda guy So in my ideal world I'd rather not behaving to change inputs on my screen AND on my Aego in order to watch somehing.

I know I'm fussy, but I'm new to this streaming thing so I'm still hoping there's a single box out there that will do what I want.

[Darren Blake]

Well, I've been talking to SlingMedia over the past few days and I have it in writing from them that SlingCatcher can indeed play files direct from a NAS. However, don't take their word for it. My Netgear 1TB media server arrived this week and I'll be ordering a SlingCatcher very soon. I'll post back whn I know for sure it is working!

[Darren Blake]

Just to finish this off (amazing how few Sling-users there are on here!)

I set up my SlingCatcher last night and (after downloading the latest firmware for it) I was able to connect and stream MP3s from my NetGear ReadyNAS Duo without any issues at all. However, the indexing of media files on the SlingCatcher is rubbish (take note, SaingMedia). There doesn't seem to be any support for ID3 tagging and the whole thing is done using the Windows folder structure. There's no "party mode" for playing playlists or random shuffles of your collection. You can, however, select the album folder and it will play all the files in that folder in order. Luckily I have all my MP3s not only tagged but in one folder per album with sensible track names like "01 - TITLE" so for me its pretty painless even with the poor indexing.

Tonight I hook it up to my SlingBox. Fingers crossed that goes as smoothly!