Nucleus Posted February 23, 2008 Posted February 23, 2008 Hey all, My Dad and I were browsing through PC World (I know, I know...) yesterday and I started to describe to him the "wonders of modern media entertainment". I have been listening for a while now, as I'm sure have many of you, about the next generation of home cinema/music/internet and how everything is becoming linked together - what with video/music streaming through the house, home servers to store all your media, Windows Media Centre, wireless shit everywhere...We're pretty baffled here. Here's what we're looking to do. The TV in the living room downstairs has a DVD player and Sky Plus. We also have a Hi-Fi in there, connected to some big speakers round the room (this thing is quite old: cassette player, cables connect to speakers via screws which trap the wires in place - unless that’s common place. I'm not sure...). We're looking to buy a new Hi-Fi and speaker system (5.1) and it would be great if the TV could connect to the speakers as well (wireless speakers?). Now, I’m not sure about having a PC downstairs. Is this necessary? I don't really understand the concept of having a PC connected to the TV. Is it better to just connect it to speakers rather than having a separate Hi-Fi? Is there a choice between this and having streaming from the computers upstairs? As for music, we are looking to stream round the house, i.e. kitchen, living room, bedrooms. This seems to be a bit of an unnecessary pipe-dream though. However, we are certain that we want to stream to the living room (possibly adding speakers in other rooms at a later date). How would this work? Would you need to stream the same music to all of the speakers or could you have it set up to produce different music in various rooms? - Streaming video would be a nice touch as well (living room only of course). We're looking to buy a few digital photo frames to display around the house. I know that you can buy ones which accept streaming from your PC but as with everything else, it must be compatible. I'm sorry to unload this onto all of you and I hope it isn't too cheeky, but I'm really confused with all the different setups. I would really like to attempt this myself without calling a professional but I need a basic layout first. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys. Nucleus.
McPhee Posted February 24, 2008 Posted February 24, 2008 Post up a budget and I can help. Also, with the speakers would you prefer music or movies as the priority? Doing both equally well doesn't really happen because they require very different properties
Jasper Posted February 24, 2008 Posted February 24, 2008 Streaming your music is easy with iTunes and an Airport Express: just use AirTunes. You can this way also stream film through Apple TV (though any setup would) so that would be a good choice there too. I'm talking Apple because I know from my experience those work for that purpose, and I haven't really seen any alternatives to the ease of AirTunes. I would, however, hold of from wireless speakers. They require batteries, synching, in short: a whole hurdle of problems that you don't have with wires. If I were you and was willing to pay a good price for it, I'de say that the Apple streaming solution would be the best. Not because it's Apple, but because it's easy and quickly done. An airport express (about €100), an Apple TV (I think that one is €300) and a free copy of iTunes on all PC's make it managable to have surround sound everywhere, stream all PC libraries around your house, buy and rent movies, and so on. It would be my solution, but if somebody knows better stuff than say so, since I only know Apple who support AirTunes or something similar, and the AppleTV doesn't really have a great alternative except Xbox360, but that doesn't have a big library like iTunes.
Nucleus Posted February 26, 2008 Author Posted February 26, 2008 Sorry for the late reply for this; I've been busy and this thread slipped my mind. Thanks for the posts so far. As for a budget, I'm not quite sure what the range for a setup like this would be. Could you perhaps provide a range (i.e. min and max) figure for a home setup? Sorry I can't be more specific. I spoke to my Dad and he said maybe £300. This is more of a ballpark figure however; it is not a definate max cost as, like I said, I have no idea about the sort of costs involved with a project like this. As for speakers, I believe that the primary use for the living room sound system would be for movies. However, any future speakers around the house would most likely be for movies (yet as I said, this is something for the future). I'd heard of Apple TV previously but never actually knew what it was. It looks quite interesting. I'll definately consider it as a possibility.
RoadKill Posted March 4, 2008 Posted March 4, 2008 Do you have an Xbox 360? If so, you're pretty much set already, just install TVersity on your PC, share out whatever media you feel like, and you're done
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