Make sense of home connectivity and streaming.

spoonthumb

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I consider myself well knowledged in hi-fi matters. I have been reading about and have been interested in hi fi for over 35 years so what I don't know usually is about very technical aspects of hi fi. Then there is the area of connectivity in home. There I am not so great. I have a PC (non wi-fi but have purchased adapter), a laptop (wi-fi), tablet (wi-fi) 2 HD TV's pre wi-fi and a small CRT tv in kitchen. I have TV antenna sockets in every room, Hotbird sattelite tv and am just about to have broadband wi fi internet installed into my home. My question is how do i connect everything so i can turn on my computers and tv and watch and listen to everything wherever i want it, i.e turn on my PC upstairs and listen to the music on it though my surround system (5.1 amp pre wi fi) downstairs? I realise this is a huge subject with multiple possible answers but a little information to help set me on the right tracks would be much appreciated. Thanks.
 

Overdose

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As you say, a huge subject and one that has a variety of solutions.
In the first instance you need to decide what you realistically want out of the system and then connect the bits that you want to integrate.
Networking your computer system should be the first step so that all devices are at least linked on a common home network via WiFi or wired connection, depending on your situation.
For multimedia access and playback you might like to consider adding a NAS (network attached storage) drive, this would feed media to the consumers in your system. This function could be done by a dedicated PC, but a NAS is more power efficient and better if you want a system to be continually active.
There are numerous devices (media players/streamers) that can be connected to existing hifi or TVs to provide media playback from the media source on your network, be it the NAS, Pc or the internet.
 

davedotco

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In all honesty you simply can not do what you want, well actually you probably could but the system would then be so complex that you would spend all day just trying to get it to work.

That kind of flexibility will only come with a full av/music install and cost lots, video distribution alone is a huge subject and best dealt with by specialists.

Unless you are prepared to pay, best is to try and work back to your 'core' requirements and see if there is some simple way you can get this from your home network.

Good luck, you are going to need it....... :doh:
 

professorhat

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As davedotco says, there's no one size fits all solution to do this apart from one designed by a home entertainment company, but that would be extremely expensive and would actually still use a variety of different components to achieve it. The advantage is, you don't need to know the details, they'll just put it all in for you, then explain how to control everything.

To do this yourself, you'd need a variety of different solutions e.g. your example of streaming music from anywhere to any other room could be achieved with a Sonos solution. Best bet would be to work out what's most important things you want to do first (e.g. streaming music from one room to another, streaming video from here to there) and then start building the solution slowly from there.

One thing that's likely is, you'll want a central NAS storage unit to store all your media files. This then makes it easier to stream everything to everywhere. There's a few different brands / recommendations here as well - I personally use a Synology NAS, but there are also ones from QNAP, Buffalo, Western Digital etc. etc. which would probably fit your requirements.

EDIT - sorry, didn't read Overdose's comment properly and I see he already mentioned about having a NAS.
 

spoonthumb

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Thanks all the comments are useful. Sounds like NAS is the way to start. Was looking into using the electricity wiring to send the signal around via wifi adapters but my house is triple phase and it won't work upstairs and downstairs without further recievers and transmitters. :doh: Looks like I will need that luck. Thanks again and any more ideas would be appreciated too.
 

omnibeard

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Not sure this is as difficult a proposition as people are making out. Or indeed necessarily that expensive. It's pretty much what I am doing in my place. I'm lucky in that I've just renovated a house, so I have ethernet cables everywhere. I don't rate power line data transfer, WiFi might cut the mustard, but I couldn't say for sure, so would recommend you try to hard wire a network somehow - it is doable.

Start with a NAS, then all you need to do is to connect the NAS with each location to which you wish to stream media (ie cable from NAS to router/switch, then cables off from there to living room/bedroom(s)/kitchen/bathroom(s)/whatever). This might mean holes through ceilings and knocking small trenches into walls to take cables. In my case I then have a Mac Mini (if needed for video) and an Airport Express (if needed for audio) at each location. The Macs only need to run Snow Leopard to do everything I want them to do, so something like an Intel Core Duo 1.83 GHz is fine for my needs. I've picked these up on Gumtree for anything from £60 to £120. It's worth maxing out RAM on each of them, RAM is cheap - these things will take 2GB and that costs about £20 at the mo. Install XBMC, iTunes, anything else you fancy, and point them at the NAS where you store all your files. Optical out from Airport Expresses into various amps and AV receivers. One or more iPad Minis to use as remote controls for XBMC/iTunes/Spotify etc. Say you have 4 locations, 1 iPad mini, I reckon that comes in at well under £1k.

All of which means I can walk around my house streaming anything to anywhere. I've set up XBMC with a MySQL server so that I can pause video in one room and then resume in another. Hope that all makes sense! Does that sound like the kind of set up you're after?
 

Overdose

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The only thing that I would add to the above, is to make sure that the Mac mini/Pc or whatever, can handle HD video. Early Macs cannot and if you want a truly multimedia expreience, then HD is a must. Blu Ray is a bit more tricky and might need a dedicated Blu Ray player for a trouble free solution.

If you install a NAS and have a networking Blu Ray player, you could do away with the Mac mini and use Apple TVs and Airport Express. The iPad would do the media playback. The Airport Expresses also double up as WiFi range extenders.

Either way, entirely doable without breaking the bank, but not cheap per se.
 

davedotco

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omnibeard said:
Not sure this is as difficult a proposition as people are making out. Or indeed necessarily that expensive. It's pretty much what I am doing in my place. I'm lucky in that I've just renovated a house, so I have ethernet cables everywhere. I don't rate power line data transfer, WiFi might cut the mustard, but I couldn't say for sure, so would recommend you try to hard wire a network somehow - it is doable.

Start with a NAS, then all you need to do is to connect the NAS with each location to which you wish to stream media (ie cable from NAS to router/switch, then cables off from there to living room/bedroom(s)/kitchen/bathroom(s)/whatever). This might mean holes through ceilings and knocking small trenches into walls to take cables. In my case I then have a Mac Mini (if needed for video) and an Airport Express (if needed for audio) at each location. The Macs only need to run Snow Leopard to do everything I want them to do, so something like an Intel Core Duo 1.83 GHz is fine for my needs. I've picked these up on Gumtree for anything from £60 to £120. It's worth maxing out RAM on each of them, RAM is cheap - these things will take 2GB and that costs about £20 at the mo. Install XBMC, iTunes, anything else you fancy, and point them at the NAS where you store all your files. Optical out from Airport Expresses into various amps and AV receivers. One or more iPad Minis to use as remote controls for XBMC/iTunes/Spotify etc. Say you have 4 locations, 1 iPad mini, I reckon that comes in at well under £1k.

All of which means I can walk around my house streaming anything to anywhere. I've set up XBMC with a MySQL server so that I can pause video in one room and then resume in another. Hope that all makes sense! Does that sound like the kind of set up you're after?

Fair comment if you are as competent in these matters as you appear to be, less so if you are not.

A few things come to mind.

You have "ethernet cables everywhere", a lot more difficult if like the op you don't.

You are suggesting an Apple based system which I find quite easy to set up, I would not want to try this sort of setup on a PC. We have no idea if the op is, or even wants to be, Apple based.

Finally you have not touched on the op's requirement to stream video to what are clearly non network TVs, easy enough if you are iPad > ATC > TV but if the media is not on the iPad it gets a lot more difficult.
 

Overdose

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davedotco said:
Finally you have not touched on the op's requirement to stream video to what are clearly non network TVs, easy enough if you are iPad > ATC > TV but if the media is not on the iPad it gets a lot more difficult.

Music and video would appear to be able to be streamed from a Synology NAS to AEXs and ATVs without Airplay.

http://forum.firecore.com/topic/9402
 

davedotco

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Overdose said:
davedotco said:
Finally you have not touched on the op's requirement to stream video to what are clearly non network TVs, easy enough if you are iPad > ATC > TV but if the media is not on the iPad it gets a lot more difficult.

Music and video would appear to be able to be streamed from a Synology NAS to AEXs and ATVs without Airplay.

http://forum.firecore.com/topic/9402

Interesting but way beyond my level of compedence and by the comments on that thread others find it difficult too.

For the non expert I think Sonos is the way to go for audio but as I have no interest in video it is not an area I have looked into with any enthusiasm.
 

daveh75

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I got the impression the OP wants to stream broadcast TV (satellite) around the house too which slightly complicates matters.

Apple isnt the best solution if that is the case, and I wouldnt even consider it on a WiFi or homeplug based network...
 

davedotco

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daveh75 said:
I got the impression the OP wants to stream broadcast TV (satellite) around the house too which slightly complicates matters.

Apple isnt the best solution if that is the case, and I wouldnt even consider it on a WiFi or homeplug based network...

Exactly. One for the expert installers I think........ :hand:
 

Overdose

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daveh75 said:
I got the impression the OP wants to stream broadcast TV (satellite) around the house too which slightly complicates matters.

Apple isnt the best solution if that is the case, and I wouldnt even consider it on a WiFi or homeplug based network...

I think that'd be covered by the TV ariel connections around the house.

ie "TV antenna sockets in every room"

I really don't think this needs to be too complicated.
 

daveh75

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Overdose said:
daveh75 said:
I got the impression the OP wants to stream broadcast TV (satellite) around the house too which slightly complicates matters.

Apple isnt the best solution if that is the case, and I wouldnt even consider it on a WiFi or homeplug based network...

I think that'd be covered by the TV ariel connections around the house.

ie "TV antenna sockets in every room" I really don't think this needs to be too complicated.

Yes and also mentions hotbird satellite TV and wanting to watch and listen to everything wherever they want.

I think the OP needs to be more explicit on the current setup and in what they're trying to achieve.
 

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