Trout

iTrader: (1)

OK - an eight hour plane journey and a copy of STUFF magazine could have been a mistake.

Assume that I am not particularly technology literate but I do know what the end result is that I want. Any advice would be appreciated! I will try and be succinct in describing what I want.

Four key rooms in the house that I want to provide media services to - lounge, home office, family room and master bedroom. Due to the house configuration the lounge and master bedroom are out of wireless range even with my Netgear uber router with extended range. The house is long and thin - and the walls are very old - up to 2ft thick at the base in the case of the wall separating the lounge from the rest of the house!

Home office has MCE PC, network hard drive, wireless lappy, broadband entry point is here and has Netgear router, no tv aerial point.

Family room has LCD tv with DVI input, analogue tv point.

Master bedroom will get a TV, analogue tv point, telephone port.

Lounge will have Sky HD and suitable screen/projector, analogue tv point and telephone port (although BT Engineer could not guarantee broadband on this connection), satellite entry point.


My ideal scenario is that I can get Sky in every room - I would also like to record from Sky on the MCE PC. In addition I would like wireless in each room so I can use the lappy around the house - currently only office, family room and garden.

Questions include: -

Will a Slingbox/Sony LocationFree basestation enable me to link the Sky HD box to my PC?

To do this I believe I will need wireless in my lounge - how do I acheive this?

- can I relay the wireless?

- can I add a second wireless router to the telephone port? (I believe that the systems mentioned above will send the output to any IP address in the world over Broadband!)

- what bandwidth will I need to actually carry an HD signal or even a normal satellite signal?

What mechanisms could I use if any to send media back from the home office to the lounge?

I assume that to enable the TV in the family room I can get Sky Multiroom? Is multiroom HD? Does it provide FULL Sky services - if so I guess I can attach my Sony LocationFree in the family room as it has a strong wireless signal.

Phew! Lots of thoughts but the desired outcome would be: -

Wireless everywhere

Sky in every room whether on TV or MCE PC

Possibility of playback from MCE PC in other rooms with TV!!


I want it all and I want it now

Suggestions are welcome.

TIA

Rannoch

Mossman

How about a nice Matsui Midi system instead!?
Hope to see you soon!
Mossman

sti-04!!

Great thread. Come on guys get the answers up

Barmyclown

With the wirleless can you move the router to a more central phone socket. Then there is the option of higher gain antenna`s on your router and any pc`s that you will be using to stream, I put a 7dbi antenna on my desktop while leaving the router with it`s normal antenna ( didn`t want to send a booming signal that half the world could pick up ) and it`s worked wonders for the patcy reception I had even though they are only 10 - 20m apart. If that didn`t work I was thinking of getting a patch direction for the router to focus the signal more in the direction needed, ie the house instead of the front garden like it is at the moment.

Jase

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

What about those networking boxes that plug into the leccy plug socket and use the houses leccy wires to send information around a network?

^^
Sorry for the technical barrage!

Ian Cook

Could use a wireless range expander like the Linksys WRE54G ? to sort the wireless bit out anyway !

You can get things like this http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318 to pull data from the MCE PC to any tv in the house, although you would need one of these boxes for each TV ! which can get a little pricey ! lol

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the comments so far.

The reason the router is at one end of the house is that the BT Engineer could not guarantee broadband on any of the extensions. Howevr I will try when I get home.

Separate question - with wireless I get around 950kbps, when I had a wired router got 1,650kbps. Any clues as to difference? My PC has a wireless card to match the router and the connections is 108mbps!!!

David_Wallis

Why dont I run you some cat5 and we could add a couple of access points, say one in the lower landing / hall area and one in the office.. or similar?

Slingboxes will be ok over wireless, but over dsl could be tricky..

I could also run you a coax from the tv in the lounge to the office or wherever..

If you want a hand then give us a call on the mobile, however I have a new work number and the other number isnt currently on.. Steven has it though.

Recording from sky on MCE is a little bit of a pain, as all the channels on the guide need to be recieved on the sky box, for example if you want to record BBC One with MCE and Truda is watching Sky in the lounge, then MCE will change the channel, rather than knowing it can get BBC1 down the Aerial.

XBOX360's allow the playback of MCE in any room where the XBOX is.

David

rich101

You can buy a DVB-S PCI card for MCE which will record FTA from the Sky/Astra sat's.

There are fairly inexpensive but do take a little bit of tinkering around with to be reliable or so I am led to believe.

DVB-S2 PCI cards are imminent (<1week) so that would offer BBC HD via their current trial service for around 150 Euros + P&P

Have a read here

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350742

and here

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showt...ighlight=dvb-s

rich

David_Wallis

Rich, Im assuming that means he needs a dual or quad LNB though.

rich101

Indeed a quad LNB would be required, but that is what will be fitted if SKY HD is ordered. Cheap as chips and should fit a standard SKY dish LNB mount too but obviously you would then need a further run of cables from the sat dish to the equipment plus the requiste F connectors

There is a device which will take the V and H polarisation from a sat dual LNB and allow you to connect multiple devices, ? Octo ? something . . .

rich
Indeed a quad LNB would be required, but that is what will be fitted if SKY HD is ordered. Cheap as chips and should fit a standard SKY dish LNB mount too but obviously you would then need a further run of cables from the sat dish to the equipment plus the requisite number of F connectors

There is a device which will take the V and H polarisation from a sat dual LNB and allow you to connect multiple devices, ? Octo ? something . . .

rich

David_Wallis

I'll add a quad LNB then , however reading that thread, its quite worrying the processor requirements.. havent finished reading it, but I can see me getting the HTPC bug again, just a shame MCE is poor..

David

rich101

Yep, Totally agree with the MCE being a little poor.

All HD is going to be a processor hog but to record the streams should be fine 'tis just the play back

I liked the idea of binning my SKY+ and being able to archive recordings long term with the capture card idea.

rich

David_Wallis

I can see me needing to replace my HP D5000 with a dual core box and a top Graphics card argh!!!

David

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Well it was all looking good and then you all started to speak Greek, or maybe it was Latin?!

Will have a chat with you David and we will see what we can do. There is already a coax from the lounge to the booster box in the attic and then from the booster box to the kitchen.

Would prefer to do it without wires trailing around the outside of the house, there again internal work would be messy!

Let's see what we can do.


On another tangent - can I have my wired router plugged into my PC and the wireless on a another socket so I can roam with the lappy?

Just a thought!

Rannoch

TopBanana

A friend of mine sells multiroom systems to footballers and the like. They have them installed just to show to their mates and never use them because they're so flaky and crap to use. Give it 10 years and various devices will start to talk to each other in a meaningful way.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Well I have made some progress.

Connected my main PC to the original BT ADSL modem which gives me far superior connection rate (2.2mbps).

I have the netgear wireless router in the kitchen which gives 1mbps broadband speed on my wireless lappy in most parts of the house. This is using the MCE pc as a gateway. Even in the deadzone I am now getting 0.5mbps.

So overall it is looking pretty good.

Will investigate the media side soon - although need to get an analogue aerial point for the MCE machine.

Rannoch

David_Wallis

Let me know and Ill help you out, MCE is fussy about signal strength though.. especially with the hauppage cards.

David