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I forgot to say before. This sounds like a fun project and I hope it
goes as well as you'd like. Congrats on your new house, as well. I
probably come off as a zealot or whatever, but I hope my input can help
you, whether or not you use it. I've addressed some additional items
below as well. Just my $0.75.<br>
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<li>Will you be using an audio receiver / amplifier?</li>
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<div><br>
Yes. <br>
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<br>
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Do you have a receiver that supports separate rooms already, or do you
plan on buying 6 separate receivers, one of which supports digital
surround? One of the messages in the list did mention receivers with
multi-room support. They DO exist, but they are usually the higher end
models. Almost all receivers have a speaker selection option to select
multiple speaker sets, but you usually can't pipe separate inputs to
the different sets.<br>
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<li>If yes, are you going to try to support digital surround
sound?</li>
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Only in one room, the actual home theater room.</div>
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Will you be using a DVD player in this room? I think I saw you wanted
the receivers in the server room. That would mean that you would either
have to run optical or high-grade coax (digital audio coax...RCA plugs
on the ends) from the dvd player back to the receiver in the other room
(expensive again...) or have the dvd player in the other room.<br>
<br>
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<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">Running analog wires, in my
opinion, would be a last resort. The
degradation of video and audio quality would probably be significant
enough that it would almost outweigh the benefit of doing this at all.
Especially as you increase the number of rooms. </div>
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<div><br>
I'm not an A/V wiring expert, but how does the cable company maintain
quality with co-ax cable? I was just going to do the same thing,
assuming it is possible.<br>
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The cable company maintains good quality by requiring a "thin client"
as well...a cable box. For digital you either rent or purchase the box,
and for analog, the decoding hardware has been built into televisions
for many years now. Doing the same thing as the cable company would
require expensive equipment to create the same type of signal used by
the cable company.<br>
<br>
Just running video over coax (probably using an RF modulator or
something?) is likely going to make your picture look
very grainy an anything larger than a 20" television (but still
noticeable even on that small of a size). Basically it will look like
you are watching a reasonably clean picture off of a rabbit-ears
antenna. If you've ever owned a video game console, you might know what
I'm talking about. The clarity of a the signal coming off of an RF
modulator (converts the video to coax inputs) is quite poor compared to
even standard composite. Unless you ARE talking about composite cable
(the yellow one) which is definitely acceptable.<br>
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<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">REALISTICALLY... using some
sort of thin client that you can hide
somewhere is BY FAR the most flexible way to go. Your "wall jacks" to
"simply plug in" to would be much better suited as networking ports or
even wireless, with some sort of device in between to convert the
stream back to something you can use on a TV or stereo. A computer can
be such a flexible device that you don't have to have an entire desktop
case to dedicate to such a specific task. </div>
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<div><br>
The server sitting in a dedicated server closet is supposed to be the
flexible device. All output would go from it, to various rooms.<br>
</div>
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It all depends on how you look at it. In my opinion, converting the
digital data to analog so early is more of a headache. That is why
digital cable and satellite are so big these days, because it is much
easier to distribute a digital signal than analog. So Having the server
distribute (or provide access to) digital media directly allows you to
keep it digital as long as possible. You <br>
<br>
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Could be an issue in the future, not sure.<br>
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<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">Probably more issues, but
really I don't see it being worth it. Myth on
your server can save it's streams to some sort of shared folder and you
can just read them right off the server and not even bother with the
myth front-end. I'm pretty sure it's standard mpeg format video (for
recorded programs) and if not, you can have a script convert them.<br>
<br>
I know I probably sound like a MS / XBox fanboy here, but to put this
into perspective, I don't even have an XBox. I plan on purchasing one
in the next month and doing exactly this. 5 of my friends however DO
have modded xboxes (you can do it with software these days, no opening
of the box is required if you don't want to....this also allows you to
put it back to it's original state easily) and I can tell you it's
great. It put the itch in me to pick at least one up if not more and
for like $99 used, its a steal.<br>
<br>
Let me know what you think about this since I have other ideas, but I
just think this is the most convenient, clean and highest quality
solution for this type of installation. </div>
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<div><br>
Thanks for the input. Since this is still the exploratory phase, I
obviously had not thought of everything yet. I just wanted to know if
MythTV could handle multiple channels of audio and video output. <br>
<br>
I've seen some of the small form factor PC cases, and they would look
OK scattered and hidden around the house. But unless I can run them all
as headless myth clients with their own web front-end, I really don't
see the benefit of putting a computer in every room just so I can
centralize the storage and streaming of my A/V media. I might as well
just put a small boom box in every room and be done with it. <br>
<br>
If I CAN do the SFF headless myth client with web-based front-end, then
it becomes something worth looking into.<br>
<br>
Dave<br>
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<td valign="middle"> <a href="http://www.plaudit.com/"><img
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<td colspan="3"><span id="persons-name"><font
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