Need advice: want to set up a good home entertainment network in my house..

JC 2K3

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in one of the Home Entertainment boards, if a mod feels it'd be better off there then move it.

Anyway, having a family who are quite into computers, we have a lot of computers in the house and a lot of media stored on Hard Drives. Basically, the setup that we have right now is:

Sitting Room:
-Old, but decent, laptop connected to speakers and external HDs with music on them.

Kitchen:
-Old and pretty slow Gateway 2000 laptop connected to speakers. Music obtained from other PCs over the windows network. Laptop is up high on a shelf and is only touched to be turned on. It is controlled with VNC from another laptop.

Front Room:
-TV with a DVI input. If streaming a match online or watching a movie, a laptop is plugged into it.

My Room:
-My desktop PC connected to speakers and an external HD with music on it. Xbox connected to my PC (for FTPing stuff to it) with XBMC and movies on it.

Every PC in the house is connected together via a wireless router, and thus media files can be accessed via Windows Networking from any PC on the network (every PC is using Windows XP, bar the laptop I'm typing on, which has Ubuntu). Every PC can also be controlled via VNC and this is necessary, as mentioned above, for the PC in the kitchen (everyone in the family has a personal laptop they would use to control this).

Now it's all pretty great, with one big problem - it's SLOW. The laptop connected to the speakers in the kitchen is the biggest problem. It's very old, and XP runs pretty badly on it. VNCing to it makes this even worse.

Also, I want to centralise all my media, and by this I mean, I want to have all the media available to be played in any room of the house stored on external hard drives connected to the laptop in the sitting room.

Finally, I have another old Gateway 2000 laptop that I want to connect to the TV in the front room and use in a similar fashion to the one in the kitchen, only for movies.

So, basically, I want to install some kind of lightweight OS or some program to run on windows/linux on the PCs in the sitting room, front room and kitchen to do the following:
Kitchen:
-Be able to access files stored on another PC on the network and also be able to be controlled remotely to play songs on the speakers it's connected to.

Front Room:
-Be able to access files stored on another PC on the network and also be able to be controlled remotely to play movies on the TV it will be connected to.

Sitting Room:
-Be able to allow efficient access over the network to files stored on external hard drives attached to it and also be able to be controlled remotely to play songs on the speakers it's connected to.


So has anyone got any suggestions as to what OS(s) I should consider for the above PCs, or has anyone got any suggestions in general as to how to manage such a setup?

Thanks,
JC

rmacm

I can leave it here for the moment you'll probably get decent answers to your questions. If you want I can move it to the Home Entertainment forum if you think you'll get better answers there at some point.

FusionNet

Hi JC,

Pretty big request! What you are trying to achieve has many pitfalls, all of which Im sure you have come across at some time or another. I see many problems as it stands:

1) Wireless Network

2) Different OS's

3) Differnt ages of tehcnology

4) Domestic Electronics

5) No Central Server

Ok Ill talk briefly about the stuff Im good at and I wont advise you on the stuff im not!!

1) Running media on wireless is ok to a certain point. You run several risks though. People hacking in (easier than people think), slow network transmission and lost data, higher potential for breakdown, all running on a wireless router.

I would seriosly consider a certified cat6 computer network. No other copper type is worth investing in if you are into streaming music and movies. Ive seen cat6 handle 80MB per second without breaking a sweat, this was streaming HD CCTV.

2) Ok so your differnet OS's and older PC's. Linux to me would be the way to go. Its stable, takes a lot less ram and there is a ball of free software for you to chooses from. It would be worth you wiping one PC and trying it on a test bench before considering the change over

3) not much you can do about this except upgrade RAM. Remember as well that standar PC's will only have domestic 5400rpm drives. Makes file access slower.

4) Domestic electronics basically means switches and routers and wireless electronics that you can buuy in currys or whatever. Its usually cheaper, more flawed and doesnt work as well as commercial stuff. If you were to use a wired network then you router would only be used for internet on laprops you use on your couch. All other internet traffic and data would go through a switch 10/100/1000 unit that will handle the pressures of High Def and music. Remember a 24 port 1GB switch does not offer 1GB per channel. Id invest in a good switch pay maybe 200 at leat for a 16 port.

5) Most business enviroments have central servers. You seem to have music on lots of different HDD's/ Had you thought about storing it centrally and doing everything over the network?

Any question please feel free Ill be on later again.

Paulw

FusionNet wrote: »

I would seriosly consider a certified cat6 computer network. No other copper type is worth investing in if you are into streaming music and movies. Ive seen cat6 handle 80MB per second without breaking a sweat, this was streaming HD CCTV.


4) Domestic electronics basically means switches and routers and wireless electronics that you can buuy in currys or whatever. Its usually cheaper, more flawed and doesnt work as well as commercial stuff. If you were to use a wired network then you router would only be used for internet on laprops you use on your couch. All other internet traffic and data would go through a switch 10/100/1000 unit that will handle the pressures of High Def and music. Remember a 24 port 1GB switch does not offer 1GB per channel. Id invest in a good switch pay maybe 200 at leat for a 16 port.

Thinking of doing something similar.

Would Cat 5e not be good enough? What about using a 10/100 16 port switch?

Would it really require cat 6 and a gb switch?

SouperComputer

Provided its installed with care and good planning, either CAT5 or CAT6 will be sufficient. CAT6 is a little trickier to install however, its less malleable and can be more difficult to terminate. If you are doing it yourself expect to spend some a little more time installing CAT6.

Bandwidth wise, you don't need, or want 1Gb to each client. You only want it from server to your switch, then all (or at least most) of the clients should be on 100Mb. Otherwise if you copy a large file from one computer to the server it may cause stuttering for the media playback on the other machines on the network. There are ways around this, but for the sake of simplicity, start with a 1GB connection from your server to your switch and have the clients at 100Mb. From that perspective you are looking for a switch that has one or two GB ports. You could pickup a nice used 3com on eBay for buttons.

You probably want to run two cables to each point. It can be used for telephone too. Ideally you will want a patch panel in the room where the switch is.

For a central server, a PII or PIII will do. Plonk and add-in HD card if needed for your extra drives.

In terms software and the media "experience", what are the specs on these machines? I think you are looking along the lines of scrapping VNC and buying remotes for some of the media clients. You can use the web interface on the free slimserver to control music playback on any of the computers in the home.

"Lightweight" client software options include freevo & geexbox (Linux), GB-PVR & XBMC (Windows).

Maybe you should leave this post here for the discussion of the network and post a new thread on the HTPC/Media Centre forum so we can look into the software side in detail: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=643