Help please?

wexie

Hi all,

Looking for some advice as I want to get rid of Sky altogether if it can be sensibly done.

I have a Silverstone LC17 with a 3.3ghz Core i3, 8GB, 160GB boot SSD and 4TB storage (mostly full ).

There is nothing else in it for the moment.

Really what I'm looking to do is to

a) get rid of Sky altogether
b) be able to stream video and audio to the bedroom
c) be able to stream audio to the kitchen
d) be able to stream video to the kids playroom, but from a separate library with only the kids movies (no need for them to be watching the likes of Day of the Dead)

I'm using XBMC at the moment and have several mobile devices being used as remotes for it using Yatse or XMBC remote.


The house will have hardwired connections to the bedroom, kitchen, playroom, sitting room (where the HTPC is for now) and office (where the patch panel will be). I'm happy enough to work out all the networking myself but the HTPC /satellite bit I could really do some help with.

Really I guess the first step would be what hardware would I need to replace Sky so if someone could help with this it'd be much appreciated. Ideally on a somewhat reasonable budget. (also if someone has a source for reasonably priced speaker ceilings it'd be great, I'd have thought they'd be about the same as car speakers but I haven't really seen any under 100 each :eek:, can I use car speakers?)

Many thanks in advance!!

Johnboy1951

Satellite cards etc

http://www.tbsdtv.com/products/

If you want to record one while watching another then get a dual tuner card.

If you need DT also then also get a DT card to receive terrestrial broadcast TV.

You will need a PCIe slot for each for best operation.

pug_

I'm still working on a) myself so won't be able to help you much there, but the rest of it I have setup similar to what you've described so I can tell you what I have and it might be of some use to you. I'm assuming some linux knowledge as I'm pretty clueless about windows.

I have one main server in my office and that hosts all my content, both video and music.

For video I use XBMC. I have a MYSQL database on the server that all clients can use, and I share the content via NFS. Doing it this way means the database only has to be synched once and all clients will have the correct info, artwork, watched status etc. It also means setting up new clients is very easy because you just point it at the database and away it goes.

For Music I have logitech squeezecenter installed (I think it's called logitech media center or something now though) and I have a mixture of Logitech squeezeboxes and raspberry Pis running squeezeplug. I don't know how much of an audiophile you are, but for the raspberry Pis the B+ model is supposed to have improved audio quality, otherwise there is an external audio board that can be attached that will give proper HD audio (I can get a link if you like).

b) be able to stream video and audio to the bedroom

For a combination of video and audio the way I do it is just play audio through the TV, if you want to be able to listen to audio with the TV off through a set of speakers you could install softsqueeze which can then be controlled seperately by your phone/tablet/pc. The only potential snag here is allowing two applications access to the sound card at the same time with alsa, but because the Gotham release of XBMC now uses pulseaudio by default this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

c) be able to stream audio to the kitchen

I use a raspberry Pi with SqueezePlug for this and control it via my phone.

d) be able to stream video to the kids playroom, but from a separate library

What I have for this is an Asus Revo with openelec installed that I got a few years back. They are no longer available but you could use a similar Spec box or even a Raspberry Pi to do the same job these days.

The way I seperate out kids content from everything else is by using smart playlists. I have all my kids movies and TV shows in seperate folders which makes it easier, but you can do the same thing by using tags. Essentially what I do is create a smart playlist that filters out everything but the Kids content. I then add that to the home menu as a menu item 'Kids Movies' (this is skin dependant, I use Neon as it's light, pretty, and flexible). I hide all other menu items and lock it into kiosk mode so it can't be changed.

If your kids are a bit older or smarter then you can create a seperate kids profile that only has access to kids content and lock the master profile with a password.