Advice for building a home media network with virtually unlimited budget.

April 6, 2007 11:23 AM

Home Media Networking Filter: Advice for building a home media network with virtually unlimited budget.

Ideally, this network will connect four or five televisions to a media server and a big DVD jukebox. Once I've set it up, it should be extremely easy to use, and allow some sort of intuitive PVR functionality. I's also like to have the capacity to get 1080p on all the televisions in the house, though at present only two of them are able to pull that off.

The media box seems pretty easy: dual Hauppauge tv tuners, mythTV or maybe the PC version of ReplayTV, dual 500GB SATA drives, etc. But how do I connect all that data to the televisions spread around the house? I'm planning on using wireless N, but what's at the other end? Xbox Media Extenders? AppleTV? MiniPCs? How can I ensure that the interfaces at each television are maximally simple to use?

In order for this setup to be absolutely perfect, it should allow the user to watch live or recorded television, something purchased from Itunes, or a movie on the DVD shuffler, pause it, and then move to another room and continue where she left off. It should also be possible to do different things at each screen. Is this an absurd demand? I'd also consider a Mac based solution, if PCs aren't up to the task at present, but I'd need a lot more guidance.

posted by anotherpanacea to technology (16 comments total)

HD Tivos and hacked XBoxes running XBMC all around. HD Tivos for your live/recorded TV, XBox + XBMC for everything else. You'll need a bunch of networked storage too, for putting all your stuff.

I'd try to figure a way to centrally locate your media sources, running hard-wires to your monitors (S-video, component, DVI-D, and whatever else). Infrared remote signals can easily be piped back to the head units via coax. That way, you can view (or listen to) the same thing in multiple rooms if you want (good for parties).

Downside: I still am not crazy about the remote for XBMC. I'm thinking a PocketPC with wifi might be the ticket, but I haven't tried that out yet.
posted by LordSludge at 11:44 AM on April 6, 2007

Err.. how do the various tivos talk to each other? Vista Media Center is supposed to interface with Xbox unaltered... I think they got tired of sharing the wealth.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:28 PM on April 6, 2007

The core challenge is the DRM restrictions in hardware. White box PVR solutions downgrade you to 480i. Try this.

And you'll definitely need HDMI cables to deliver HDCP compliant signal at up to 1080p. The backhaul (remote control to media center) could probably be any data cable. Build big, easily accessible conduits to enable easy pulls of whatever cabling solution succeeds HDMI next month.
posted by MattD at 12:30 PM on April 6, 2007

Let's say you're doing all this with HDMI. First you need to run HDMI cables through all your walls. You then need to place all your gear in your media closet, and hook it all up through a cross switch. Sadly for you, a 3x2 switch seems to be the best you can do, at least right now. The situation with component video isn't good enough for you, either—you can get a 6x4 cross switch. You could get the video to follow you around using the remote for the switch (with remote extenders in every room, natch), but in order to feed N input devices to 5 TVs, I think you'd need to do something weird like set up multiple switches in series or something, and the mental gymnastics to route everything properly would be annoying at best. Doing this over heterogeneous cabling (HDMI + component + composite) would get incredibly annoying and be even more expensive to wire up, though at the hardware level, the switching might be easier.

So the general principle is do-able, but maybe not on this ambitious a scale.
posted by adamrice at 12:34 PM on April 6, 2007

If money is no object then get it professionally installed.

The off the shelf components to do what you want just aren't there yet probably 2-5 years out to do what you need.

You're going to have to sacrifice iTMS support unless you go with anything but Macs or WMC.

I'd advise against going wireless unless you have to. It's no fun to spend tens of thousands on a setup and then not be able to watch TV and run your microwave at the same time. There are enough interference sources in a modern house to make it annoying.
posted by Ookseer at 12:55 PM on April 6, 2007

MythTV utilizes the concept of both a "backend" and a "frontend" -- the backend sits and records stuff, and manages the file library, while the frontend provides the interface and display of the media managed by the backend. While Myth is often set up with the backend and the frontend on the same machine, it is just as often set up with a backend server on one machine, and multiple frontend machines connected in various places in the home. Unless you expect to do as adamrice says and hook up HDMI cables everywhere, you'd want to set up a single backend and have an Ethernet network with multiple machines that act as a frontend.

A few notes:

1080p Myth is a wonderful thing. I use it myself. But boy, does it require a lot of processor power in order to deinterlace 1080i content properly and come up with a nice-looking moving image. You have two choices if you want to display 1080 lines -- get a fairly heavy-duty processor for each 1080 frontend (dual-core Athlon 64 4400+ or higher, or Core 2 Duo 2 Ghz or higher) or live with the "jaggies" of interlaced materials.

Recording 1080i content in Myth requires specialized hardware, and I'm not aware of anything that does 1080p. That Hauppage probably won't do true HDTV with Myth, and there aren't commercial generic 1080p video capture cards. You'll need to get either an HDTV tuner card for over the air broadcast television, or you'll need to connect your cable box (or video source) via firewire. If there isn't a tuner card available for what you want to do, and there's no firewire out on the device you want to grab from? You probably won't be able to record in 1080.

Also, 1080i/p video uses a lot of bandwidth, even with compression. *A lot of bandwidth*. We're talking 8Mb/s for 1080i, double that for 1080p. Unless your wireless link is line-of-sight from an access point to a card in the same room, you're probably not going to get that kind of bandwidth consistently, even with N, and you'll get stuttering. You'll want to seriously consider running wired 100Mbps or 1Gbps Ethernet through your location.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, there's no easy HD frontend out there because of the processing power involved. MiniPCs would be your best bet, although they'll run hot with the necessary processing power. This will change in the next year or so, as processors get more efficient and more video processing power is the norm.

All of the above is far less problematic with standard (DVD) definition video, which requires substantially less processing power and bandwidth, and for which recording tools are widely available.

MythTV is rather difficult to get set up "right" at first, but is really very intuitive to use once it's set up. If you have a frontend in every room, it's like having that mythical jukebox in every room, even with a nice remote interface if you set that up. However, I'd have trouble recommending setting up HD Myth to someone without substantive linux experience, but once set up, it's easy enough for the whole family.

Dave
posted by eschatfische at 12:56 PM on April 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

I say MCE backend connected to XBox 360's on each TV. Thats the easiest solution and you'll get most of the features you requested. You'll want to go wired gigabit.

However I believe Vista MCE can support a max of 4 HD tuners, so if you want all 5 TV's watching different shows... might not work. You're going to need a lot more then 1TB of space and you'll probably want to run RAID if you are recording 5 shows at once.

My 1080i recordings take about 7 gigs / hour.

I have 2 HD OTA tuners recording on an older Pentium D, no issues at all with 1080i on both tuners.

You will not be able to play protected Itunes, music, the only way would be through the Apple TV. You also won't be able to bookmark DVD's and start them on another TV.

-------------------
To respond to other posters.

A modded Xbox w/ XBMC will NOT play HD content.

You don't necessarily need HDMI nor HDCP compliant displays to do 1080p. I play 1080p WMV encoded movies from my MCE machine to my Xbox360 via Component.
posted by mphuie at 2:41 PM on April 6, 2007

@adam rice

Why would you need to run HDMI through your walls? That sounds like a huge pain in the ass, and for what? Splitting a video signal to 5 TV's at once? How are you going to watch different shows on different TV's with that setup?

Also, will MythTV ever get CableCard support? ATI is about to release their HDTV cablecard tuner for Vista, which means you are probably stuck with Vista MCE if you want to start now.
posted by mphuie at 2:50 PM on April 6, 2007

Thanks for the advice so far. Has anyone had any experience running Vista Media Center straight off of an Xbox 360? Microsoft claims it'll be easily compatible. It solves some of the networking speed issues, I think, since it mimics the Apple TV model of transmitting a particular movie or television show to the HD on each Xbox. You lose the capacity to roam easily, but with a little planning ahead you can have the same experience. But I'm dubious about buying a bunch of Xboxes if this system is clearly flawed. I'm also not sure if you can do 1080p on an Xbox....

Dave (eschatfische): If there's no tuner card that works at this resolution, how are you doing it? Are you running it off a homebrewed Tivo HD? I was looking at the Hauppauge HVR-1600, not realizing that it was 1080i, not 1080p. That might work, though; I doubt it'll be a noticeable difference, especially using MPEG-2 encoding.
posted by anotherpanacea at 2:53 PM on April 6, 2007

MythTV is a great idea, but a huge pain in the ass if you're not a Linux 44th level Dark Mage.

I like to stick with SageTV, which lets you stay in a Windows environment, does probably all of the stuff you're asking for, and has a very lively and supportive forum.

Really, check into it. You're on the doorstep of Linux hell.
posted by SlyBevel at 4:52 PM on April 6, 2007

Also, MCE has a crappy proprietery format for video. Don't support the DRM overlords.

SageTV spits beautiful plain vanilla MPGs.
posted by SlyBevel at 4:54 PM on April 6, 2007

mphuie: if you want a show to "follow you around," you need to have all your players centralized and run through a splitter. With a cross splitter, you can send Signal A to TV 1 and Signal B to TV 2.

Unless there's something I'm missing, of course.
posted by adamrice at 4:59 PM on April 6, 2007

Adam, I've heard that there isn't support for the HVR-1600, so be careful with it if you go the Myth route. I use a Technisat Airstar HD-5000, and it works pretty well; great Linux support in recent kernels.

OTA HDTV broadcasts simply aren't in 1080p, the max is 1080i for broadcast. Myth takes the 1080i image and performs different (configurable) types of line doubling or image processing to render a 1080p picture. It works beautifully, but that's what creates the processor load I was talking about.
posted by eschatfische at 7:52 PM on April 6, 2007

I second MythTV. If you start with Knoppmyth it's really not that bad. The backend (where the tuners are) might take some fussing, but only if you go with hardware that's not on Knoppmyth's recommended/approved list. They have some very good forums where you should get all your hardware purchases vetted before you start ordering. Setting up a Knoppmyth frontend requires nothing more than booting from the CD and pointing it at the IP address of the backend.

And I would nix the wireless. It's crap for high-definition video. If your budget really is "virtually unlimited," you should be running conduit in the walls. Have the electrical contractor end-run all the conduit to a central location, where you'll have the media server, and bring the cable line to that point.

If I were you, I'd use one or two analog tuners to bring in all your analog cable channels, plus two high-def tuners; there's really no point in wasting a high-def tuner on your basic cable channels, since most programming isn't in high definition. And more tuners are better, since they let you record more programming at a time.

And fanless (possibly even diskless) MicroATX PCs are by far the most flexible frontends you'll use. With the way the technology is developing, you want something you'll be able to upgrade; PCs are good like that.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:29 PM on April 6, 2007

You will run wired gigabit ethernet. You may not run wired gigabit ethernet right now, but if you go with a wireless solution, you will eventually say "WTF!?!" when your network connection inexplicably drops in the middle of something and then decide to run wired gigabit ethernet. Might as well get it over with now.

Serious. A gentleman I know leased a new office space for his small (10-employee-ish) business and decided to go with wireless. He dropped thousands of dollars on business-grade wireless access points (this was 802.11g, I believe). Inside six months, he was having cat6 pulled through the entire facility due to the unacceptable issues he was having with wireless. That was just for sharing internet and word docs, spreadsheets, etc. Imagine the fun with video.
posted by Alterscape at 6:24 AM on April 7, 2007

I haven't dug into the walls myself, but I'm assured that there's ethernet (cat6) cabling in there. So that's good. Thanks for the KnoppMyth suggestion; looks like it might do the trick.

This 1080i to 1080p magic: I'm unclear how post-recording image processing improves picture quality. That sounds like some crazy voodoo where you take the original Super Mario Brothers game, add witchhazel, and out pops the feature film with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:20 AM on April 7, 2007