Building a new BTV House!

[Duc Hunter]

I am buying a house that is wired for Cat5 in every room. I have been using BTV since before 3.0. I currently have a 4,0 server with over 1 terabyte of storage. It needs a little tuning before it goes into the new home but that is a different story. I am trying to figure out how to set up the 3-4 TV’s in the house to all leverage the Snapstream server (one would be HD, the rest not). I was thinking put the server in a central place with a tuner card for each TV in the house, and one to record on. Then use BTV Link for each TV to access the server, stream live TV and/or recorded shows. The server also may have all my music, so Beyond Media is a possibly, to provide music to each room from the server. Is this all possible? What hardware would/should I put attached to each TV to run BTV Link? Does anyone have any better suggestions?

[Kal-El]

when i have some free time i'll respond with some suggestions. but first:

are you going to have some kind of centralized sound system?
you mentioned beyondtv link without mentioning other pc's. unless i'm missing something, you would need to have some kind of basic pc with every tv to accomplish what you want.
have you considered using a mini-san for your storage? this would help keep the load down on the box you're using to record by having the san deal with the crapload of access (all tvs downloading from it at once while the capture cards write multiple streams to it).

[Duc Hunter]

No I won’t have a central sound systems. In the living room will be a surround system with separate amplifier etc. I was planning on having a little more robust PC to do the surround with a Sondblaster THX7.1 card in it. I MAY put a more simple surround system (like a PC based self amplified speaker setup like from Logitec) in the master bedroom. I knew I needed a PC of some kind for each TV to run BTV Link. I was wondering if I could get away with dirt cheap thin client pc. The thought of a full sized pc in each room, sucking up all that juice is just not appealing. I was thinking a pc with an Audigy 4 Pro and with a 6600+ video card car for the living room. The rest of the pc’s would run 5200fx’s and all would have minimal disk drives and no fans and a basic sound cards

[Duc Hunter]

Ok, not that anyone is paying attention anymore but.........let me know if this seams reasonable. BTV Server upstairs in a closet running 24/7 (has over 1 terabyte of storrage). It will do all the recording, hold all my music (may run Beyond Media)and serve the house. That would mean it would need 4 tuner cards (recording HD, Serving live HD downstairs, Serving Regular TV to 2 other tv's in the house). I would like each TV of my three tv's to have fanless PC's that are as small as possible, running BTV Link with remotes. I am not sure how the dowstairs TV will run the Beyond Media off the server and it will need to be HD capable (the server will be HD Recording) and have a THX 7.1 sound card for my suround sound system. With all that I am not sure it can be fanless. The other 2 tv's are just regular tv's, so those pc's shoudl be able to be links no problem. Right?

[btvfreak]

Why would your server need to run Beyond Media? It'll be stuck in the closet with no monitor connected right? Your Link machines will need to run Beyond Media if you want to use that as your interface to all your music, movies, etc stored on your server.

Your Link clients can be small and quiet since they won't need to hold a lot of hardware. The mATX mobo's with the nvidia 6150 chipset's are great for this. They have very good onboard video (can even playback HD), are moderately priced, so you can use slim cases with it.

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by btvfreak

Why would your server need to run Beyond Media? It'll be stuck in the closet with no monitor connected right? Your Link machines will need to run Beyond Media if you want to use that as your interface to all your music, movies, etc stored on your server.

Your Link clients can be small and quiet since they won't need to hold a lot of hardware. The mATX mobo's with the nvidia 6150 chipset's are great for this. They have very good onboard video (can even playback HD), are moderately priced, so you can use slim cases with it.

The search for that "perfect" balance of ergonomics, functionality and cost for a BTV-Link PC goes on. Keep us posted on what you finally end up with.

The "ideal" thing for my taste and wallet, would be an unobtrusive setup box like the Hauppauge Media MVP that could run a BTV Client. I've tried for years to come up with something but it always ends up costing too much.

[HomeyFour]

I think you've got the right plan. No need for BM on the main server, just BTV and all of your tuners.

As far as HTPCs for the BTV-Link, I've found that dirt cheap PC and Silent/quiet usually don't happen at the same time!! I use mostly left-over, old PCs retrofitted with high-end GPUs for Link machines. I try to hide them under/behind/next to furniture, and my wife throws doilies over them for WAF. I've gotten used to the white noise associated with PC fans and disk drives (we have HEPA air filters all over the house anyways) so the noise factor isn't much of an issue for me.

[katarr]

I happen to be in a very similar situation. The solution I have planned is to use an AVeL Linkplayer2 as my set-top box in any location where I want to watch recorded TV without a PC attached. It will play both MPEG and Divx files, including HD. We just moved into the house, so I have had no opportunity to actually set this up and confirm that it will work as I expect, but after a bunch of research, I don't see any reason why not.

[bits]

Originally Posted by katarr

I happen to be in a very similar situation. The solution I have planned is to use an AVeL Linkplayer2 as my set-top box in any location where I want to watch recorded TV without a PC attached. It will play both MPEG and Divx files, including HD. We just moved into the house, so I have had no opportunity to actually set this up and confirm that it will work as I expect, but after a bunch of research, I don't see any reason why not.

I have been running an LP2 for about 6 months now and I really enjoy it! I did not have the money to go for another computer to be used as a HTPC nor did I want the white noise or unsightly box in my family room. Recorded video can be watched in the family room, from my home PC HDD which is on the other side of my house, while recording a show (PVR250) and cruise the internet all at the same time and only be using around 20%CPU. I can also play DivX, WMV, DV avi and vob files on my HDTV monitor, that are on my HDD.

I schedule 5-10 shows per day --> use ShowAnalyzer and Dirmon2 to find commercials as they are recorded --> cut the commercials using VRD --> they are now commercial free and ready to watch.

Overall it is a nice alternative to HTPC! When I get some additional time and money I will add another LP2 to the upstairs.

[cat6man]

i used to have a couple of Hauppauge mediaMVP but sold them as they
cannot support HDTV.

i now have a Zensonic z500 and a JVC IOdata SRDVD-100u (basically a LP2
plus DVI output).

both play video and music and can connect digitally to a hdtv.

iodata support is flaky at best.....zensonic is new but support and bug fixing
seems superior.....i would lean towards the z500 when they go on sale outside of australia (i bought mine by mail from australia)

[bits]

Originally Posted by cat6man

i used to have a couple of Hauppauge mediaMVP but sold them as they
cannot support HDTV.

i now have a Zensonic z500 and a JVC IOdata SRDVD-100u (basically a LP2
plus DVI output).

both play video and music and can connect digitally to a hdtv.

iodata support is flaky at best.....zensonic is new but support and bug fixing
seems superior.....i would lean towards the z500 when they go on sale outside of australia (i bought mine by mail from australia)

I agree that I-O Data support is poor at best but basically the LP2 works fairly well. The point to be made here is that there is a viable alternative to HTPC and that is networked media players.

BTW when you step into the world of High Definition your in a world that is in a state of confusion, no approach is easy or perfect, which does not take into account that there is very little HD material around (other than HDTV). HDTV broadcasts are good when they are good but there are lots of times they are full of distracting problems.

Maybe in a few years HDTV and HD material will be more consumer friendly but I strongly suspect that it will be much harder to record in a way that you can manipulate it. It seems to me that the media industry is forcing the introduction of HDTV at a rate at which they can incorporate encryption and copyright protection.

[gjunky]

I saw this computer from VoodooPC
http://www.voodoopc.com/showroom.aspx?lineID=17

Just like a Mac Mini but it is a PC and comes in bunches of colors. Not cheap though.

-gjunky

[btvfreak]

Anyone try the Buffalo HD LinkTheater?
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...p?productid=96