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New member Username: John_strattonNorfolk, Va USA Post Number: 1 Registered: Jun-05 | This is my situation: I'm building my home and am interested in setting up the house with a home theatre. I will have hd Directv and a dvd player. I intend to also buy a high quality reciever (preferrably one that is XM Satellite radio compatible) and a projection tv. I will also purchase good quality speakers. I intend to also have 'mini home theatres' in both my master bed room and in the family room where I will have an LCD tv (42") and a plasma tv (50"), respectively. With these two I figured on getting a HTIB. OK! Although each of these rooms will have dedicated home theatres, I would like to be able to tap into the MAIN theatre from the mini's from time-to-time. For instance, to listen to XM radio in the family room from the reciever that's XM compatible in the main theatre or to music or even view movies stored on my macintosh computer system. Now I know there are dozens of ways of doing this and that it depends on my budget but what I would like to know is how YOU guys would accomplish this. I'm interested in mid to high end equipment with the best QUALITY (I know this is subjective). Right now I have to wire the house appropriately for this set-up and for other things so this is what I have in mind... I'm going to run CAT5e cable for the telephone system (in preparation for Verizon's FIOS in the future) Cat6 cable for my hard-wired ethernet (in preparation for higher bandwith applications), quad shielded coax for Directv and/or Cox cable. What would you guys do if you were in my shoes? Money is not necessarily an object...especially since I plan to do all of this over the course a several months. If I know what equipment I will buy and what the set-up will be I can easily set the house up properly now. Now, again, I'm really interested in what you would do and why...or if you would do this at all. What equipment do you like in this scenario? The master bedroom is a squareish 20 x 18, the FROG (where the MAIN theatre will be) is rectangular and about 25 x 16...the family room is about 20 x 20. Thanks in advance! |
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Silver Member Username: Joe_cOakwood, Ga Post Number: 496 Registered: Mar-05 | My suggestion to you , unless you are very adept with home electronics, is to have some company come in there and do it for you. As far as wiring, you seem to have most under control. Maybe you could go ahead and run surround wires for 5.1/6.1 in the bedrooms at 14-16ga and then run 7.1 in the maintheater at 12ga. There are many ways to link the rooms with either just a media (pc based) console or a whole house remote solution. I cannot suggest too much more because this mostly depends on the equipment, and as you said there is ALOT of it out there. We could give you suggestions all day about what equipment to buy, but this would defeat the fun for you in deciding. Go and listen to a BUNCH of stuff if you have a few months. Your ears and eyes will thank you. |
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Silver Member Username: DaedilusPost Number: 170 Registered: Jun-05 | Your Linking of the rooms will be difficult if you want to have 5.1 audio transmitted from one theater room to another. If you just want Stereo music, you can run 2 coaxials from the main theater to each remote room. Depending on distance, and excessive distance will be a factor, you could purchase a DVD player that features analog surround sound output and pull 6 coaxials from the main theater room to remote rooms and do it with high quality Y adapters. Thats getting a little cheesy, but unless you get into some custom fiber optic work, your just not going to be able to find a pre-manufactured fiber cable that long. I havent researched it, but it is possible there is an AMP (brandname) ST or SC conversion head that would allow commercial fiber heads to adapt to the music industry standard fiber head. In which case you could run commercialy available fiber optic to each location from the main location and repeat the digital format from a tranceiver. This would require fiber terminations however, which can be a bit costly if you cant do it yourself. All that mumbo jumbo aside, your getting into some pretty unusual stuff there. If the 2 remote rooms are less than 100 feet as the cable runs from the main location, you might also try linear bitstream / PCM coaxial digital signal. Again, at that distance it's getting a little iffy and i havent tried it. As for video distribution I know of a situation that could help you. A company called NTI, http://www.kvms.com/nti/nti_video_extenders.asp , Makes Svga over cat 5 transmitters / receivers that allow svga images to be sent up to 600 feet. They also have models which trasmit audio over the same link. In addition to this, Impact accoustics makes a Component video to SVGA converter allowing images up to 1080i hi def to be converted to svga. hense you could send a video image up to and including extended def or hi def from the master theater to the 2 remotes over cat 5, then revert them back down from svga to component. http://www.impactacoustics.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=1001&sku=40226&engine=overtu re&keyword=%28vga+to+component+converter%29 Having said all that, You may be going to extremes you dont need to, to receive the result you are looking for. I think that you may find that a shared stereo link and composite video 480i might be sufficent for the infrequency of the use you will enguage this system for. given the cost, and problematic nature of synch'ing all of these systems together, you may find it better to simply invest in a dvd recorder and record the movies from PC to dvd to watch them in the remote locations. Past that an umbilical stereo cable between systems would be simple. |