Different media to multiple rooms
|
New member Username: Wayne186Maryland USA Post Number: 1 Registered: Apr-04 | Ok.. I pretty much give up looking on the web for this solution and I hope someone out there can help me. I am looking for a system that will allow me to use a high spec computer that I already own that has masses of storage to deliver video to multiple tv's. I want to have a touch screen panel in each room that accesses a web based media system (the webserver can run on the same high spec computer as the storage) that I can simply select a movie from and deliver to whichever room I command it to. I have the touchscreen systems already and they are tcp/ip based with web browser capability (Not java compatible)! Surely there must be some software out there that you can load on a system and add all your dvd's into a library and then select whichever movie you want to watch in whatever room? (Note - I just moved to the USA from England and I am screwed at the moment because most of my dvd's are european region, my dvd player outputs pal which is hated by my US tv which expects NTSC) - so rather than spending tons of cash on a converter I thought I would redirect and look for an alternative in the hope that I can simply upload all my dvd's onto my computer. Hardware wise - I would like to think there is a pci based card that can deliver high end video from multiple selected sources to destinations.. may need several or something that can handle multiple tv's. I really want the capability of being in the living room and selecting a different movie to the one being watched in the kitchen.. Any ideas please as this is driving me nuts. I am getting ready to build my house and would like to have a good idea of what I am going to use. many thanks Wayne |
|
Silver Member Username: Project6Post Number: 452 Registered: Dec-03 | trying looking into Windows XP Media Edition and of course your own central dedicated server that you can access via networked computers in your home. I've seen this set-up before and used it extensively to access different movies. They were all stored in a central server and any networked computer can watch the movies anytime they want. Problem is, you have to have a different computer for each terminal or drop point. That would mean a separate computer for each and every room in your home that you want access to movies, and of course, a big server that can handle the load. |
|
New member Username: Ice_sicklePost Number: 1 Registered: Apr-04 | There are a number of appliances that deliver audio and video over a network (TCP/IP). Gateway makes one called "Connected DVD Player." There are other manufacturers as well but I'll describe the Gateway unit. The unit is a DVD player (but that's not the point) and it delivers audio and video from any computer on the network that is running the hosting software to the DVD player for display. A PCMCIA network card is inserted into the device -- either wired, or wireless (note: only two specific models are supported). Mine is wired. The player connects to the TV via RCA audio jacks and component vidoe or S-video jacks. There's also an optical audio and 5.1 outputs. From the room where the device and TV are installed using the remote I can connect to a media computer, browse the media on the computer (including pictures, audio and movies). Then select which movie, recorded TV program etc. I want to play and BOOM it starts playing on the TV in front of me. Since each device needs just an IP address to operate you could easily have 10 of them around the house (they run $220). Playing two different movies at the same time would likely work poorly as the HD on the media machine would be working overtime. I love the functionallity but have been having trouble getting the system to work without periodic lock-ups. Frequent defragging helps but I've yet to arrive at 100% reliability. I recently updated the firmware and drivers. I'm hoping that helps. I previously had tried to wire my ATI all in wonder to perform the audio video deliver but I had tons of trouble with ground looks (waves across picture, audio humm). Some I was able to chase out but not all. There are quality limitations on these devices related to bandwidth 25KBps. That's below full fledge MPEG-2 DVD levels which I understand get up to 250-1500 KBps (depending on format). Here's a link to a review: http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2003/12/gateway_connect.html Hauppauge makes a similar device (lacking the DVD player) which is smaller and now cheaper ($99) but I believe it requires other Hauppauge hardware on you machine to work. http://www.hauppauge.com/html/mediamvp_datasheet.htm This at least gets close to what you are looking for. Ice |
|
New member Username: Ice_sicklePost Number: 2 Registered: Apr-04 | I miss read the bandwidth maximum for the Gateway device, it's 3Mbits, not 25KB. Ice |
|
New member Username: Wayne186Maryland USA Post Number: 2 Registered: Apr-04 | Ice Sickle - that is fantastic info, thanks a lot for this. Whilst it is not exactly what I wanted it is within a hairs breadth and considering I have been looking at a solution that could cost me about $18'000 which does the very same thing (except that runs as a website). I could put one of these in each room and have a similar system for a huge amount less. So now I think I will buy one of these systems and give it a good test. I am pretty sure I will not have any i/o issues to the disks as I have a fibre attached raid san that I will be putting the movies on. Have you heard if gateway are going to create a web interface for it? I read through some of the posts in the links you gave me and it mentions something in one of them about this and urls in an mdb (presumably it runs on the back of an access database?). Ice - you have surpassed all expectations!! Thanks a bunch  |
|
New member Username: Ice_sicklePost Number: 3 Registered: Apr-04 | You're welcome Wayne, I didn't mention it but the video quality is significantly below that of DVD. My PC is set up as a PVR and I record a bunch of TV shows for later viewing. These are recorded at lower than DVD so that could be part of the performance issue on my end. Let me know if it works for you. |
|
New member Username: Wayne186Maryland USA Post Number: 3 Registered: Apr-04 | Ice - what do you mean by 'video quality' and PVR? Is this something that you have plugged from your pc to the tv and record shows as you would from a VCR? Kind of a newbie on this side of things! Also can you give me your opinion on the performance of the dvd player by gateway when it plays a movie (DVD) from your media storage system? I am interested to know how it looks when you are watching a movie and whether it is capable of playing this just as it would if you had actually put the dvd into the player itself? Whilst I am not a very demanding media buff (I personally can not tell the difference between using a set of cheap $5 rca cables and gold plated $75 cables), so I am not looking at every pixel! But I would like to know if you frequently get scrambled signals, interference or poor quality playback from the dvd library. Which leads me to my other question - how would you or how do you get your dvd movies that you just bought from the shop onto your computer storage system? Is there a piece of software that you use and do you know if you are capable of removing the regional formatting so that this device can play my european dvd's? cheers Wayne |
|
New member Username: Ice_sicklePost Number: 4 Registered: Apr-04 | PVR -- Personal Video Recorder. I've configured my computer as a PVR. I use the device to display things I have recorded -- like a VCR. The programs I'm watching are recorded in MPEG-2 format (the same used by DVD's) but are nowhere near the quality of a shrink-wrapped DVD. There are considerable compression artifacts (blockiness when the picture changes dramatically, some noise). This is in the recording on my HD. I'm doing the compression on the fly (as the show is being recorded I'm doing the compression in real time) so that may be the issue -- I have a 2.5 Ghz CPU with 1 gig of ram. I find it adequate for watching TV shows though it's obviously well below even broadcast quality. (Digital cable might bake a bit differenc too.) I haven't played around with it a lot to see if I can improve the quality yet. The other files I have on the system are from my digital camcorder. They look great on the computer but their bit rate is too high to be displayed on my connected DVD player. I'm going to burn them onto DVD's anyway so I haven't messed with it. More investigation is needed here on my part. I have not played a factory DVD on my system to my Connected DVD player. If I get a chance next week I'll look into what kind of quality that yeilds. I will say that the quality is much better than when I had 50' of video and audio cable run from my computer to my TV. I had problems with ground loops. "Ground" is not always 0.00000 Volts. On two circuits in the same house it will differ slightly. This difference causes electicity to run from the higher ground to the lower ground along the grounded shielding for example. This causes a 60 Hz hum in the audio and/or patterned video interference (white bars moving up the screen at a few Hz). Very annoying! My process is very different from yours. A DVD is my final output. Storage on my computer is for viewing and deleting or for burning onto DVD's (family videos). So I have looked at the issues you are interested in. I may have time next week to do some more exploring. Ice |
|
New member Username: Ice_sicklePost Number: 5 Registered: Apr-04 | I did some testing and got some pretty good picture performance. I recorded some shows at higher data rates and they looked pretty good when displayed through the connected DVD player. Stability is also improved with new the drivers. If you have high quality recordings on your server you should get pretty pleasing picture. I don't have any DVD's that I bought on my hard drive. It's my understanding that copying a DVD to a HD requires breaking the DVD coding and that isn't legal. Ice |
|
Anonymous | i got a better idea, i got some wireless audio and video sender. it can send up to 8 different TVs, should check it out. www.wholesalesupplier.com |
|
New member Username: Wayne186Maryland USA Post Number: 4 Registered: Apr-04 | Ok gents I have finally found a solution and I have it all set up now. Things work beyond my expectations and if you want to have central media resources being disributed to multiple locations simultaneously then this is in my experience by far the most cost effective way to go. I will not leap into much detail here.. but if you are interested then visit my website and read all about the finding s and how you can go about achieving what I have. There are step by step instructions here http://www.wayne186.com/selfbuild/feldon_project/home_automation/home_entertainm ent/entertainment_overview.htm |
Main Forums
Today's Posts- Home Audio Forum
- Home Video Forum
- Home Theater Forum
- Car Audio Forum
- Accessories Forum
- All Forum Topics