The Ultimate streaming solution

[uaeabudhabi]

Hi there,

I know that what i am going to ask is really complecated but i hope if some bodey can advice. i am stucked for 2 months now just to build what is in my mind.


What i am looking for is to build a full streaming solution inside my house.

This is the scenario: i have 6 rooms, 3 in the first floor and 3 in the second floor. each room has a full hd 40 inc tv.

the adsl line in located in the second floor and connected to a linksys modem/router. I have dreambox 800 and i am using the internet sharing feature which supported by this reciver.


Now what i want is to have a upgradble NAS which can be accessed through gig network where i will be saving all my blue ray file or media in general. Also would like to know which best extender to buy to attacch them to the 6 HD TV's. also i would like to have the ability to streame the dreambox signal to all the tvs too.


this give me a concolusion that i will need a Network media player which plays all kind of file types without exception, network componans like gig routers and gig switches and for sure extenders for all the tvs.

I dont have any money issues. I would like to build a solution which will let me check my media staff which is located in my nas from anyTV in house even if it is in blue ray quality. also would like all the tvs to be connected to one dreambox if posibble through the network and even if it requires hardware to be purchase i dont mind purchasing them. for sure it will be nice if this hardware will let each tv can have the control to see a defferent channel than the master source.

Also i will prefer if you can recommend to me also the nas which should be cabapale to upgrade to diferent hard disk speeds . i am talking about a 16 terabyte nas as a start which lets say has an 8 bays with 2tera hard disck . and supported more disck speeds in future.

Having a wireless coverage as an additioanl feature will be nice too if is it consedered in the solution, where connected laptops can also get the benefet of the wireless to see the blueray streaming films.


Can you recommend me with product names and parts needed to get this setup if lets say you have the money and you wana do this for your self in home. what you will recommend in this case?

this will be nice if some bodey can help me in this

Thanks in advanced

 

[endoftheline2]

Your problem is going to be this:
"Network media player which plays all kind of file types without exception"
There really isn't such a thing, basically you would need a actual computer connected to each TV to truly play all fine types, like that your PC can play.

There are a lot of extenders out there, and some play a lot of formats, your going to have to decide if the best extenders you can find will play all the formats you need them to.

 

[uaeabudhabi]

Your problem is going to be this:
"Network media player which plays all kind of file types without exception"
There really isn't such a thing, basically you would need a actual computer connected to each TV to truly play all fine types, like that your PC can play.

There are a lot of extenders out there, and some play a lot of formats, your going to have to decide if the best extenders you can find will play all the formats you need them to.

thanks man for the replay. which one you sugest and which one is the best in matter of quality and data streaming and features.


can advice one and which one you are using ?

regards

 

[Guest]

If money is no problem to you then check out Kaleidescape. (http/www.kaleidescape.com/products/). It is quite pricey but will solve all your problems nicely (I mean NICELY). You will need a small player in each room and the server can be in one location. You will need RJ45 everywhere too. Wireless is not a good idea.

DelPierro

 

[Sugyi]

I would suggest building a central server with several hard drives in raid. You already know this. I suggest building up a small HTPC, or bigger one, its up to you. Today atom+ion is very popular for the possibility to play 1080p content with low heat emission and low noise.
Streaming the content from the dreambox will be tricky I think. I have a dreambox 7020 at home. With that box i could only stream through the web-ui it provides, where I could switch the channels and then play them back with VLC. I dunno if you can somehow stream from it easily to the lan. Maybe a cheap SkystarHD2 card into the server is a better solution for this (it would run in the server, but I have no idea about the streaming possibilities, but suppose they will be better then the ones with the dreambox). The problem with the satellite streaming is that you can watch maximally one channel on all the TVs. I suppose you do not find it enough. With satellites, it's always like you have to have a receiver for each tv you have. But, it's not enough. You have to get the signal to each receiver with a coax cable (you can not use the lan cable). Then, you have to buy a convertor which can supply the signal to each cable/receiver. This way, you could watch satellite on each TV freely. If you want to chabge the satellite (from astra to hotbird, then to thor) you will need a special dish for it with several convertors (or more dishes, but thats more expensive and space requiring).

However, you can play the content from the server on a Dreambox, so maybe you wont need the HTPC. But, playing the content on the Dreambox is not so comfortable as it is with a HTPC and maybe the Dream can not play 1080p content (or maybe can, but surely can not put it on tv as it is, because of the maximum 1080i output). You can already test the possibility of playing the content from your pc using the dreambox. The internet is full of guides(here is one quickly googled http/www.techwatch.co.uk/forums/34410-streaming-avi-films-from-pc-to-dreambox-tv.html ). It's up to you, how much you want to see the satellite on wach tv. There is no need to buy several decoding cards for each dreambox, cos they can share the keys through the lan.

I won't go into nas. I would build a server on my own this time. Because of 16tb, the nas is going to be so huge. I would go for a simple RAID controller card (Areca, Adaptec...) with 8, 16, 20 ports for hard disks. It's the most convenient. Putting there a mobo with a normal processor. There is no need to go for a really powerful one unless you want to stream to dreamboxes. I'd rather choose an energy efficient one. The same can go for the HDDs. Green models can do the service for you. I dont know even that big NASes exist (however maybe they are easier to set up) and you can not run vlc on them to stream the content to the dreambox.

For the wlan nothing is easier. Just buy and connect a wifi AP (access point) to the existing lan (if it exists). I would go for 802.11n if money does not matter, because it's much faster. Also if it had 4 antennas and the notebooks do have also 4 antennas for receiving, you can go up to theoretically 600MBits, which can be in real life maybe 300-400MBits (just a rough guess for me), which is enough even for the Blu-ray content for several notebooks at the same time.

At the moment we are just reconstructing our house and I am planning to do the same thing you are goint to do, just in smaller extent. Maybe 2-3 receivers with 3 TVs. I have an ethernet connection now for each TV as well as a coaxial cale is there for either satellite or just terrestrial TV. At the moment I am trying to figure out my hardware specs for my server. I will buy an Adaptec 3405 controller with three 2TB hdds put into raid5. It will give me 4TBs of space, which is enough for me at the moment with the possibility to expand to 6TBs with the possibility that one hard disk can fail and no data is lost. I think I will hook up this server also to the main TV, cos its just through the wall, so no noise issues and it will be cheaper. I will use linux for the server (maybe for you its more conveniet windows home server for easier setup) and for the gui on tv I will install XBMC (www.xbmc.org), which nowadays seems the most advanced HTPC gui, that can be pu also on linux and windows and mac. You can however use win7 with its media player, but it is more hardware demanding (and maybe does not have all the functions, but is easier to set up).
At the moment 2 TVs will be connected to satellite, one with a dreambox 7020 i have and the other with a 800hd which im going to buy. For the other TVs i am considering buying a out-of-the-box player as popcorn hour c200 or setting up XBMC on a atom+ion htpc, which can be also purchased easily and with a small effort gives more possibilities.

PS.: This way I would like to ask someone to point me where I can find some suggestions/discussions on CPUs slightly overperforming Atom with similar power consuption. Also some graphics card to be able to accelerate HD content under linux (some nvidia?). Thx