Entertainment system setup

NotAGolf · 5 Jul 2011 at 08:33

I’ve just moved into a new house and one of my many jobs is to sort out some kind of entertainment system!

I’ve got a TV and PC that has a blue ray drive so this is what I’ve been using for the last few years. However, in my new house the PC is upstairs and the TV is downstairs. So running a cable between them is a no longer possible.
What are the alternative solutions?

I thought about getting one of those set top boxes like the WD Live but there’s a couple of problems with that. I don’t want my PC on 24/7 and don’t fancy going upstairs to turn it on every time I want to watch something. It will also need to be wireless so I’m not sure if it will have fast enough transfer speeds to keep. Can they control disc drives as well or is only content stored on hard drives? Changing the disc would be a bit of a faff too.

So another idea would be to have a NAS box or something similar that will be small, quiet and energy efficient so can be left on 24/7. Then I could have this hidden in the living room somewhere so could have it wired to the TV. Problem with this is that it’d have no dvd/blu-ray support so I would have to buy a standalone player, AND I think I’d still need to get a WD Live or something similar to access it, so this would be a costly option. Getting content from my PC to the NAS box might be a slow and tedious process too.

What kind of setups are people in a similar situation using? Any rough ideas of how much it costs to setup? Is there any other alternatives that might be worth looking at?

Thanks for any help.

lucid · 5 Jul 2011 at 09:16

Wireless is widespread but isn't reliable or quick enough for what you want. Home plugs are an option (internet/network over mains), but a piece of network cable still remains the fastest, cheapest and most reliable way of moving data. With a new house you have the best opportunity to get some cable in.

A PS3 under the lounge TV might be a good option for you. It does wireless and has a network point, and has some internal storage, and has a local optical drive so you can play Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs directly. A second-hand console would keep your costs down.

sHo0sH · 5 Jul 2011 at 11:42

I use a combo of a Boxee Box and a standalone Bluray player.
Boxee is connected to a readynas duo with 2x1Tb drives with my BDrips and TV shows. To be honest the bluray player is kind of a little obsolete - as soon as I get a film, I stick it in the pc and rip it to the nas.
I have this connected wirelessly but its only about 15 feet from the router, so no problems with buffering

hawker1986 · 5 Jul 2011 at 12:41

Ive got a home server box with all my music and films on it, then via homeplugs to my main PC upstairs and also to HTPC under the TV which has blu-ray player. Excellent setup and very flexible. Never had any problems streaming over the homeplugs even at 1080p, tried wireless but it just isnt reliable enough. When I get my own place I will be running CAT5 rather than the plugs though.

Hawker

NotAGolf · 6 Jul 2011 at 13:00

Thanks for the replies guys.

The more I think about it, I think a dedicated HTPC would be the best option. It looks like its going to be the cheapest, easiest and most flexible way.

The main issue will be the interface. I know there's all sorts of media centre software out there and one of those combined with a remote control should help to ease that problem.

Any recommendations on the software/media centre side of things?

I'm going to head off to general hardware to try and piece together a htpc box!

blairw · 6 Jul 2011 at 13:34

I have the following, which is more of a test setup than anything at the moment, but it works brilliantly for my needs and I will be expanding it when we move house

HP Microserver running UnRaid with 5.4TB of useable storage holding Blu Rips, Dvd Rips and Music. This is stored in my cupboard and connected to my network via ethernet cable.

Acer Revo PC running XBMC Live - connected to the network using ethernet cable. This plays everything from my media server, including full blu ray 1080p rips without skipping a beat.

This is all controlled with my Ipad and iphone which run XBMC Commander, allowing me to view a gallery of my media by tv show or dvd cover, its brilliant.
I also use my ipad to view my server details, and access sabnzbd which is installed on the server.

I am going to expand this when we move house, installing logitech squeezeboxes and another couple of acer revo (or custom built htpc) clients.

hawker1986 · 7 Jul 2011 at 22:17

My server is running WHS 2011, recently migrated to this from WHSv1 due to stutter problems and drive extender. Also the remote interface and streaming are much much better. Over all been very happy with the upgrade. As for the HTPC, having played with a number of options I find media centre the easiest thing for me. Allows me to use TV tuners on the HTPC which XMBC doesnt and I use media browser for my remote films. Also I use tunerfreeMCE for iplayer etc, lovefilm and Arcsoft TMT3 for playing blu-ray dvd and hddvd films from disk. It all works very well from a simple remote.

Hawker