need help building a media centre pc that can handle 4 tvs simultaneously

teddyb

teddyb

teddyb

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24 Jan 2010
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basically im looking to build a pc that will be able to play videos/movies on 4 tvs (well 3 tvs and one projector) at the same time.
i was hoping to use Windows media centre to play it back (or any other 10-foot
UI)
can anybody recommend the best way to go about this?
i have some ideas in my head but they are turning out to be very complicated
 
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yeah, that was gonna be plan b if i couldn't get this to workout.
am i going the wrong way with win server 2008 and having 4 virtual machnes doing this?
 
4 VM's would work but your guna need some beefy hardware to cope with running 4 at once all streaming HD content, It would probably be more hassle then its worth, I don't know how VM works with graphics cards but in theory you'd also need 4 graphics cards to power each display
 
Four virtual machines was my first thought. A much easier approach is to put some form of itx computer next to each monitor and run ethernet between all of them.

I'd have thought any quad core would do four virtual machines quite happily, but as I don't have any HD media I can't test for you. You'd need two graphics cards (not in sli or in crossfire, running separately), but not four. How are you planning on controlling it? I'd probably go for a keyboard and mouse connected to the quad core with a monitor above it, switchable by kvm such that it shows the same thing as any of the four other screens on request.

It's a good question
 
There is in no way any need to run a seperate VM for each media stream.

You could for example open multiple copies of VLC to play different video streams, and using eyefinity, and drag each onto the "monitor" you wish to play on.

Get a wireless controller with some custom buttons, where you could select say monitor 1-4. That way, when you jump to that monitor, it should then control that instance of VLC or whatever.

On the other hand, you could go with devices such as "Apple TV", or the Media boxes as stated above.

I would be tempted to research the software side of this a bit more, i.e alternatives to vlc/wmp etc, such as xbmc
 
ok, ive made a little drawing of what id like to do, anybody care to scrutinize it for me?

drawings.jpg


not sure how visualization works exactly but hopefully im getting this right.
 
I can see what you want to do and if possible would be good and something i'd quite like to try!
But how are you going to assign a bluetooth dongle to each VM can you select which VM can access which physical USB port?

If it was mine i'd want to run say 4 instances of XBMC which would look the best imo one for each display each controlled by there own bluetooth pad.

Also how are you going to output 4xaudio streams I take it they don't need to be dolby digital or dts capable?

It looks possible but I don't know enough about having multiple VM's i've only got my test XP VM setup!
 
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