new house, new connection options

[sansnom]

Don't over complicate it.

Although you have a few devices it's nothing over the top, light bulbs aren't exactly high bandwidth and 40 of them shouldn't trouble any router from the last decade.

I get that, it's just that for example my old Netgear DG8342 used to spaz out anytime more than 3 or 4 devices were connected to it. That's what led me to getting the N66u as I regularly had about 10-20 devices connected at any one time. But bearing in mind that going forward the router will also be channeling streaming both from net and from within the house i really just want to make sure it can handle everything we throw at it without breaking a sweat.

Cable wise last time I did this I though about 6 but still rolled 5e. I don't for see a situation where i'll regret that any time soon. Smart TV's use a few mbit to stream from online, playback of 1080p over the LAN won't break a sweat. As to the cable runs then in my set-up the balum's run two un-broken feeds from the matrix to each screen/PJ, this is totally separate to my LAN. For each room I pull 4 cat5e feeds, 2 for HDMI and 1 for data, the 4th is spare for either of the other two.

curious, may I ask why you have 2 for HDMI? My understanding is that 1 HDMI into the TV at the room level, x number of HDMI into an HDMI switch at the hub level which is making me rethink the need for 4 ethernet ports in each room. The costs would start to spiral if you used a separate balun for each HDMI device coming through 1 dedicated port no? Or have I misundersood? Also do you have any Coaxes running into the room?

Control is interesting, at the simplest level Sky have a remote app you could use, or you can use RF with the magic eye set-up, beyond that it gets more expensive and complicated, that said pulling RG6 to each room at the same time is easy enough and magic eye kits and remotes are cheap.

Control is a bit confusing for me - a friend of mine has that magic eye solution but as the transmission eye (where you sit in your living room) has about a metre's length his electrician had to wire it into the ethernet. The signal is transmitted to the receiver in the electronics hub room which is then picked up by the receiver 'eyes'. I don't think I'd be able to do that myself without help??

With the Vivo what are you wanting it to do? An entry celeron based NUC can do HTPC duties up to 1080p easily enough, what are you wanting to do on top of that? Personally i quite like a flirc as I can use the Sky remote from a control perspective.

You kow I'm not really sure - what I'm trying to do more than anything else is just centralise everything so there's no cabling in each room and no devices in each room.

My idea of how this will all come together is, I'll have a central area (Hub) where 8 coax feeds come into from the dish. From each room, there will be 2 coax feeds and 4 ethernet ports coming into the Hub. Now in this Hub area the idea is to have my telephone Master Socket, My modem, My router, my central storage drives and a device that can stream content (htpc). I only plan to use this for home media streaming.

So I'm kind of confused as to whether I need a NAS with say 4-10TB hard drives connected to an HTPC which in turn is connected to the switch which in turn is connected to the router etc

OR

I just make do with a simple setup that has something like the Vivo connected with 4-6TB of USB hard drives and connect all that to the router.

OR

I could just build an HTPC and plug a couple of drives in there, stick it in the cupboard and be done with it. Can't see why a NAS would add value here but not sure?

 

[sansnom]

any advice on that ^^^^?

 

[lude1962]

So I read it as you want
*Sky box feeding 4 tv's over hdmi <- seen a 3 port hdmi extender with ir 'feedback' use 3 sky remotes
htpc feeding movies over ethernet <- NAS running plex server, plex client on smart tv's, use tv remote
plus modem switch etc all housed in your cupboard.
plus extra Ethernet ports in each room

*or
where 8 coax feeds come into from the dish.
so your getting an 8 lnb antennae to feed 4 sky boxes 1 in each room?
but you say 'so there's no cabling in each room and no devices in each room'

So for starters
you'll be needing a std 48 port gigabit switch
Patch panel
patch leads
some sort of racking...ikea lack table
face plates

you'll probably need to install some wifi access points around the house as well if your wifi router is under the stairs


Are we going in the right direction?

 

[Randall8686]

I have no complints abot plus net finre, been with them a year after leaving BT. Mainly i wanted a static ip it was not price driven that was a bonus. Exactly the same speeds and ping etc just a bit cheaper. Its not dropped since the day i put it in. Well happy. I do however use my own asus router.