We are getting to within a few months of a new house project being ready for wiring, and wanting to get the collective thoughts from others on what my best approach is for whole Audio / Video etc
WISHLIST
* Will be using MediaPortal TV Engine to provide HTPC functionality. TV Engine will sit near the Dist "area" for audio/Video. TV CLient will be in the Lounge for driving Screen and Audio.
* Each room in the house will have 2 x RG6 and 2x Cat5e pulled thorugh walls back to AV Dist point.
* Im looking at having my own office hub in the garage where my servers, ADSL Router, Switches, Patchpanel, Phone line Termination point etc will be. I'll pull all Cat5e from Bedrooms to this office point.
* UNder the stairway will be the AV distribution point with a Switch for all remaining Cat5e (eg from Lounge, Study, Living room and master bedroom)... then a link from that switch back to the other end of the house where office is)
* Will have a Fee-To-Air satellite and normal aerial (for Prime) feeding via RG6 to the MediaPortal server (this will have a 2xSkyStar2 cards as well as a PVR150 to allow watching and recoding of channels at the same time)
What Im not sure about is what to do in regard to the Audio/Video side, especially in terms of getting other signals from and to other areas of the house.
* Dont need anything fancy, but maybe
- whatever is being watched in the lounge can be watched in the bedrooms. If we assume no HTPC client (since that will always be possible with the Cat5e), just a straight lead form the MP TV Engine ... I presume that lead gets split. But where is the best place to have the splitter?
- Since we have the RG6 leads for bringing a signal to the Dist Panel, be cool to have say Channel 70 be a security camera looking outside, Channel 71 another Camera erc. Realise that a Modulator is needed to get that into a certain channel, but beyond that Im still searching :). BUt does Channel Modulation then pretty much destroy the quality of the signal?
* If we have the Video Signal from a room (say a VCR) is it best to use whole house Audio to get the Stereo Audio signal back to the viewing area via a Receiver/Amp? Ive seen some systems that send the signal via FM ?
* Whats the best approach to allow for scalability in the future. I presume by having the RG6 leads all being pulled back we are pretty safe?
* Is two Rg6 from the Antennas OK (eg at the moment it would be Normal aerial and Sat Dish). Ive heard of people running as much as 4?
* Has anyone seen much of running Audio/Video over Cat5 (http://www.hometoys.com/htinews/jun01/articles/prasanna/prasanna.htm)
That will do for now ... fire away with your ideas. Can even provide a floor plan if it helps :)
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