Guys,

I have been lurking this forum for a long long time. They time has come that I actually take advice from you folks as what I have done by myself has not worked completely.

The scenario is that I have a dedicated theater and three plasmas around the house. I have a large server with 3TB NAS in the dedicated theater with a 100MB network running through the house. In the theater I use an HTPC with TT and I am very happy with the results. I have 300 DVD's ripped in IFO format accessed via a touchpanel with Mainlobby. All great stuff.

A couple of years ago I wanted to access the library through one other TV in the house. I built my own HTPC with MCE. It works OK. While I picked quiet components, the darned thing makes more noise than I would want it too. Also, the suspend/resume is not real reliable. But it works with all of my movies.

Later I added a Xbox 360 to another tv with my movies and transcode360. This really does not work. It is not reliable enough and I cannot trust the living room computer to be up and running every time the kids want to watch a movie. It really has been a big failure. The transcoding process is slow, cpu intensive and unreliable.

So now the question. I want to have a media extender on every TV in the house that can look at the server with a network share and play movies without noise and 100% reliably read my IFO's with menu navigation. I dont want 'experimental' support. Menu navigation is the most important feature. A nice GUI is a plus, but not required. Cost is not really relevant at this point. I am not modding Xbox's for this, this is not an option. A completely silent Niveus MCE PC at every tv is an option as they do everything I would want them to do, but they are expensive and PC technology is somewhat unreliable for this application. Some good extenders with IFO menu support would be preferred. I need Component and DVI (or HDMI) and preferably a DVD drive for local movie playing (not absolutely necessary but a plus).

Please point me in the right direction...

Thanks in advance

Pablo

Hi Pablo,

Have you thought of using a Matrix HD Switcher instead of putting a PC in every room? I have a setup like that and can play the XBOX360 in any room which is pretty sweet. I also have access to all movies, the XBOX HD player, two DVR's, etc. I'm not sure of your setup so I'm not sure if this makes sense costwise. I already had speakers in every room wired back to a Russound Whole house audio system. As you know, all controlled via MainLobby.

Hi Pablo,

Have you thought of using a Matrix HD Switcher instead of putting a PC in every room? I have a setup like that and can play the XBOX360 in any room which is pretty sweet. I also have access to all movies, the XBOX HD player, two DVR's, etc. I'm not sure of your setup so I'm not sure if this makes sense costwise. I already had speakers in every room wired back to a Russound Whole house audio system. As you know, all controlled via MainLobby.

Mario,

unfortunately my attic where my equipment rack is located is very far from all other rooms and I have no way to run new wiring unless I can do it with Cat5 circa 1997. Interesting thought though, I had not even considered that...

Pablo

Hi Pablo,

You may be in luck. You could use these baluns to distribute component video and Digital Coax Audio all through one Cat5:
http://www.cinemaronline.com/products.500050.html

I personally used them all over my house and they work great.

Having all the equipment in a central location and available to every single room has been awesome. My Master Bedroom just has a plasma on the wall and no other equipment. All devices are controlled from a 7" wireless tablet bedside and a standard Harmony IR remote that passes IR through a Russound UNO-S2 wall keypad.