I have a question about firewire connection topologies.
I want to connect equipment in 3 rooms.
Each room will have a 6 port hub.
The following equipment is in each room.
Room1:
JVC 40K DVHS
Sharp LC45GX6U HDTV
PC
Sony Vaio DVD Changer
Sony Vaio DVD Changer

Room 2:
JVC 40K DVHS
Sharp LC45GX6U HDTV
PC
Motorola DVR

Room 3:
JVC 40K DVHS
PC

I would use 2 sets of Unibrain Firewire->CAT5 extenders to connect the rooms.

I have a couple of questions though.
1. Will this work-Is this OK by Firewire standards-the physical connections/graph/topology
2. Will the DVHS decks be able to communicate from room to room? What about playing back a DTheater title in Room 1 from the deck in Room 3?
3. Will the TV in room 1 be able to use the DVR/DVHS in room 2?
4. Are these Unibrain extenders reliable/bulletproof over 100ft runs?
5. Will the PC's prevent playback of 5C contents by their mere presence on the network graph.
6. How reliable is DVHS/DVR firewire control through the tv's built in firewire control panel.

1 Should not be a problem even though I would encourage you to utilize 1394 repeaters.

2 Should not be a problem, it is a secure network.

3 Should be able to.

4 Don't know, I like 1394 repeaters and have had sucess with them, let us know how yours works.

5 No but since the PCs are not 5C they will not play back protected content.

6 I have a similar Sharp display and it has worked o.k. for me. I prefer to use the VCR remote directly.

Update.
Unibrain extender did not work for me.
However Newnex FireNex CAT5 repeaters work very nicely interconnecting bedroom/living with 75ft Cat6 cable. I stream HDTV from my Comcast DVR to the bedroom Mac Pro. Devices are connected to Kramer powered hubs-computers, tuners, disc subunits, dvr's, tv's.

My Yamaha DVD-S2500 is flaky though. When powered off, my Sharp tv drops out of the network. While powered on all nodes function properly. All nodes connected to a hub with Firenex repeater connecting rooms.

Cool technology.