What is the optimal Home Theater set up for my home?

blu ray player plex image

Joe

I have been looking into the Roku 2 XS, the Boxee box, WD TV Live, a dedicated HTPC, HomerunHD network splitter, Plex, etc, but I keep going back and forth on what would meet my family's needs.
Here is what we have:
Living Room television: currently connected to cable DVR and a non-wifi enabled Blu-Ray Player.
Bedroom 1 TV: Connected to tri-booting computer, PS3 and coax from cable company that gives basic channels (basically all the OTA ones).
Bedroom 2 TV: Connected to PS3, cable company media extender that streams recorded shows from DVR, as well as non-premium channels. At one point he had an Xbox 360 in this room as well, but I think it may be broken.
Basement TV: Connected to a Wii, VCR/DVD combo, and another media extender from cable company.
I also have a wireless router that has a USB NAS storage port, and an external drive I could connect to it.
Ideally I would like a cableCARD device, like the HomerunHD one, be able to record shows, but also able to stream to each television, like what I think the WD TV Live offers. Pretty much have to have a cableCARD, can't ditch the cable because of local sports channel (Fox Sports Midwest, if it matters) basically airs 90+% of STL Cardinals and Blues games, as well as some college sports games (Mizzou). It seems if you use a cableCARD, you pretty much have to use Windows Media Center, especially to get the premium channels, so I was leaning towards a HTPC running Win7 in the living room to complement the HomerunHD device. Is there a way to automatically send any recorded shows directly to the NAS hard drive, which would be accessible by all DLNA compatible devices (like the two PS3s)? Would it require the recorded shows to be converted to a different format?

Answer
what you can do is hook the NAS directly to the computer and see if the Windows media player can play any of the content or just use a pin drive and record a few minutes of play then stick the pin drive into the computer and see if the Windows media player will play the file.....

Program that with control my Media Center from one Source?

Tim

Hello All,

This is question i have been thinking about asking on here for quite some time. after doing some looking online and not finding very much. i figured i was time to ask this question to ALL you great people here on Yahoo Answers! XD

okay so here is the situation that i have, i currently have a small "media center" set up for lack of a better term and here is the setup:

1.) a older HP slimline desktop connected into my 32 inch LCD TV that me and my fiancee use for for watching movies over netflix, off the hard drives, or even DVD and Blu-Rays.

2.) an old MSI G-series laptop with a GS 9600M in it that is connected to a small speaker system that we use as the Stereo for the main living area, we use pandora, sky FM and various other online music sites for music and of cause we use itunes to play some since we both Ipods.

3.) an ASUS G60JX with an Geforce 360M in it that is used for the main PC gaming platform at the moment (will be upgrading as soon the funds are there) and we also do online gaming on it.

that is the media setup as it sits right now in the house. and now onto the question:

is there a program that let me control all of the from one source?? (like a remote desktop or something maybe) basic instead of running around changing thing manually is there a program that will let me do in from one the of the computer? (most likely the ASUS)

is there a way to network all of them together (in case this helps we have a Standard Cable Modem and wireless connection through Time Warner)

and with there is such a program what are the requirements?

Thanks in advanced.
let me clarify something, basically what i want to do is control each device but play still the media on the computer they are on Ex:

play the movies of the HP, while controlling the HP from the ASUS

Answer
plex media is great for that you will have to install plex server on your gameing pc then plex player on the rest they all sink through your lan

Powered by Yahoo! Answers

Title Post: What is the optimal Home Theater set up for my home?
Rating: 100% based on 998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
Author: Yukie

Thanks For Coming To My Blog