Best Options for a Home Entertainment Network?

Vultan asks: "Now that I'm finally a proud homeowner, I'm looking to integrate my video, audio, and computer hardware. Specifically, I'd like to be able to listen to Internet radio throughout the house (or at least through my main stereo unit), and transmit video from my computer to my home theater in a separate room. I've done my share of googling, and I'm drowning in options. Wired vs. wireless, RG6 vs. CAT5e, digital vs. analog, line level vs. speaker level (for audio), etc. What kinds of technology do Slashdot readers use or recommend?"

Comments

Wired vs Wireless

[farnsaw]

If you can, go wired. It has the bandwidth you need for video and with a switch you can handle several servers and clients simultaneously each with it's own 100Mbit connection where with wireless you share bandwidth.

Re:Wired vs Wireless

[farnsaw]

I agree for a general system situation. In fact, I have done both. I run my servers by wire (as they don't move around) and my laptops via wireless. Most people don't move their TV and Stereo system around much once they get it setup, so I would recommend wires for those as well. The two biggest advantages of Wires vs Wireless are bandwidth and privacy. By using both in your house, it would allow you to sit on the porch surfing the net at full speed (even those of you with 3 Mb ADSL) while several people in the house are watching movies on the Televisions and listening to streaming audio around the house. If you do everything wireless, you will see a huge slowdown when someone starts to watch a movie and/or several people start steaming audio from your server.

Re:Wired vs Wireless

[Jeff Kelly]

Still, you are mostly right (I think). Wired solves more problems than it creates, in the long run, but some degree of DIY skill is involved to get a subtly neat installation.

This mostly depends on the size of the installation and the type of cable used. Also in most countries you have to adhere to certain regulations regarding in-house wiring.

In germany for example (where I live) it is not allowed to use unshielded cable for in-house-wiring (you may use unshielded cable for connecting your computer to the RJ45 jack but for everything which runs in the wall or covers distances > 10m you'll have to use shielded cable) and since shielded twisted pair is not trivial to install. (Atr least if you have to adhere to emv guidelines) I personally consider using broadband wireless connections.

I'd certainly prefer wired connections but don't underestimate the complexity involved in in-house-wiring if you have to adhere to emv guidelines and building codes. You also will have to consider the guidelines for deploying shielded cable. (You may only bend shielded cable to a certain degree, you have to pay attention to the transition between in-wall wiring and the wall jacks etc.)

Regards Jeff (been there done that)

Cat5

[cscx]

Run CAT5 all over the place... in addition to Ethernet, CAT5 has an impedance of ~ 100 ohms which makes it perfect for both balanced analog audio signals and digital AES/EBU if you want to do that. You want to go balanced if you're doing long cable runs otherwise you could pick up hum.

Something else to think about...

[Sean Johnson]

If you are concerned about security, you might consider that even if you have WEP enabled with wireless, CAT5 will always be more resilient to eavsdropping on your network streams; simply because it hard to hack into CAT5 physically. Also, as another poster postulated, you have a dedicated 100mb throughput for each device or computer hooked into the LAN. With wireless, it's shared. CAT5 rocks for bandwidth! I can stream straight .VOB (DVD) files from my host computer to the living room computer and it plays just as if it were from a set-top, stand-alone DVD player; no skips or nothing. So you could have video playing over the LAN for one device in one room, and have plenty of bandwidth to spare for a couple of other devices in other rooms. Ultimately I guess it's how you plan to use it that determines the best implementation to use.

My system

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't perfect, but here's a quick list:

Audio/Video:
- Kenwood THX Receiver ($400)
- Infinity 5.1 Surround Speakers (no they aren't dipole)
- Toshiba 3109 DVD player (older)
- Toshiba 50H81 16:9 HDTV-ready
- Digital cable with 5.1 dolby
- Mistubishi SVHS VCR with SVideo in/out

Conversion Computer (upstairs):
- Athlon 2000+, 512MB Ram, 4x80GB drives (manually mirrored with rsync weekly)
- ATI Wonder TV
- 100baseT network
- Mitsubishi SVHS VCR for Playback/Recording
- RH9.0 Linux
- MEncoder, vobcopy, mplayer, Freevo and custom scripts for conversion from analog and DVD to DivX 5.0x
Here's where to get the software: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design6/news.html
http://www.divx.com/
http://lpn.rnbhq.org/
htt p://freevo.sourceforge.net/

- mod_mp3 for streaming audio files
- Apache web server for Streaming video inside the house

Playback Computer (near TV):
- Compaq Armada E500 (900MHz, 256MB Ram, composite video out, stereo audio out)
- DLink 802.11a PCMCIA adapter (in turbo mode I see 72Mbps)
- VLC is used to stream the video from the server upstairs

Plug the laptop into the AUX input for the Receiver and use the Toshiba's aspect ratio and zoom controls to fill the screen completely.

Works best with DVD conversions. I've converted some favorite VCR tapes too and lots of home videos from 20-30 years ago. There's nothing like being able to have family over and laugh at them as kids going down a slide and landing on their butts at the bottom or seeing Mom in kat-eye glasses.
Also works great with WinAMP for MP3 and other audio format playback. If WinAMP's video would stream, I wouldn't need VLC

It isn't a perfect setup. It needs a remote control, a cleaner look downstairs, but for watching a full length movie, it is great - no more switching DVDs or hunting for the DVD . They are all safely away in a closet.

There are lots of other choices for the Linux software, but for one reason or another, they wouldn't work on my system. Mostly due to dependencies. RPM sucks!

Could I be first?

Re:What are your preferences?

[DigitalGlass]

i tried streaming an 800MB divx file from my wired desktop into my wireless laptop, and it lagged alot and dropped alot of frames.

AVSForum

[SL33Z3]

One of the best sites around for this sort of information is http://www.avsforum.com/

Do your research in their FAQs and then post any questions you have to the board. The site is ass-ugly, but it's great information!

Re:Don't understand the point of IT based HE syste

[njan]

Whether or not MP3 reduces the sound quality of any given source (which obviously it does), you can tell the difference between a production quality set of technics speakers and the 5watt multimedia speakers that shipped with an mmx-era tiny: in just the same way that a decent car will still handle well on a poor quality road, decent hardware will make the most of whatever sound you feed it.

With a few exceptions - notably headphones - this isn't the case. There are certain lines of sennheiser headphones, for instance, which sound dreadful when fed a 64kbps mp3 of classical music; however, even on a 160kbps mp3 feed, my pair of Sennheiser HD500s sound positively wonderful, especially when the music has as few channels as possible. This difference in headphones is mostly due to the fact that headphones aren't designed to playback recordings made for speakers - which your body naturally perceives accoustically due to the multiple, far-distanced soundsources and diffuse reflections off environment and shoulders. Even the most expensive headphones still find it extremely hard to compensate for this; the best solution is to use a binaural recording, made generally by a set of microphones embedded in a plastic or polystyrene fake head, such that playback sounds as realistic as possible.

In short, hardware DOES make a difference - even to a 128kbit mp3 feed. But what would sound bad on good hardware at that bitrate would sound bad on any set of speakers - and if you're really after audiophile sound quality, you won't be feeding a set of expensive speakers with a low-rate mp3 file.

Remember also that most recordings are now made digitally - it's extremely easy to get hold of even mp3 recordings of extremely high quality (256kbit mp3 files are practically indistinguishable from cds to the lay person's ear; with ogg vorbis, the compression artefacts drop vastly in occurance and this applies to an even greater degree)....

Wiring for your Home

[tres3]

The first suggestion that I have is NOT to let an electrician install the wiriing unless you KNOW that they are capable of doing it right. I had to set up a business (an ISP) with a network that was really elaborate. It even had a central UPS with outlets in every room that were connected to the central UPS so those outlets wouldn't loose power when the city's power grid failed. During the installation I walked in and was appalled at what I saw: the cat5 wire was laying on the ground with crap piled on top of it, it had nicks in it from being pulled through aluminum 2x4s, and was generally screwed. We had to redo it all the network stuff! From an electricians point of view if it carries a current then it works. This could not be farther from the truth. If a cat5 wire is bent with a radius of less than one inch or if it is pulled with a force that exceeds 25 lbs it is no longer cat5. It will carry current but the twists in the wire will be f*cked up and it won't be able to transmit data at its rated speed. I strongly suggest that you either pull the cable yourself or get someone that KNOWS what they are doing. Catagory 5 wiring cannot be within four feet of a flourscent light, it can't drop more than two flooors without a stress relieving loop, etc.. There is a LOT to know.

What I would do, since wire is cheap relatively speaking, is pull everything that you think that you might need. I would pull a coaxial, two cat5e, and a phone line (cat2) into all of the places in question and then leave what you are not going to use in the walls for later. Perhaps even a piece of fiber (single mode) There are some companies that have wire bundles where all of the above mentioned wire is in a single bundle so that you only need to pull one wire (albeit a large one). I would also pull a few pieces of heavy nylon cord for use later. These help when you need an additional run. Simply tape the new wire (fiber?) to the nylon and pull the nylon cord out, thereby pulling the new wire into place. You may want to pull a replacement piece of nylon cord with it for the next time.

Remember that you must be as gentle as possible with the wire so as not to pull the twists out of copper wire or shatter the glass in a piece of fiber as you run it through the walls. The last thing that I would strongly suggest doing is testing the cable after you have pulled it. I'm not talking about one of those $45 boxes with lights that your nearest Fried Electronics (Fry's Electronics - I used to work there and most of the sales people don't know shit about this stuff) will try to sell you. I'm talking about a $5-8k tester from Fluke, Wavelan, etc. that can tell you what the wire is actually transmitting. You should be able to find someplace to rent one for the day or perhaps your lucky enough to have a friend in the business. Or you could pull one of the tricks that Fry's customers do all of the time: buy yourself the tester and then return it within the 30 day return policy that they offer.

Once you have run all of the wires that you may need for the next 10-20 years then you will be free to hook whatever you want to the ends of it. There was a slashdot discussion on the merits of a Linux multi-media server that you may want to search for as well. First get the infrastructure (wires) installed and then your options are wide open.

Good luck. Tres