One day soon we're going to start construction of our new house (looking like next spring ATM), I'm currently speccing various aspects of it and I'm stuck on how to distribute media housewide.

We use 2 x Squeezeboxes for audio and at the moment we have a single Sky+ with a "magic eye" link to our bedroom.

This is the kind of kit we'll probably have in the new house:

1 x HTPC
1 x Sky+ (maybe with Magic Eye)
1 x Dual tuner HTPC/audio server
3 x Squeezeboxes
2 x TVs
2 x PCs

We'd like to have the flexibility to allow location changes or system expansion, is something like this the way to go, or are there other/better ways of doing this?

http://www.smart-e.co.uk/cgi-bin/news/news_single_article.pl?35

I have Sky, FreeSat, projector-TV in lounge, bedroom TV, Bathroom TV.

All done on MythTV.
It's not that hard if you dedicate the boxes.

You're welcome to come and see... Reading just off J12.

David

I remember you saying the same last time I raised this. We're a lot nearer to starting construction now so might take you up on that, I reckon I might be able to do sometime in mid/late November, is that good for you?

(BTW thanks most kindly)

I was given some advice by someone who installed home automation systems a while back. He told me to always run in twice as much as you think. I think this is good advice because in bulk cat5 cable is cheap and easy to install when the plaster isn't on.

The systems you plug in will come and go, but you will still need that cable in the wall. I worked in one guys house that wired cat 5 to each light and mains outlet, just in case. His central comms room looked bonkers, but when I came to install his broadband it was all there waiting for me.

That looks like one impressive system, what sort of price bracket is that in?

Cheers

Cris.

Apart from being very jealous, I would think very seriously about putting fiber into each room. In my experience, the best and most reliable DVI/HDMI extenders are the fiber ones. Even if you don't need it straightaway, if you intend to live there for a long time it could save you a lot of hassle later on.

Last time I checked the price of CAT5 has rocketed in the last few years, to the point where it wasn't that much cheaper than CAT6.

Make sure that 'everything' goes in the apps room/basement. Nothing looks slicker in the living room than 'just' a Plasma/LCD or projection screen and nothing else.

Just echoing David's recommendation of MythTV. I've finally got work to let me build a MythTV off-air recorder. IMHO, MythBuntu is by far the quickest and easiest way to start out.

It's still cheaper to put it in before you need it, which was my point, installing cables after the fact is just a total mare. I used to spend hours trying to make a good job of wiring in new build houses when they hadn't put that crucial socket where they wanted it. I never was truly happy at the end of the job.

You can't beat having a bit of copper in the walls ready for use, it's more universal than fibre, you don't need so much kit on the other end and you can use PoE etc... or even just a simple RS232. I don't think CAT6 is worth bothering about for the whole house, and there is little point anyway unless the full spec is followed.

From what I have seen on andym's Myth system it look mighty impressive. I have never attempted it myself, but maybe freesat HD may be enough to tempt me. It seems a very powerful system, and seemed quite reliable for such a system.

Cheers

Cris.

Putting in a couple pull cords into each duct would be handy as well.

Some of the more advanced home automation systems will also need a cable running to most points so you can consider that as well in the future.

You can get wire bundles that have dual cat-5e and dual rg-6 all together. You can also buy more expensive bundles with fiber. Run that everywhere and you've got a lot of flexibility later on down the road.

Personally, I don't see much point in spending the extra money on cat-6, nor on fiber. Ethernet in its many forms is an excellent way of moving your bits around. Also, I think, if you really want, you can even do HDMI-over-twisted-pair. Not sure how well that works, though.

Things to think about are running cables not just to panels on the wall near the floor, but also to strategic places along the ceiling where you might wish to mount a wireless base station or other future gizmo (network-connected video projector?).

I've found you have to be very careful with pull cords. Unless the duct is considerably larger than the cables currently inside, it can get to the point where you've got the cable halfway along before it snags around other cables which can be very frustrating. It's all to do with the way the cable twist around each other as you're looming them together. If the duct is tight and cables are very close to each other then you'll run into problems.

Off the top of my head I'd probably run the following as a minimum to each room:

4 x CAT5/6
2 x CT100 (Sat frequency RF cable)

The four CAT5/6's should give you plenty of ethernet connectivity, but also serial and KVM as well. The two RF cables should give you the flexibility of running TV + Satellite or two separate satellite signals in each room.

Then in the living room/home cinema add:

1 x Pair multimode fiber
? x Speaker cables

If you give a stuff about decent picture quality, especially HD then I'd look at using DVI/HDMI to fiber converter boxes. I don't know how big you intend the house to be, but I wouldn't feel comfortable running HDMI over distances any greater than a couple of meters, especially if the route the cable takes goes across other services.

They don't, at least the expensive ones we bought at work didn't. We ended up moving to fiber, it was the only way to make dual link DVI and 1080p video work reliably.

Yeah. Yanking a piece of Cat5 through a tight duct would probably exceed the bend radius and snag it on everything. Still, its easy and cheap to put in now and you may want it in the future.

You can run video over Cat5 if you have the necessary adapters as well. Composite/S-Video + audio or RGB with no audio. I've got one of them actually on my Sky Digibox because it kept giving me ground loops problems.

The budget method would be to use something like a Loftbox but you're basically converting everything to composite so it will look bad.

We use BlackBox baluns which do S-Video + Stereo Audio over CAT5 for distributing our off-air signal to plasmas round the building. The quality varies from not too bad (15 meters) to terrible (150 meters).

EDIT: Should probably point out the few long distance screens we have that look okay are the ones connected over CAT6 instead of CAT5e...

The Kat5 units aren't baluns. They're active units.

Quality seems okay to me. Somebody I know has a long run with them feeding a projector and the picture quality is fine.

IMO it's a little bit sad that it's still necessary to run analogue cables (whether video or audio) from room to room in this day and age. Really there's no technical reason why all these devices -- cable boxes, satellite STBs, DVD players, CD players, Empegs, TVs -- can't just have an Ethernet socket on the back and sort all the streaming out among themselves using UPnP. I guess there's legal/contractual reasons in some cases, though.

Peter

I'll also start building my house next month. The planning of the media distribution has already been more than a nightmare.

I've pretty much got it covered now, except for regular TV. This would not have been a problem up to a couple of years ago, in the days of analogue TV. Then you simply needed a good amplified splitter and presto: TV in every desired room.

No more the case. Today there's digital TV. And while it also brings some advantages (mainly in image quality and number of channels) it's also a pain in the neck getting it distributed all over the house. I'm still not sure how I'll go about this...

For now I've planned it like so that every room in the house will have (at least) two Cat 6 drops. (Andy's made me doubt now, since he advises to run at least 4 cables to every room) Those cables are meant for internet access, data transfer and media streaming (both video and audio) and maybe also VOIP phoning. Aren't two Cat6 cables sufficient for all that? I can always use a small unmanaged switch on those cables if two cables don't cut it, right? But that's not really the problem. UTP cable is relatively cheap, so I might end up with four cables to every room anyway, I don't know...

As said, the main problem is the TV distribution. I have the choice between TV over ADSL (which I will not use since it's an inferior technology and -even more reason- I don't use ADSL but cable), digital TV via my cable provider - Telenet- (DVB-C) or Satellite (DVB-S). If I choose DVB-C, I need a proprietary decoder + smartcard from Telenet for every TV in my house. I don't really think this is a particularly good idea, installation-wise or cost-wise, since this would also mean I would have to pay a digital TV subscription for every TV.
DVB-C is still my preferred option, but knowing the aforementioned make it a difficult choice.

Another option is satellite TV, which I'm totally willing to install, but I'm not really in the know with. For one, is the coax cable used for connecting a TV to cable the same coax cable which is needed for satellite? In other words, if I run one of these cables to the room, will I still have the choice of connecting them to either a dish or cable? Or is this a different type?

So for both technologies, you need a set-top box. But my main question is: aren't there decoders out there which can distribute the TV signal, once received, to a number of TV's in the house? If this would exist, I would be saved. I mean, there must be some technology that does this? Or how do all those hotels with their dozens of rooms + TV's go about this? They also don't place a decoder per room? Or is that all still based on analogue TV?

Why of why do cable distributors require you to use their own set-top box hardware? This is like returning to the seventies when everybody who switched to cable also had such a box on top of their TV! Wouldn't it be a LOT simple if there simply was a smartcard slot in every Tv, in which you could then slide your smartcard, and then would be given access to all the channels? It probably is, but my guess is cable companies also make a lot of money on those set-top-boxes, even if they annoy the pants off of their customers. You also can't use a Myth box with digital TV, because all the channels are protected. (I'm guessing it does work with Satellite, which is another pro for that technology?)

Does anybody have a solution for me here? I'm hoping you don't mind the slight thread hijack Tahir, but I'm guessing this might also be interesting for you.

Do it now whilst the walls are open. If you want to add extra in the future then it will be a major job.


Have the set top boxes all in a central location and distributed out to the TVs around the house. You can get IR receivers to put into each room and then a small transmitter near the set top box so you can still change the channel. If you want to be able to have more TVs watching different channels then you just need to add another set top box.


You can send the output of a set top box to all the TVs or you can install a switcher so you can select the source you want.


The TV is special and has a built in receiver.


Its called CableCARD in the US. I don't think it exists in Europe.


If you can get a CAM + smart card and also have a receiver card then you can watch encrypted channels. Whether you'll be able to get that CAM is another matter.

It barely exists in the US, and only for cable, not satellite, and is supposed to be obsoleted before too long. The vast majority of people still have set-top boxes. And they're PCCard form factor, not smartcard.

Sending video around would be a nightmare considering the average home network. You'd need QoS as well and most home networking devices don't support that at all.

Yeah. Somebody I know bought a HD TiVo and still has to keep their set top box to watch OnDemand and PPV. Alledgely there is a newer revision of the CableCARD standard that would allow this but nobody uses it.

I know. No worries there, 'cause the walls have not even been built.


I thought about that scenario as well. I even found a way of distributing the TV signal over UTP cable. The only problems is indeed: this only works if you always only use one TV in the house at the same time, or watch the same channel on all connected TV's. Once you want to watch different channels on different TV's (not all that unthinkable if you consider the average home with parents + two children, which means at one time you will need at least 3 decoders!) It's exactly that scenario I'm trying to avoid, or am trying to find a solution for.

Yeah, that's what I figured. It would not be easy, but at least the technological possibility is there, which is not the case with DVB-C.

I'm very sure I'm not alone with this problem. There must be some solution for this?

Nope. Not much you can do about it. Buy more set top boxes or tuner cards + smartcards. The companies want you to buy more anyway. I don't know of any single device that will tune to all available channels, decode them all and then distribute them around the house. They do this in a hotel by having a stack of receivers.


Some DVB receivers have a CI slot to add a special PCCard + smartcard to enable decoding.

You'll still need multiple receivers and multiple cards however.

The RG-59 coaxial cable that was commonly used for regular television in many houses is a different grade than the RG-6 coaxial cable used to connect to DirecTV satellite dishes these days. I'm told that the RG-6 cable needs to be of a higher grade to carry power to the LNB of the dish itself, and that RG-59 will either not work or will melt through its insulation if you try.

Additionally, you can't just use a passive Y-splitter to connect multiple tuner boxes to satellite dishes, the way you could with regular TV cable. Instead, you need an active electronic device known as a multiplexer (sometimes mis-referred to as a 'splitter' by people talking about satellite dish installations).

And, of course, you need a receiver (tuner box) in each location you want to watch satellite TV.

Other than that, it's exactly the same as TV cable.

You'll need a dual or quad LNB if you want to distribute it because of the different bands and polarisations.

Yeah, that too.

Okay, time for show and tell....

The top photo shows what appears in each room. Please note I'm not intending to do A/V distribution in the house.

2 x CAT5e
2 x CT100 RF

Gives me two ethernet/serial/closing contact in each room. Also the ability to have a Sky+/Freesat PVR and terrestrial TV/Radio connection.

The dish and aerial outside, the bottom photo shows the quattro lnb.

Closeup and rear view of the RF plate. Note the back is completely shielded.

The bottom photo show the multiswitch and aerial amp power injector in the loft.

Mildly interesting story, when BBC Broadcasting House was undergoing it massive refit the boffins at R&D looked at how to replace the hundreds and hundreds of miles of audio, video and network cable and optical fiber which something more elegant. The answer was AES47 and ATM. The boffins loved the idea that only thing coming out of each studio was a pair of fibers (well two pairs actually for redundancy). On those fibers there was everything, programme sound, talkback, computer networks, automation and control, and in the case of a TV studio, video.

In the end, they went for the old discreet model of video cables, audio cables, CAT6, etc. As the cost of implementing it was huge. I worked on a project using ATM adaptors in PC's just for switching and control and the cost of the adaptors was quadruple that of the PC's that they were inside of, and they were just presented on RJ45, the fiber ones were even more expensive. Not that broadcast kit is cheap anyways.

tahir - I remember now
Yes, that'll be fine - PM me when you've got dates in mind and I'll check the calendar.

anyhow, more chat... with the caveat that I'm more interested in DIY than a top-end bespoke commercial solution

Two things here:
1. designing an A/V system that works on day one.
2. minimising the impact when things change

Throwing lots of wire in and then thinking about it is a bad approach IMHO.
Designing a system and *then* throwing in lots more wire - that's better

I renovated but I ran 50mm waste pipe down from the attic to the ground floor; this is an option I'd look at very seriously.
Putting big drainpipes in every wall going up to the roof space would be very valuable.
Seriously: the other 'simple' solution is to build a bungalow or make sure there's a suspended floor
No worries with *anything* then; wiring, plumbing... simple.

Another of the big things that I think is missing here is that getting the distributed signal (ethernet) around the house isn't the hard part; it's getting from the point in the room where the signal comes out into the (mainly) analogue components.

The 'spec' includes squeezeboxes - but they need mains power, an amp (mains power and speaker-wire) and speakers (speaker wire). Getting the amplified sound to 2/4/5/7 locations around the room is a biggy.

Video goes via HDMI/DVI so you need a local video engine. Of course you could be lucky (or clever) and locate node0 to be local to everywhere.
OTOH with frontends shrinking all the time - and the fact that you'll want to plug in one or more of an Xbox, Xbox360, PS1, PS2, PS3, Wii (that covers the last 3 years right?) in one or more rooms - and I'd think of having a discrete breakout/node1 in an appropriate place in each room.

Oh, and you need to rethink TV too.

I have zero interest in 'live' TV. It's there to test that channel changing works. Hard to believe - you will.

Sometimes, as a novelty, we watch a TV programme *whilst it's still being broadcast*.

Currently we have to choose from 1026 episodes/programs, using 1.9 TB (1 month 14 days 9 hrs 48 mins) out of 3.6 TB.

I'll have to do some install piccies though.