Multi room media solutions...

[marcgti6]

Not really sure if this should be in this forum or Home Cinema...

So, I'm in the process of buying a new house. It's going to need quite a bit of work doing to it so I'll have the opportunity to wire all in the necessary AV bits and pieces before we decorate.

I have a PC that I can use as a server to store all music/films on. Think I'll be going for the Virgin Media 30mb fibre optic broadband package so I'll have a decent speed wired/wireless connection to PC.

I'll have an AV receiver downstairs with Apple TV 3, Sky+, Xbox 360 all plugged in which will also run my speakers. Panasonic plasma with all the bells and whistles.

Then upstairs, I'll have another TV (with the possibility of more in the future), hifi and I'm hoping to put some ceiling speakers into the bathroom.

We have iPad's and Android phones so I'm hoping to be able to have at least some degree of control through these.

Is there anyway I can run the speakers in the living room, bedroom(s) and bathroom as separate zones and control the audio through iPad/phone?

I keep seeing people mention XBMC and Raspberry Pi but I'm not sure what's best for my needs. Any advice or links to any helpful information?

Cheers

[idiotgap]

I have multi-room audio with control via ipad or android tablet.
I use the squeezebox system which logitech bought from slim-devices, but has now abandoned. There seems to be a reasonable following for it though and it all hangs together quite nicely. You can construct a squeezebox system out of almost any hardware you want, it's virtually free - why not try it out and see what you think, you can always buy sonos later. Only cash I've spent on it has been a couple of pounds on android/ipad apps. As well as listening to the tunes on your fileserver, you can play internet radio on it. You can also link it up to spotify though I've not got round to looking into that.

You need to gather together a few things to make a squeezebox system work
- server (you say you already have this)
- player hardware
- controller


Server: most popular NAS drives seem to be able to run the LMS (logitech media server), since you are electing use a pc for your file-server this wouldn't be a problem.
http://logitech-en-amr.custhelp.com/app/answers/de...

Player hardware: there are loads of options for this.
- You can buy 2nd hand genuine logitech hardware on ebay (search for touch, duet, squeezebox radio,), these look nice, but they are probably old now and getting quite expensive.
- There are android and apple ios apps that will turn any iphone, ipad, ipod touch (gen 2 and above I think), android tablet, android phone into a music player. Look at ipeng for apple and squeezeplayer for android.
- there is an easy way to turn a raspberry pi into a player, see picoplayer. You just put the download onto a memory card and plug it in.
- there is a plugin for xbmc which turns any xbmc installation into a zone for your music system
- there are loads of options see here - http://www.communitysqueeze.org/faq.jsp vamp vertexbox wandboard (I don't know much about these but they are there for the trying).

Controller: Any browser capable device on your home network can be a controller. The most basic form is just a little website run by your server which allows you to decide which music to play and build playlists, you can also adjust the settings from here. the slickest controllers are the ipad/android apps available in the appstores, I mostly use ipeng.

I have a linux pc running xbmc in the lounge, mostly for playing movies and watching tv on, but when we have a party it is a zone in our squeezebox music system.

My wife's ipad often lives on a speaker/stand in the kitchen and serves the tunes in there via the ipeng app

In the dining room I have a separates stereo and this has a raspberry pi plugged in running pico player.

I have two android phones and a tablet which I use to create extra pop-up zones when and where needed. They can either use the attached speakers or be plugged in to separate amplification.

You can choose to play different music on each player or sync them up into groups and link them however you like.

[RedLeicester]

Given you're already I-thinged up, slap an AppleTV wherever you want audio / video and leave a machine running iTunes, and all controlled from Apple's Remote app on the phones / ipads.

Done.

[tamore]

marcgti6 said:

Not really sure if this should be in this forum or Home Cinema...

So, I'm in the process of buying a new house. It's going to need quite a bit of work doing to it so I'll have the opportunity to wire all in the necessary AV bits and pieces before we decorate.

I have a PC that I can use as a server to store all music/films on. Think I'll be going for the Virgin Media 30mb fibre optic broadband package so I'll have a decent speed wired/wireless connection to PC.

I'll have an AV receiver downstairs with Apple TV 3, Sky+, Xbox 360 all plugged in which will also run my speakers. Panasonic plasma with all the bells and whistles.

Then upstairs, I'll have another TV (with the possibility of more in the future), hifi and I'm hoping to put some ceiling speakers into the bathroom.

We have iPad's and Android phones so I'm hoping to be able to have at least some degree of control through these.

Is there anyway I can run the speakers in the living room, bedroom(s) and bathroom as separate zones and control the audio through iPad/phone?

I keep seeing people mention XBMC and Raspberry Pi but I'm not sure what's best for my needs. Any advice or links to any helpful information?

Cheers

sonos if you're just looking for audio. a/v is a little more convoluted.

[marcgti6]

Thanks for your replies.

I'll certainly look into Squeezebox - it sounds good although I do like the idea of a Raspberry Pi/XBMC combo.

I think I might abandon the multi-zone option and just move my Apple TV to the bedroom and then run XBMC on a Raspberry Pi downstairs. I can still stream music from my PC via Apple TV if I want to.

Having multiple Apple TV's is an option but I quite like the flexibility of a Raspberry Pi and the (seemingly endless) customisation options/add-ons.

Going to have to do a fair bit of googling I think - these Raspberry Pi's sound good but there must be some downsides, surely?

Can I get Netflix on Pi/XBMC?

Edited by marcgti6 on Tuesday 4th February 16:48

[marcgti6]

How easy is it to stream media (mainly audio) from a PC to a Raspberry Pi running XBMC?

I'm guessing that it's fairly straightforward stuff that the Pi can do out of the box?

[idiotgap]

marcgti6 said:

How easy is it to stream media (mainly audio) from a PC to a Raspberry Pi running XBMC?

I'm guessing that it's fairly straightforward stuff that the Pi can do out of the box?

That's fairly easy, nothing is quite 'out of the box' with a pi though. Easiest way will need to get on your PC and create an sd card containing an xbmc distribution like (raspmc for example) for each pi. Plug the pi in to a relatively recent hdmi tv and you will be able use your tv's remote control to control xbmc, find your music on your network and play it.

You won't be able to sync playback between zones with this solution, just have different music in whichever room you want.

[marcgti6]

idiotgap said:

That's fairly easy, nothing is quite 'out of the box' with a pi though. Easiest way will need to get on your PC and create an sd card containing an xbmc distribution like (raspmc for example) for each pi. Plug the pi in to a relatively recent hdmi tv and you will be able use your tv's remote control to control xbmc, find your music on your network and play it.

You won't be able to sync playback between zones with this solution, just have different music in whichever room you want.

Thanks. What's the need to use something like raspmc then? I thought I could just download XBMC direct to the SD card...

[Rick Cutler]

marcgti6 said:

Not really sure if this should be in this forum or Home Cinema...

So, I'm in the process of buying a new house. It's going to need quite a bit of work doing to it so I'll have the opportunity to wire all in the necessary AV bits and pieces before we decorate.

I have a PC that I can use as a server to store all music/films on. Think I'll be going for the Virgin Media 30mb fibre optic broadband package so I'll have a decent speed wired/wireless connection to PC.

I'll have an AV receiver downstairs with Apple TV 3, Sky+, Xbox 360 all plugged in which will also run my speakers. Panasonic plasma with all the bells and whistles.

Then upstairs, I'll have another TV (with the possibility of more in the future), hifi and I'm hoping to put some ceiling speakers into the bathroom.

We have iPad's and Android phones so I'm hoping to be able to have at least some degree of control through these.

Is there anyway I can run the speakers in the living room, bedroom(s) and bathroom as separate zones and control the audio through iPad/phone?

I keep seeing people mention XBMC and Raspberry Pi but I'm not sure what's best for my needs. Any advice or links to any helpful information?

Cheers

In any room you are doing run two CAT5/6 cables to each double gang mains socket. Run these back to the electrical cupboard and get an IT guy (or me) to terminate them, When the budget allows you can send video down CAT5/6 and also can be used to extend wifi, send audio etc,

The Sonos system is great works really well and totally expandable however not cheap. I would run a couple of decent quality audio cables two the ceiling space, take photos of where they are before the ceiling is finally plastered (To find them later). Run these back to the electrical cupboard or av locations if the electrical cupboard could not house a reasonable size amplifier.

Any Questions drop me a message. If you are local to Chepstow, pop over.

Rick.

[marcgti6]

Rick Cutler said:

In any room you are doing run two CAT5/6 cables to each double gang mains socket. Run these back to the electrical cupboard and get an IT guy (or me) to terminate them, When the budget allows you can send video down CAT5/6 and also can be used to extend wifi, send audio etc,

The Sonos system is great works really well and totally expandable however not cheap. I would run a couple of decent quality audio cables two the ceiling space, take photos of where they are before the ceiling is finally plastered (To find them later). Run these back to the electrical cupboard or av locations if the electrical cupboard could not house a reasonable size amplifier.

Any Questions drop me a message. If you are local to Chepstow, pop over.

Rick.

Thanks Rick.

Why CAT cables to mains sockets?

Yeah, think Sonos could be a bit of a stretch on my budget - I've got my eyes on some tasty B&W speakers for the hifi side of things (music is my primary concern really). Running audio cables is a good shout!

Cheers

[idiotgap]

marcgti6 said:

Thanks. What's the need to use something like raspmc then? I thought I could just download XBMC direct to the SD card...

The raspberry pi is a computer, but comes with no operating system (like ios, android, windows, linux or OSX).
XBMC is a media player - an all singing all dancing amazingly good one, but it can't stand alone and needs an underlying operating system.

You could install some form of linux (rasbian for example) on the pi and then put xbmc on top, this would probably be hard if you don't know linux well.

Easiest way as directed by the xbmc folk on their download page is to write xbmc+operating system direct to the SD card in one hit. XBMC themselves don't go so far as to prepare the packaged up whole thing themselves, but there are at least three people that do. This page on the xbmc website will direct you to them.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Raspberry_Pi/...

Briefly, you can download and copy onto an SD card either openelec, raspmc or xbian. Those three are all pre-built SD card images containing both a recent version of XBMC and an operating system combined. Should be dead easy to use.

[Rick Cutler]

Run CAT5/6 cables (Either CAT5 or CAT6) to a single gang plate next to the mains sockets. These are the network points you see in offices.

You can run audio and HD Video down a single CAT5 using Baluns. These retail around the £100 a pair mark for good ones, A simple 4 way HDMI switch would allow you to send HD Sky around the house. Also modern houses with steel beams and some solid walls are quite good at blocking wifi signals. You can easily extend wifi with these points too.

[marcgti6]

idiotgap said:

The raspberry pi is a computer, but comes with no operating system (like ios, android, windows, linux or OSX).
XBMC is a media player - an all singing all dancing amazingly good one, but it can't stand alone and needs an underlying operating system.

You could install some form of linux (rasbian for example) on the pi and then put xbmc on top, this would probably be hard if you don't know linux well.

Easiest way as directed by the xbmc folk on their download page is to write xbmc+operating system direct to the SD card in one hit. XBMC themselves don't go so far as to prepare the packaged up whole thing themselves, but there are at least three people that do. This page on the xbmc website will direct you to them.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Raspberry_Pi/...

Briefly, you can download and copy onto an SD card either openelec, raspmc or xbian. Those three are all pre-built SD card images containing both a recent version of XBMC and an operating system combined. Should be dead easy to use.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation. Think I'll try Raspmc then. Cheers

[marcgti6]

Rick Cutler said:

Run CAT5/6 cables (Either CAT5 or CAT6) to a single gang plate next to the mains sockets. These are the network points you see in offices.

You can run audio and HD Video down a single CAT5 using Baluns. These retail around the £100 a pair mark for good ones, A simple 4 way HDMI switch would allow you to send HD Sky around the house. Also modern houses with steel beams and some solid walls are quite good at blocking wifi signals. You can easily extend wifi with these points too.

Thanks Rick, I will look into running CAT cables then as it sounds like they can be used to send pretty much anything. Plus, the cable is cheap as chips.

Cheers