I am interested in sending sky signal and also music / dvd (audio / visual) around the house.

I'm in no rush - but when I upgrade to sky hi-def I would like to have an appropriate system.

I recently spoke to a sky engineer - who advised to steer clear of this route and lay hdmi cable to each tv point.

Does anyone have any experience to share in this area?

Ravi

  You need to have a chat with our old friend Keith Doxey.  You'll find his WebSite illuminating at:

 http://www.kat5.tv/index1.html

Regards

 Andy
 

 Happy to contact him - funnily enough his was one of the sites I came across in google research mode - but was put off by:

* the fact that main page hasnt been updated since17th may 2004

*general lack of reference to high def

Now I know they are 'recommended' I'll give them a try. thx

 Hi Ravi,

 i'm still battling with this options at the moment myself.

I have not come across any real HD solutions, they are mostly composite and somtime svid.

I'm currently still on the - 'disttribute over IP' and decode at the end point, with either 1 or 2 server PC's to handle the encoding/hosting of MP3's,vid's, pics etc. (LinuxMCE / MediaPortal/ Windows Home Server etc.)

With a wired gigabit network there is plenty of scope for the future and there is currently a drive for more and more HD clients starting to emerge - sling catcher one of the eagerly awited ones.

bottom line I feel is that run a good few cat5's to all end points and you should be able to handle mostly anything. You can get balun's to covert mostly anything to cat5 - Keith's being one example, madnat housing more (including spdif) - I have also found hdmi baluns. Stick with the cat5 and you should be good.

Another good suggestion (personal) never believe anything sky 'technical' tell you - I've never had them tell me anything that made sense or was correct.

Cheers,

Ian.
 

I would just like to second the comment about the Sky engineer

Also I have just wired my House and I have Allowed at all TV Points 3 X CT100 Coax and One Cat5 this should give me good scope for a little more than RF signals 

Ian

   A very useful client program for HD content is VLC.  It can also be used in server, peer and transcode mode.  We've had it running DVDs to the Nokia N770 and N800 handheld internet tablets.

 
  You can find more details at:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Regards

Andy 

Andy,

agree, VLC is another solution, not particularly wife proof - and a little too geeky/configurable for some.

TVersity is pretty good and gaining more traction - even mentioned in this month pc plus review of end point streamers, it's transcoder is pretty good, the downside will all transcoders is a decent dual or quad core is requried.

TVersity has the benefit of being a standard upnp server (not sure if vlc is) and has native support for many clients e.g. xbox 360 and this too works fine with the N770  - haven't got an N800 to try - although N810 must surely now be the way to go :)

Cheers,

 
Ian.