Newbie Needs Some Help

[jnorman]

NEWBIE SMART CONNECTED HOUSE

Hey everyone I was wondering whether you could all help me. I have been given the opportunity to purchase a small house that is the process of being built. Its a two storey two bedroom property that I would like to integration a smart building music and tv system.

I have been looking into HTPCs and Mac Mini setups. I love Mac operating software and would love to have a HTPC setup on Mac Software or actually go for a Mini Mac connected to multiple hard drives. I am looking to hook up a keyboard, iphone and ipad remote to control the media centre. In turn I want to connect my media centre setup to my sky dish and be able to stream and watch sky on different tvs in different rooms possibly at the same time.

In addition to that I want to setup my media player to stream music to different speakers in different rooms possibly at the same time which can be controlled by the ipad / iphone.

What would be the best way and cheapest way to be able to control such a system. My house is small so would cabling and switches be on option for such as system? I work for an IT hardware provider so obtain cabling and switches would not cost me much.

What is better, wireless speakers etc or cabling to tvs and speakers. etc.

If you guys could help I would really appreciate it.

Cheers

James

[elootos]

Hello and welcome

You sound like a man with a plan which is exciting! However I fear you are trying to achieve the impossible: Sky AND on a Mac!!

I know Sky can be tuned in with a Media Center PC but I'm not sure on the ease of setup of usability: I think the biggest flaw is the epg.

You can use a Dreambox which is a linux set top box and stream it to a Mac but again I think you'll struggle. If Sky is the most important factor then nothing will beat a proper subscription to them. No matter how much it pains me to write that!!!!

If only wanting to use Macs then the official bundled software is crap: iTunes. You'll have a bill as long as your arm with all the videos you'll be buying/renting from the iTunes store. Nothing from Apple comes cheap!

I know Dunks has mentioned some Mac media software before, Plex, I think.

The other option is boot camp which will run Windows but again I'm not sure of its compatabilty running Media Center.

As for wireless speakers; I think the only reliable way is wired. Wireless is still going to require power etc so you may as well just run speaker cable to them instead.