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[RobOK]

Hello,

I am a home theater newbie, currently use wireless connections to Tivos.

It struck me that my house is wired with a parallel set of coax (i.e. every room has two coax wires) and a set of Cat-5 wires.  Both are unused, but seem a great resource.  The hub of all this is in a storage area.

Would it be possible to use either of these as a way of streaming an audio and video feed to my home theater?  I think the answer is "no", but people here always have some interesting ideas.  What would be needed on the receiving end to make that happen?  Are there any cheap devices to do that -- would i be looking a uPnP devices?  What would I need on my server to output those?

The Tivo does well with images or music but would like to get the MC interface and/or be able to stream video.

thanks,
Rob.

[benn600]

I do this at around 10 locations around the house.  You need a home theater pc at each end.  Some companies specialize in tiny boxes.  I make larger ones for less money and just put them in a well hidden area.  Oh yes, Media Center in every room.  Especially when you've got 16K FLAC songs, not to mention video.  I've got a gigantic server that hosts everything and has yet to give me a hiccup.  It is RAID6.

[RobOK]

Thanks Benn600, I have read many of your posts.

At this point, I want to do it without HTPCs at every TV.  I can see the advantages of that, but for me that is too much.

I have a ton of music and images, might get more into video in the future.

thanks for your reply,

Rob.

[WinoOutWest]

I know its not exactly what you are looking for but here's what I do - its a quick and dirty method of distributing my audio around the house.  I distribute 2 zones of music out (analog from my HTPC) to several rooms in the house using cat 5 and some cheap Video Baluns.  They are used for sending video but work equally well for sending analog audio (which is what I am doing) or digital audio.  I picked mine up on ebay for about $8/set.  If you just wanted to send composite video signal to a TV you could use 3 sets of these to distribute video and 2 analog or digital zones on a single cat5 run.  In my office I have a PC and a regular amp/receiver so I run MC but I also have access to the 2 zones from the main HTPC that is always playing music.
Cheers!
Wino

Here's a link to the ones that I use:
http://tinyurl.com/6bpa5k
(I can also recommend this) vendor - after I confirmed these worked I but a bulk order in with them offline)

EDIT:  Forgot to mention - I also use NetRemote and my trusty Dell Axim to control the music

[RobOK]

I know its not exactly what you are looking for but here's what I do - its a quick and dirty method of distributing my audio around the house.  I distribute 2 zones of music out (analog from my HTPC) to several rooms in the house using cat 5 and some cheap Video Baluns.  They are used for sending video but work equally well for sending analog audio (which is what I am doing) or digital audio.  I picked mine up on ebay for about $8/set.  If you just wanted to send composite video signal to a TV you could use 3 sets of these to distribute video and 2 analog or digital zones on a single cat5 run.  In my office I have a PC and a regular amp/receiver so I run MC but I also have access to the 2 zones from the main HTPC that is always playing music.
Cheers!
Wino

Wino, thanks for showing me these...  I am not sure I understand what you do on the receiving end, what are you plugging them back into for playback?

Thanks,
R.

[WinoOutWest]

Wino, thanks for showing me these...  I am not sure I understand what you do on the receiving end, what are you plugging them back into for playback?

Thanks,
R.

Just a regular Yamaha amp/stereo.

[benn600]

I'm very intrigugued as well but not quite sure how these work.  It appears that you don't get the ability to control the audio but rather, you take a receiver and send out 6 channels (3 stereo signals) to different rooms.  Is coax really that expensive?  I guess in a typical or even large house, I figure the cost of running coax, or much more common for me Ethernet Cat5e, is that it is so cheap you can't afford not to load up the walls as the house is built.