Looking to equip another house with HTPC, display, and service

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kleptophobiac

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I'd like to put together a reasonable home theater setup in another home. I've currently got MythTV running happily at one home, and would like to set up another station over there.

I currently have no TV service over there. I get one over the air channel there, and it's 24/7 preachers. If I were to get satellite TV and pay for multiple receivers, would I be able to use the service at both addresses? Also, could I use firewire to capture the mpeg2 stream to avoid quality loss due to digital-->analog-->digital?

Also, I've never bought a projector before. I don't even know enough about the market to have defined a budget. About all I know is that I want to hook up a computer (probably via DVI) and I think it should be a DLP rather than an LCD model. Beyond that, I don't even know who manufactures the things.
 
your post isn't very clear...where is "over there"? Your other home or your current one? Do you have cable at your current home (assuming you do cause of mythTV).

And no, I dont think you'll be able to use the receivers at both addresses (I don't have sattelite, but it seems pretty common sense that you would only be able to use the service at one address...).

I know that some set top boxes you are able to do firewire transfers, so maybe?

As far as projectors, you really need to set a budget, even if you dont know the cost. Reason being you can get crappy projectors for a few hundred, whereas highend projectors can range in the thousands. For a good projector expect to spend about 1000 I'd say, maybe less maybe more depending on what you want. Maybe a slingbox?
 
kleptophobiac said:
I'd like to put together a reasonable home theater setup in another home. I've currently got MythTV running happily at one home, and would like to set up another station over there.

I currently have no TV service over there. I get one over the air channel there, and it's 24/7 preachers. If I were to get satellite TV and pay for multiple receivers, would I be able to use the service at both addresses? Also, could I use firewire to capture the mpeg2 stream to avoid quality loss due to digital-->analog-->digital?

Also, I've never bought a projector before. I don't even know enough about the market to have defined a budget. About all I know is that I want to hook up a computer (probably via DVI) and I think it should be a DLP rather than an LCD model. Beyond that, I don't even know who manufactures the things.
Click to expand...

no, you couldn't use multpile recievers at different sites without establishing another subscription. You would require 2 dishes, so 2 subs. Some STB do firewire, some do not. It is hit or miss depending on what the provider gives you.

for a projector, I suggest you start reading htis forum...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=68

read it for a few days and get a grasp of the market, then define your price range.
 
kleptophobiac said:
Also, I've never bought a projector before. I don't even know enough about the market to have defined a budget. About all I know is that I want to hook up a computer (probably via DVI) and I think it should be a DLP rather than an LCD model. Beyond that, I don't even know who manufactures the things.
Click to expand...
Also

Definitely research more before you decide on DLP vs LCD. There are many brilliant, affordable HD LCD projectors available now, whereas the HD DLP projectors tend to cost many hundreds more.

Write a list of interesting projectors you've read about at AVS, then compare their features at ProjectorCentral. You may also want to consider bulb replacement cost before making a decision.

Affordable and decent 720P LCD projectors

- Sanyo Z2 (older but decent)
- Sanyo Z3
- Sanyo Z4 (price category leader)
- Panasonic AE700
- Panasonic AE900u (price category leader)
- Infocus SP5000 (cheaper, more lumens, but PQ not as good as the others i listed)

Good EDTV projectors with faroudja processing onboard
- Infocus SP4805 (very good PQ)
- Infocus X1 (not the X1a, or X2 though)

Edit: Or you can go old school with a CRT front projector. Decent ones with 8-10k bulb hours left often for less than $1000, resolution ranges usually between 1280x1024~1600x1200 depending.

Let us know how it all turns out.
 
It is very possible to use the TV tuning that you already have with MythTV in one home at another location. The only problem is BANDWIDTH. And it's quite a problem. In my case, recording a 1/2 hour of TV results in a 1.1Gb file for roughly 20 minutes of program material (commercials removed). In order to view this "real time" at another location, you need to have almost 1 megabyte per second of throughput between the sites.

1126Mb file / 1200 (length of program material, in seconds) = .938 megabytes / second

This means that the house that has the tuner needs *UPSTREAM* bandwidth that will support this. It's REALLY easy to get good downstream bandwidth, but most ISP's are pretty stingy with upstream bandwidth.

Now, that being said, if you can manage to get your *OWN* connection between the two houses (string cat5 over a fence, bury your own fiber line, whatever), this would be easy to accomplish.

If not, you'll pretty much have to spring for satellite or cable service at the new location.

Good Luck!
-q
 
I know some people use their satellite cards in two different locations....but it does require a pre-installed dish.

Also, I haven't heard of any Sat. STBs outputting video via firewire, only digital cable providers.
 
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