Music Distribution - How good is it?

[pryderi]

I'm new to the concept but I'm currently renovating a house and planning to install a sage tv sort of system into it. 3 zones
- kitchen with 7.1 sound@?!
- bedroom with 5.1 sound
- living room with 5.1 sound

I'll be using the HD Extender once it's released??

I'm looking forward to it's music capabilities as well as the video. How good are the music capbilities and does it work with the apple AAC file format as the majority of my music files are based on iTunes.

Appreciate any comments back on this one.

Thanks,
Pryderi

[Mahoney]

One thing it doesn't do at the moment is synch playback between clients - so you can't tell the kitchen and the bedroom to playback the same thing in synch. Slingbox can do this, so I presume it would be possible, and would be a very good feature.

[Mahoney]

I would guess this is actually something an STV might be able to do... don't you have access to all the clients programatically from an STV? Can anyone with Studio experience comment? I could add it to the long list of things I'll do when I no longer need to have a job...

[evilpenguin]

Nielm's webserver can tell a single client to play a specified file, so I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to extend that to tell all clients to play a specified file. However, bear in mind that this wouldn't give you truly syncronized audio, essentially it would be like manually trying to press play on multiple CD players.

[Mahoney]

Yes... I was wondering if something more sophisticated could be achieved by checking time against the server. Be an interesting problem, but if Slingbox can solve it then Sage can.

[pryderi]

I'm not to worried about syncing the music in different rooms. I guess people in different rooms would like to listen/look at different things.

Another "newbie" question... if I had a server with , let's say TerraByte Hard Disk could I drop my DVD collection into SAGEtV and use it to look at the dvd's, without the need for a DVD MultiPlayer/Changing Dvd's everytime I want to look at something else.

Would an external Hard Disk drive be a solution?

I'm yet to purchase my server. What sort of spec would be "ideal".

Many thanks for the response in advance,

Pryderi

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by pryderi

Another "newbie" question... if I had a server with , let's say TerraByte Hard Disk could I drop my DVD collection into SAGEtV and use it to look at the dvd's, without the need for a DVD MultiPlayer/Changing Dvd's everytime I want to look at something else.

Yup, absolutely. Between my SageTV server (1.75TB RAID-5) and my ReadyNAS (1.5TB "X-RAID"), I've got Sage serving about 400 DVDs through my house.

Would an external Hard Disk drive be a solution?

If I were doing it (and I will probably be redoing/expanding this winter), I would go either internal to the server, external to the server via eSATA or SAS, or via a Gig-E connected NAS.

I'm yet to purchase my server. What sort of spec would be "ideal".

If you're not going to have any SD extenders, then I'd go one of two routes:

Draft an existing PC (save some money).

Or build a new server, focused on energy efficiency (within reason). I think I figured my server costs me about $17/month (200W). Buying today, I'd buy 1TB drives (the WD GP series looks interesting) and fewer of them, than 500GB drives.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by pryderi

I'm not to worried about syncing the music in different rooms. I guess people in different rooms would like to listen/look at different things.

Another "newbie" question... if I had a server with , let's say TerraByte Hard Disk could I drop my DVD collection into SAGEtV and use it to look at the dvd's, without the need for a DVD MultiPlayer/Changing Dvd's everytime I want to look at something else.

Would an external Hard Disk drive be a solution?

I'm yet to purchase my server. What sort of spec would be "ideal".

Many thanks for the response in advance,

Pryderi

I'm sorry, I was confused about what you are were asking in the first post. Yes, Sage has great support for audio codecs (mp3, flac, aac, Vorbis) and you'd have access to them anywhere you put your HD extender. The only thing that would give you trouble would be if the videos were purchased from the itunes music store and contain DRM.

[Mahoney]

Originally Posted by pryderi

I'm not to worried about syncing the music in different rooms. I guess people in different rooms would like to listen [to] different things.

Sometimes I get up and move between rooms, doing stuff . Also useful for parties.

[pryderi]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

Sometimes I get up and move between rooms, doing stuff . Also useful for parties.

good call mahoney!

[jasongrimme]

Maybe the next update will support external audio streams to extenders(slimplayer)

[pryderi]

hmmmm..... is it possible to hook up an FM radio to work with sage tv via an extender box? I guess all it means is getting another card in the server???

Pryderi

[CollinR]

If you want sycronized playback like that all you need to do is plug an MVP into an open encoder and give it a channel. Tune that MVP to whatever you like, then all other clients can simply call that channel and jump to the front of the framebuffer which should be the same for all clients.

Or you can just plug an MVP into a conventional or 70v amplifer and go to town all over your home. You then control that MVP via the webserver.