Spec?? HD Home Media Network

[Razputin]

Hi,

Moving into a new house soon and want to spend a few quid on a decent HD Streaming Media network to link all my toys together. HD Sky to Xbox to Playstation (Bluray) to PC to NAS etc... although I do need a bigger NAS drive.

Don't know a huge amount about it all but can put a network together, but would like to know the best way to do it. Best router, media controller to use etc. Going to buy a new HD TV too so advice on the best TV with the right connections for this would be good.

Any help would be appreciated as I need to start buying everything I need soon.

Cheers

[popi110]

i am looking at the same thing what i have found so far is that for HD streeming the minimum is wirless n and works best with gigabite 10/1000 hard wired just got the new tp link gigabite n router and its ok
now looking for a gigabite nas device and a usb n adapter for my media centre as its got internal wirless g as i have some problems with my media center extender even though its n 300mbps

tvs are a nightmare
led if you can afford it minimum of 120 hertz refresh rate if you want 3d ready and then there is a mpeg4 tuners for freeview Hd and hmdi 1.4 if it was me i would hang on for 12 months

[sirlisterofsmeg]

For an HD media player & streamer combo you cant beat the X-treamer & E-TRAYZ set up
I have had both for months now and they are fantastic.
The Xtreamer is very compact and with the sidewinder cooliong add on totally silent.
HDMI output with full true HD Audio passthrough
I have mine hard wired to my network along with my PS3 360 & Bluray player.
The E-trayz is upstairs in my comms cabinet with 2 2tb hard drives for storage. With an extra 1TB bufallo drive hanging off the back
The xtreamer can also take a 1tb drive internally but i have not fitted one yet.
In my den i also have a PS3 360 & Xbox running XMBC.
These run off a wireless bridge so will only play SD content over the network.
There are loads of scripts available for the E-TRAYZ
I have installed a NZB grabber that can download files,then unrar them compile them then delete the pars and move the finished file to a specific folder.
There is also a similar program for torrents as well.

Both have a USB on the back that allow a dedicated Wirelress N USB dongle to co9nnect them wirelessly

The Xtreamer cost about ?100 with a free N dongle
The E-TRAYZ was a little bit more i think then there was the 4TB of storage on top of that.

For the price you cant beat it.
Especially when you see the ongoing development and regular firmware updates (something i haven't seen with other devices (I was going to buy a Western Digital HD player first but now glad i didn;t))

As for HD TV's thats another kettle of fish

[sirlisterofsmeg]

Unless you only watch HD content PS3/360/Bluray/HD broadcasts then 1080 is excellent
Although no one actually broadcasts in 1080p only 1080i at the moment

Any SD broadcasts will look shockingly bad

I have an LG 50" 720p Plasma and the picture looks great on SD & HD content

I have thought about buying a full 1080 HD set but i couldn't live with a crappy picture on the occasions i watch SD content

I still think a 720p set is the best compromise
With a decent upscalling chip inside even a 1080i picture will look better on a 720p set
and a SD 576 picture wont need as much processing on a 720p set as it does on a 1080p set.

When looking at new TVs shops will always display a bluray or HD feed to show off the picture
Always take a DVD with you to test and switch the set to a SD TV feed as well and check the drop in picture quality.


Plus Plasmas will always cope with Processing and upscalling a picture far better than any LCD TV on the market at this moment in time especially an a large set (over 40" )

[billy2]

The Xtreamer dose not have full true HD Audio passthrough only the new xtreamer pro will do it

[sirlisterofsmeg]

I am sorry but you are wrong on that
Yes the original version when it was first released didnt have true HD audio because of a licensing issue.
I am not sure of the exact date but from earlier this year all X-treamers had it added as they had sorted out the licence.
This was an issue with all media players using the chipset that was in the x-treamer devices.and not just the X-treamer.
They can't activate the HD audio on older models but if you have an original unit that becomes faulty they will replace it with a newer version that has HD audio enabled
This was something to do with royalty payments on units sold to DTS which hadnt been agreed before the first shipments were released.