tmbrown97
Senior Member
I don't know that there's any one best choice for everything. It comes down to user preference and overall goals.
In my case I found that I was standardizing on Elk for my platform - so I chose systems that integrate with Elk. For lighting, I did a lot of research and landed on UPB - but others do the same research and land on ZWave or Insteon. That's generally driven by cost of perception of technology - which will also affect brand choices (I chose Simply Automated for features and cost). With 60+ light switches, things add up.
For audio, the two most popular all-in-one systems seems to be Russound and Nuvo - though HAI has a new offering that's worth a look. If you were going with HAI, sticking with their audio system may be nice. Then again, another important decision in all this is how much time/effort you want to put in... if having the perfect UI is more important, then you're gonna want to build your own... if you want something you can just get online and be done with and have it all integrated, but without the UI control, putting together an HAI system may be best - because it all talks to each other pretty easily out of the box (but IMO the screens aren't the best looking).
What I was referring to with Windows Media Center was using extenders - not feeding the source directly from the PC... that's where you'll run into issues getting multiple streams at once. You can however have multiple Media Center Extenders which stream content from a central Windows Media Center to individual set-top boxes that run over IP; you can stream to multiple extenders at once. With this method you wouldn't necessarily distribute video to each TV - you'd just have Cat5 running to a set top extender. This is a tough one so it'll require more searching on your part. I don't think there is a clear solution just yet to this.
There are some pretty good recommendations on how to wire, but what's done from there is all user preference. If it were as simple as a single solution, this would be a how-to guide not a user forum.
In my case I found that I was standardizing on Elk for my platform - so I chose systems that integrate with Elk. For lighting, I did a lot of research and landed on UPB - but others do the same research and land on ZWave or Insteon. That's generally driven by cost of perception of technology - which will also affect brand choices (I chose Simply Automated for features and cost). With 60+ light switches, things add up.
For audio, the two most popular all-in-one systems seems to be Russound and Nuvo - though HAI has a new offering that's worth a look. If you were going with HAI, sticking with their audio system may be nice. Then again, another important decision in all this is how much time/effort you want to put in... if having the perfect UI is more important, then you're gonna want to build your own... if you want something you can just get online and be done with and have it all integrated, but without the UI control, putting together an HAI system may be best - because it all talks to each other pretty easily out of the box (but IMO the screens aren't the best looking).
What I was referring to with Windows Media Center was using extenders - not feeding the source directly from the PC... that's where you'll run into issues getting multiple streams at once. You can however have multiple Media Center Extenders which stream content from a central Windows Media Center to individual set-top boxes that run over IP; you can stream to multiple extenders at once. With this method you wouldn't necessarily distribute video to each TV - you'd just have Cat5 running to a set top extender. This is a tough one so it'll require more searching on your part. I don't think there is a clear solution just yet to this.
There are some pretty good recommendations on how to wire, but what's done from there is all user preference. If it were as simple as a single solution, this would be a how-to guide not a user forum.