Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:21 am Post subject: A multimedia problem
Moin,
my gf and I are planning to move together this year. I think we’ll take a two or three room flat, so we get either one living- and working room or both as one room.
Currently I’m using my PC to play, to listen to music and to watch (DVD) movies. The sound comes from a 5.1 sound system. My gf has a CRT-TV (so none of us has HD yet ).
What I want is:
- Watch TV over the CRT-TV using the 5.1 sound system
- Watch DVDs using the 5.1 sound system
- Listen to my music with the 5.1 system
- Play games preferably with the 5.1 system
What I don’t want is:
- Put the PC next to the TV, since we won’t be able to watch TV (gf) and play HW2 (me) simultaneously
What I thougt might be a solution:
- Put the PC in one corner of the room and use head phones to play
- Put the TV on the prefered TV-pos and the 5.1 system on the proper position for watching tv
- Buy Apple TV or another streaming client and put it next to the TV. Listen to music over the streaming client and thus listen it over the 5.1 system. Same applies to streamed movies from my PC
What do you think about that? How would you solve this multimedia problem?
well in my livingroom our comps stand behind our seats in a rack . got me all kinds off silent hardware so you dont hear the comps .
stereo is next to our comps
the tv is on the other side of the livingroom
we have a shared lan drive of 300GB using gigalan cards
got a flatscreen LCD 19' screen i can put in the rack and place on a small table next to the coffeetable when i want to watch tv and surf the forums
when i want to play i use wireless headphones i plug in my stereo ( wich has some serious subwoofers )
when i want to use teamspeak i use my headset with mic directly into the pc , got a soundcard that lets you select what output to use . only drawback is when i talk the mss misses the sound of her soaps . thats why you dont see me alot on TS because you won't want to come between my wife and "sex in the city" if you want to walk without a limp
when i want to listen music i use my headset and walk around , can even get a good connection in my backyard
when i have people over i just unplug the wireless headphones and use the soundssystem like a normal stereo but the source is my mp3 collection and a mediaplayer random playlist or a selected playlist if i have mates over . metalheads dont wonna hear the crap my wife listens too just unplug the headphones and plug in the compsound
i have tv out on my gfx card ( well use too atm but soon again ) i have linked this with a device that sends the signal wireless to my tv downstairs or upstairs (bedroom )
so i just play the playlist for music and put the videochannel on upstairs or stream video or watch downloaded films .
drawback is i always have to go downstairs to put the next episode on but luckily we dont have a toilet upstairs so one of us is bound to go back down once in a while . you could solve this by putting a comp upstairs with enough rights to controle my main rig through pc anywhere or something like that but for now thats overkill
if i want to watch tv i use my normal speakers and rigged my backboxes so the tv uses my stereo for surround . 1 cable across the livingroom nicely tucked away above the decorative plints.
i have tv card in my rig so i can watch another channel on my rig if i get stuck with idols for the mss and footy for me on another channel .
majority of cables are near the rack behind us tucked away and the rack is placed where the tv signal enters the home . as soon as i get hd tv or digital tv signal i can easily replace the analog cable without anybody seeing the diff
my friend and i have the following setup.(i will be changing it very soon because i do not like the setup). What we got is the monitor next to the TV. hes got the primary monitor set as the desktop monitor for when he does all the work and plays his games but wants to watch tv at the same time. So by doing that he has all the games and everything running off of the actual computer monitor. When he wants to watching something he just changes the tv imput to the computer output and drags what ever it is to the other screen... from the sounds of it all you would need is just another normal monitor...
the setup that i will be doing eventually is actually having 2 computers.. the problem with having one computer doing the work of both is exactly as you see it... if you want to play games while someone else wants to watch the tv or w.e else off of the computer. This is where the problem will arrise. so what you do is you have a dedicated computer that will have a ton of hard drive space but doesnt have to have the super duper vid card and all that... just something with a good tv tuner, sound card, and hard drive space shall do. then you turn around and build the gaming rig where you pour money into it for the video cards and processor. if you do a lot of video recording and what not you should keep it seperate from your gaming rig or else you got to much all in one computer and you will sacrifice performance on it.... just have the HTPC hooked up to the tv and leave the gaming rig on the normal monitor.... this way everything is seperate and you dont have to keep switching and have the same problem as Tank0... this is a bit more expensive but is possible to do... i built my HTPC with $600 US. A real one with the proper amount of space may run you around 1000$US.... a gaming rig setup properly could be built for 1600$ with an 8800 GTX and all the fun toys!
i know that may sound choppy but people kept interupting my train of thought as i wrote it so i couldn't completely focus... overall sepearate your HTPC and gamer rig if you plan to do a lot of recording and stuff like that.
i put together a rough HTPC with only 1 500gb hd but has dual core processor and 2 gb of memory, 5.1 surrond sound card, good tv tuner all for 500$ US... price gets higher as you had in more 500gb hd's as well as a better sound card and tv tuner...
hopefully i explained the train of thought i originally set out to do good enough for you to understand.
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