Multi room TV options

[Redsfan]

We've just moved to a new house and I'm looking at getting a TV in the kitchen/diner and up in our bed room as well as the main TV that's set up in the living room. We currently have freeview in the living room so aren't tied to any contracts at the moment.

As far as I can tell my options are

Sky+ Multiroom
Pro's - Lots of channels as well as a ton of HD channels
Con's - Expensive, I'm looking at an extra £20 a month just to have a box in my other two rooms, I think they'll charge me through the nose for installation too

BT Vision
Pro's - Cheaper, Lots on on demand stuff (I think? Anyone have it?) Already have BT Broadband
Con's - No multi room so I'll need some sort of AV sender?

DIY - Some sort of freeview set up with MythTV/Media Centre
Pro's - Lots of techie stuff to play with, should be able to watch recorded tv in any room (Is that right?)
Con's - If it misses a recording I'm in the dog house, Could be expensive to set up, No HD channels

We don't live in a Virgin area so thats out of the question.

Any thought's/Suggestions would be great

[Cmdrx3]

Not my line of expertise really, but Sky+ Multiroom will be the easiest option.

BT Vision is pathetic, so I'd avoid it like the plague. All you get with BT Vision is freeview channels, and a ridiculously poor selection of on demand. Not to mention if you are on a free calls package, but then connect your phone through their home hub, you get charged for the calls. It was actually that bad, my daughter who still had over a year left on her contract, got Sky in anyway even though she had to continue paying the BT Vision.

Ideally some sort of media centre setup would be the best, but this would rely on you having to have a way of receiving a stream from the media centre. I'm sure there are others here more suited to suggest a setup than myself.

If you were to take Sky, would you be taking any premium channels like Sky sports or Movies. The reason I ask is when I had originally planned to do multiroom it was only £5 per room if you did NOT subscribe to any of the premium services. Although in the end it was simply much easier for me to move to VM, with whom I already had my cable broadband anyway, which as you have said is not an option for you.

[Phil@Dabs]

Hi Redsfan,

You are correct in most of what you are thinking, and seem to be where I was a while back.

Sky+ HD Multiroom in three rooms with movies and variety pack will cost you £86.75 a month, which is a lot just for TV.

BT Vision has loads of on-demand available (I have the TV pack at £6 a month) but currently does not have a multiroom option (and it doesnt work if you try - I tried) but you could use an HDMI splitter to split the signal to your three rooms, but bare in mind you will need infra-red feedback control and you would have the same content in every room.

DIY - I use Windows Media Centre (Win 7 Home Premium) at home with 2 DVB-T tuners (aerial) and 2 DVD-S2 tuners (satellite) and it has been rock solid - if it does miss a recording (bad signal etc), it will use another tuner to record it, or record a repeat of the program it missed. If you use DVB-T2 or DVB-S2 tuners, you will get four free HD channels (BBC1HD, BBCHD, ITV3HD and Channel4HD) all the recordings can be shared, and then player and deleted by Media Centres in any other rooms.

[Redsfan]

Thanks for the advice guys, BT Vision is out. Sky+ does sound like less hastle but £86 a month is a hell of a lot

So the DIY route, didn't realise you could get freeview hd tuners so it does sound interesting, I would need a small media center pc for each TV, any recommendations?

Also would Wifi have enough bandwidth?

[Phil@Dabs]

Here is a list http://www.dabs.com/category/computi...953513#filters

The Tranquil PC ones are very highly regarded.

[DMS]

The alternative would be to build your own. I quite fancy an HTPC based around a Zacate miniITX board in an ultra small form factor case. The downside of going this small means that, whilst you could squeeze in an ODD, you're not going to get an internal DVB card to fit so would have to use something like an USB tuner (and then I presume you would need one for SAT and one for TER). As a compromise, the alternative would be to go for an mATX case/board.

As regards WIFI, probably best to avoid. If you can lay cables then excellent or go with homeplugs.

[Phil@Dabs]

The Zacate can be used, but there have been some problems when using CPU decode, I would always go with a more powerful CPU to cover for bad encodes etc.

My experience with USB tuners and wireless streaming, has always given problems. I now always use internal TV cards and always install CAT5.

[Redsfan]

Thanks for the heads up on the Wifi, after a bit more reading up while it should be okay I'd rather go the homeplug route.

Spotted a peice of software from dvb link that lets you have networked tuners (Not sure I can post a link), so I'm looking towards having a main media box that could have internal tuners and then just networking the others, could be quite an elegant solution.

However I think it's going to cost about a grand without the TV's! That £86 a month to sky is starting to look a little cheaper

[Phil@Dabs]

I've heard some good things about DVBLink - but I've never set it up, as I don't think the 20 day trial is long enough to setup and test (setup is not easy)

[Cmdrx3]

Well you could build a little media centre PC for just over £200 (not including TV or DVB cards)

http://www.dabs.com/products/amd-ath...ssor-74NH.html
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-m4...matx-79DP.html
http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair...dimm-679N.html
http://www.dabs.com/products/best-va...450w-5HM3.html
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-at...hdmi-6ZW8.html
http://www.dabs.com/products/samsung...32mb-65QC.html
http://www.dabs.com/products/antec-p...-12v-5J17.html

This would be good enough to do what you want with it. I know the case comes with a PSU, but the first thing I'd do is pull it out and put the Antec in.