Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Putting Media At The Core Of Your House
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "HARDWARE" @ 06:05 PM
I had to put this in the Hardware category because there was no where else it would really fit. If you want to meld digital media and your house, quite literally from the ground up, i.e. integrate your smart media center into the home, then you might need to raze your current setup (your house) to the ground (not that I am telling you to do so ;-)) and start afresh. Think of it, no pesky visible wires, some sort of common interface, central control, access to audio/video/ethernet ubiquitously at home, etc. This is, however, easier if you are having a new house built, if you know something about audio and video hardware and have the option/ability of putting it all in. Anyways, one such gentleman did so while building his new house, and here is a brief abstract -
"At the end of March, we finally moved into the new house that we've been building since last summer. One of the best parts of new construction is that you can pretty much have it wired any way you like if you get in early enough. For a geek like me, this meant an opportunity to have gigabit Ethernet to every room, a centralized structured media panel where all the house wires go to, and it even included an extra room we decided to use a 'home theater'. Something that I decided up front was that I would have the builder just do the wires, I would do the speaker installation, build the theater, etc.
For the whole house audio system, I had the builder prewire 5 pairs of speakers throughout the house: the kitchen, living room, upstairs bonus room, master bedroom and the back porch. Each room had a wall plate that connects the room's speakers, as well as a line going to the structured panel. Not wanting to spend a fortune on a multi-zone system, I found a great speaker distribution system at Parts Express."
He talks about his audio setup in some detail here in this article, and will be writing soon on his Distributed DVD jukebox as well as his Home theater construction. I for one am certainly looking forward to hearing about what he has planned for those.
"At the end of March, we finally moved into the new house that we've been building since last summer. One of the best parts of new construction is that you can pretty much have it wired any way you like if you get in early enough. For a geek like me, this meant an opportunity to have gigabit Ethernet to every room, a centralized structured media panel where all the house wires go to, and it even included an extra room we decided to use a 'home theater'. Something that I decided up front was that I would have the builder just do the wires, I would do the speaker installation, build the theater, etc.
For the whole house audio system, I had the builder prewire 5 pairs of speakers throughout the house: the kitchen, living room, upstairs bonus room, master bedroom and the back porch. Each room had a wall plate that connects the room's speakers, as well as a line going to the structured panel. Not wanting to spend a fortune on a multi-zone system, I found a great speaker distribution system at Parts Express."
He talks about his audio setup in some detail here in this article, and will be writing soon on his Distributed DVD jukebox as well as his Home theater construction. I for one am certainly looking forward to hearing about what he has planned for those.
