local area network television broadcast

[wan2no]

okay, i'm very new to this thread so do not give me a beating so early because do not understand. Let me gel in first

okay, now this is the scenario, i would like to have a pc in one room to be playing a movie or whatever and a television in another room to display this movie in another room.

How can i get this done?

I was reading something about about DVR's and set top boxes and it had my head spinning. Am I on the right path?

[Marty2003]

You could run DVI/S-Video and audio cables from your PC to the TV in the other room.

Or you could use a wireless audio/video transmitter like this.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102464&cp=2032057&f=Taxonomy%2F...entPage=search

You could also get something like this which can play video files over a network.
http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/products.php?cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLA

You could also get a Media Center PC with a Media Center Extender at the TV.

[wan2no]

that simple. So which one would you suggest?

another thing, Is it any device with a network interface can allow you to broadcast audio or video?

What's so good about the dvr's and the set top boxes?

sorry if i'm asking so much questions but i'm soo interested

[Marty2003]

It all depends on your budget. If you're going for a really cheap solution, running cables to the TV room would allow you to watch anything that's displayed on your Monitor on your TV. The downside is that you can't control what's playing from the TV Room. You would have to go to the computer and play/stop/pause or change files. The upside is that you can display any file tipe that the computer can play. The same thing applies to the wireless video transmitter, although you won't have to run wires between the rooms, but the quality will be standard definition at best.

You didn't mention if you had a HDTV in the room or what kind of connections it has. The wireless video transmitter would be good enough for a standard definition CRT TV.

Not all set top boxes(STB) with an ethernet connection can play files from a network. I believe the ethernet port on some DVR's can send recordings from the DVR to the PC. There are also some STB's that can use a wireless internet connection such as this. http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/05/d-links-dsm-5210r-wireless-hd-streamer/

Set top boxes allow you to control what's playing from the TV room. Many of them also allow you to play High Definition media files and save files directly to the set top box. The downside is that they don't play all media files. They do usually play the most common ones though, including MPG divx/xvid, and WMV.

[wan2no]

okay, i working on a very low budget like $2500. how does it look with a budget like that?

another question here is
do you recommend me buying the dvr to accomplish this whole networking regardless of its features or do you recommend the STB's?

[svetz]

With that sort of budget you could go for a pretty good setup, my personal one goes like this.

1x server pc or network storage device with as much HDD space in it as possible to store media. I setup a share for each different type of media, so to access my film share i type //server/films/. I use windows, but if you use linux/mac or whatever it shouldn't be any harder to set up. Mine's set up to record tv for me as well.

1x wireless network: As fast as possible, I have 802.11G which seems adequate. If you have wires already laid all the better and you can skip installing this. If you intend to stream DVD's wired networking is advisable and Gigabit rather than 100mb's is preferable for comfort (faster skipping, menu jumping etc)

As many as you like x media centre PC's: You can buy dedicated hardware for this or build your own. I find anything that's over 2ghz and has 512mb of ram or more is adequate(faster and bigger is always better ). Install xp and a media centre program(or a linux designed for the purpose) and point it at your media shares. Maybe add a remote control to make it easier to work. Chuck in a gfx card that can hook up to the tv you want to use and boom you're away.

If you're worried that PC's will look ugly next to your tv then look at something like http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/102625 or consider buying an XBOX and installing XBMC on it. As long as you're not playing HD content or heavy .h264 video then it really shines as a media player and is already designed to hook upto a tv.

Since from your posts I guess you already have a PC to serve content and some sort of network capability (a crossover patch or extra wire from your router will do) your budget will hardly be stressed at all. A PC to play content should cost as little as £200/$400 roughly and maybe $120 in software(Windows XP Media Center or XP home and Media portal) or $0 if you go the linux route. Or around $130 for an Xbox and $20ish for a remote and maybe another $30 to get XBMC on it. Which means you might have cash to lay out on a nice 32"LCD TV for the bedroom

HTH, good luck and happy shopping spree