The plan was to deliver Media around a normal home (mine!) using a digital solution. So this would include feeds to the bedrooms, the office, the living room, and have the ability to have rooms added without too much work. The system had to work with Sky and have Sky feeds to each of the systems. I can use any hardware I choose but the content which is available on one system has to be available on all without the need to copy data across a network. [Note, Copy - Streaming is fine]
..... Why did I start this project?
Well - it all looks like it is semi falling in to place, I have got a couple more things to arrange but it is going to work well, hopefully really well.
One of the things I have to decide upon is the mATX chassis for a secondary box. The main concerns are that It has to be quiet, and have good airflow, it can't take half height cards, so would probably need a PCI and AGP riser. The chassis will house a Pentium-M in it, and a single hard drive. I have tried to make use of the Hiper chassis, but I have already smoked 2 hard drives with it and don't fancy another (the disk ironically is not the issue, the software is the pain).But, before anyone flames the Hiper chassis, which is a pretty damn slick unit - it is designed for an AMD CPU not the Intel unit - which is the problem.
Yesterday I got another box sorted for the system and I have to say, its my favourite to date. I was speaking to one of the engineers at Intel, and he mentioned to me this unit. Basically, Intel work on a number of solutions which they can show partners, and press how they feel that their products can be used in different environments. Some of these products come to market, some of them don't. This particular box is on the market and is sold by 2 system builders Hi-Grade and Alienware.
The system is build around a pseudo 'BTX' style layout - a couple of key differences, instead of the thermal module being at the front of the case its at the side. It also has 2 60mm fans rather than a single larger fan. Other features of the system is that it comes with WiFi, Front Panel, DVDRW, Dual Tuners, Modem, IR Port, and some pretty tasty interconnects on the back. But the most important thing is, the system is silent.
I will post some pictures up later of the back of the chassis if people want to see these.
For months I have been saying to Intel and motherboard manufacturers, if you want people to put a system in a digital home environment then you need to give the correct connectivity on the back.
I have so much more of this to talk about, but I am not going to give it all to you guys today
There is important decisions I have had to make in regards to network layout, software install, tweaks and of course content feed. I suspect the rest of the kit for this project will be with me late next week, and then more time can be spent on this huge solution.


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