For over a year, I've wanted to network some things up and access movies from a central spot. But until now, my PC wasn't in a position to run and wiring to and from to the other points in the house. But we're finally moving our computer to a little bit better spot to allow for networking.

Right now, here's what I have:
- Living room: HDTV (no internet connectivity), PS3/360/Wii all WiFi G. DTV HR23 not hooked to internet yet. Receiver is not internet capable.
-Bedroom: SDTV (component capable), Xbox, SD DTV receiver. No current internet besides WiFi.
-Dining room: PC. AMD 8650/onboard video/~1.7TB internal storage on two drives. Wired 100 internet via WRT54G router.

Here's what I'd like to do: make everything wired up. The house layout means that right now, the cable runs outside of the house all the way to the other side where the PC is. When I move it, I will have the cable come into the house where it meets the house, like it was before. In this sequence, the bedroom would be right there at the entry point, then the living room and kitchen (where the PC is going) downstream.

First up is the wiring questions.
1) How should I hook up the router and modem. Should I terminate the coax at the modem as soon as possible inside the house in the bedroom? If so, do I keep the modem right there, and run three lines of Cat5e to each wired location (meaning, two long runs and one medium run) under the house, or place either/both the modem and router in a central location in the house and make runs from there? It's not your normal crawlspace, so issues may happen any way I go.

2) We're setting up our computer on a kitchen counter made for it, but there's no way to run the cables outside of the wall. So I've located what I think is a good section to run low-voltage cables (monitor, ethernet, audio, possibly USB). I've already bought the wall plates and VGA cable (we'll upgrade to HDMI at some point), but didn't realize there was in-wall VGA vs ordinary. Is it going to be an issue running the standard cable for a run in the wall behind the countertop? For the record, I bought this for in the wall: http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

3)In the living room, I have three things I'll need to hard wire (no real point in doing it to the Wii). The 360, the PS3 and the HR23. OK with using a three-way splitter for this? I don't really game online, and the only high-bandwidth thing I'll be doing is either streaming movies off of Netflix or streaming movies off my PC with my 360. I don't think there will be any issues, do you?

Now for serving: I don't know what I plan on doing for the bedroom. I may softmod the Xbox or add a Netflix capable BD player. That's down the road after I get the main TV up and running.

I'm fairly happy with using my 360 as a Media Center Extender, aside from it being almost unusably slow on the menus, and choosing a movie. No issues streaming, even on the G connection. From experimentation, wiring it up will improve performance, but I may add a nettop in the future. I really like the 7MC experience, especially coupled with Media Browser and Metabrowser. My movies are right now in VOB folders, but I'm in the process of converting them to .m4v files, as they play nicer with the 360 and I don't have to transcode with an additional program.

All my DVDs and music fit on a 1.5TB internal drive. The other 200GB drive holds my OS (Win7) and essential programs. I have another 1TB drive that's FUBAR that I need to send back. I also have a completely functional AMD 2500+XP/A7V600/9600XT/2GB RAM system that could be utilized in some way, or I could always take the mobo/CPU out of this system and use it for a server if I upgrade to a Intel Core or better AMD system. I have access (I think) to another full Win7 OS, but would have to buy the WHS OS, if I went with that. Nothing is backed up, a particularly glaring oversight right now. So I need to factor that into anything I do.

I could add a server, but I don't want it to be running all the time, just when I need it or to run automated backups. It would either be stored in the bedroom or a very small closet, so noise/heat would be an issue. Or I could continue to serve from our main computer and just integrate a backup drive or two.

Thoughts? I know I missed a thing or two, including how I'm going to keep the PC cool in a kitchen cabinet. I have an idea, but I'll run it down later.

 

1. I guess it might be best to put the router in the middle of the house that way you have a more even wifi range in your house and don't have a wifi dead zone on the other side of the house from where the router would be. You could put the modem at the demarcation point (Ooo, fancy Network+ term) and then run an Ethernet cable to your router in the middle of the house.

2. I'm sure that cable will be fine for a 6ft run behind the counter. They require UL rated stuff that have a flame retardant jacket and what not but I don't think it will kill you if you didn't but technically it might.

3. FYI the PS3 wifi adapter is garbage and can't handle streaming videos over it so it definitely has to be wired.

If you're looking to make a WHS which I'd highly recommend you could make a low power one. I think Intel is going to be releasing new Core i3 processors that are more efficient than the current ones so maybe get one of those since they have the CPU/GPU on one chip and you could build a SFF PC with a few TBs of storage you could use external drives as well have a quiet WHS machine. Or if you wanted to go really low power I've seen WHSs built using the Intel Atom CPUs, I wouldn't do that though. I think you should keep the WHS on all the time and put your media on it instead of your PC, that way you can access your media whenever you want and not have to worry about making sure the server is on before you can access your media.

 

Also if you're gonna go WHS get rid of that garbage ass Linksys router.

You're gonna want gigabit for transferring lots of data over your network and you might as well go 802.11n wifi too. Even if you don't have N devices yet your G devices can still benefit from an N-router's MIMO antenna technology.

 

The router certainly isn't 'garbage ass', and there are zero dead spots in the house. With only my phone using wifi when everything is hooked up, it makes zero sense to upgrade at this point. I've also not had any problems streaming anything on the PS3, so I'm not sure where you're getting this stuff.

I am planning to get a Gigabit switch downstream of the router, so that's covered. I will look into a low power setup though, for both my PC and my WHS.

 

I did forget one thing: I'll need to have wireless access to our AIO. It doesn't have it built-in, but I may upgrade that at some point. I'd like to have the printer stashed in along with the networking equipment. I may indeed upgrade the router at some point, but it's worked flawlessly for me in the five+ years I've had it. Come to think about it, I think it's a version 1.1 and may be seven years old at this point. I may throw DD-WRT on it and use it as a bridge. Don't know that I'll need to, though.

Another thing I don't know about is how iTunes will work with the music being stored on the server and accessing it and being able to sync it up with any iDevices connected to the PC, or any other device.

 

Have you tried streaming videos to the PS3 over wifi? It sucks! I know from experience. Maybe if the video is low quality it's OK but the videos I ripped from DVD using handbrake are unwatchable and I've heard others complain about this. Even though the PS3 is less than 15ft from the router and all the over devices mac, PC, iDevices all work fine streaming from the server over wifi, not the PS3. Once I ran a wire to it everything was fine, Music and pics were fine over wifi but not quality videos.

You could just move your iTunes library to a share on the server and map that share as a network drive and tell iTunes to point to that mapped drive for your iTunes library.

I just performed a full backup to my WHS over gigabit and it took about 12hrs



It would take MUCH longer over 100mbps

 

So you will have the computer located near where the cable will come in? I would get a second router and install it where the computer is located, and run it out to the second router which you can install centrally or where your media equipment will be. If your router does not have an uplink port, just create a crossover cable, and turn off the DHCP server on the second router. This will give you centrally located wireless, wired connection at your computer without have to feed backwards from the router, wired ports for your 360, PS3, and Sat box.

 

I did stream a video over to the PS3, and it worked fine. My problem was the shitty interface. I haven't used it for that since. But as for quality issues, no. But then again, for some reason, I've never had the hardware issues others claim with the Sony hardware either.

As for location, if I can figure out a way to get power into the small former furnace closet (there may already be power there, it's full of boxes right now), the closet would be the perfect place to put everything. It's about four feet from there to where the computer will be, and only about two feet to where I'd put an ethernet plate behind the main TV/entertainment center. If I pick up a new router (say, the TP-Link WR1043ND or the D-Link DIR-655) and put it in there, I'd have very short runs to the two main points of access. The WNR3500L looks nice as well.

The only problem with going with just one router with four ports is that I'd be short two if I wanted to give each thing a port, (DTV, PS3, 360, PC, streaming device in bedroom), and be three short if I ever added a nettop. I could just run two lines to the TV, one line to the PC and one to the bedroom. Since I won't be doing any movies on the PS3 (again, due to the interface) I could easily have it remain wireless and also move the 360 back to wireless if I get the nettop.

I think that's exactly what I'll do. Actually, I'll probably run three to the TV, one to the PC and have the bedroom be wireless. Any G devices can easily get 720p videos, and the N-enabled devices will have come down by the time I'm looking at them.

I just have to make the decision if I want to do a long run of coax (and have the modem and router together in the central closet) or do a long run of Cat5e (and have the modem and router be in different locations).

I'm also considering using the guts of my current PC as the new WHS, and build a bit better system for the main PC with DDR3. I could stick with AMD and do a nice little X4 945 or I could switch over to a Core i3 or something. I could even switch the WHS to a 8450e and cut a bit of power and heat. The XFX mobo has six internal SATA and a micro-ATX, so it should be an excellent starting point. More power than an EX495, anyway.

 

Why not just get an inexpensive switch if you want more ports. I'd run the max amount of wires you think you may want in the future the first time. Having to redo stuff is frustrating when you can just pull everything the first time.

 

Getting back to the bedroom is going to be a pain in the ass anyway. I'd rather not run for that at all. There's no HDTV back there, and even the DVD rips I've played on the plasma do very, very well OTA. Netflix does very, very well OTA. So anything I want to do does fine over 11G, so 11N shouldn't be any issue at all. I'm much more concerned with having a solid Gig connection between the server and the PC/main movie area.

And I'll never have everything I want wired. I'll eventually do something in our playroom (converted carport) and it's going to be 100% impossible to run any wire there without it being a grade-A, I'd rather move PITA.

 

OK, I'm putting together a plan for this. Unfortunately, I'm not going to buy anything right now unless I see a super serious deal. I think I'm going to use my current rig as the WHS, and build a new computer. Hopefully I can still find my key for Win7 if it decides it doesn't like me (replacing HDD and mobo). I forget how many components you can change before it triggers the activation window.

Check out what I'm thinking of. Anything without a link is from my own stash.

WHS:
Case: My own old one or an Antec 900. Not married to this one, want to keep everything cool and quiet.
CPU: 8650 Phenom
Mobo: XFX GeForce 8200
RAM: 4GB DDR2 1066
OS: WHS, Vail or current
OS Drive: 200GB 5400(?) drive. Might be 7200, can't remember.
Storage drives: 2 1.5TB drives to start out with, one of them my own.
Optical: none

New PC:
Case: My own. Will need something better down the road though. Antec 900?
CPU: Core i7-930
Mobo: ASRock X58
RAM: 6GB DDR3 1600
Video: Radeon HD 4650
OS: Win7
OS Drive: OCZ 60GB SSD
Storage drive: 1TB Caviar Green (my own, I need to RTM it)
Optical: 54x Lightscribe. May add a BD drive at some point.

Some of the specs might be overkill, and I may tone it down some. I might bump up the video. I dunno. I could probably run video from this computer to my HDTV and retain the 7MC experience I love.