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TV in the home

Posted on 13 Jan 2009 at 12:12

A wired Ethernet connection is the obvious choice. It doesn't have to be Gigabit Ethernet - even if your router supports it, it's unlikely that your current media playback devices will - but going Gigabit now will offer a degree of future-proofing. However, installing cable through several rooms isn't always an option without some serious home refurbishment, so you may need to consider an alternative. The HomePlug AV Ethernet over Powerline standard offers a maximum 200Mbits/sec over the existing power cables in your home, and dual-adapter packs are now available for well below £100 (we currently recommend the Billion BiPac 2071).

The final part of the puzzle is the device you actually plug into your TV; usually a Windows Media Center Extender that can take the stream from a media-centre PC, decode it and play it back over a scart, component or HDMI connection, depending on your screen. Which you choose will probably depend on your network. If you've gone wireless, something such as the Linksys DMA 2100 Media Center Extender has the draft-n speeds required. If you're working over a wired Ethernet or Powerline connection, the ZyXEL HomePlug Digital Media Streamer DMA1100P is an excellent choice. That said, you can't go wrong with Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. If you're not using it over Ethernet, plug in the appropriate HomePlug AV or draft-n bridge.

Of course, there's one major drawback to this approach - you have to leave a power-hungry PC on if you want to watch TV. The solution? A media-friendly NAS or Windows Home Server that can store the programmes recorded on your PC and ping them to a Media Center Extender for playback. Oddly enough, Windows Home Servers don't play as well as you might expect with Vista's Media Center Extender, but there are ways of getting the backup features in WHS to watch and copy from the Recorded TV folder in Vista. NAS devices with a UPnP media server and Linux-based home servers such as HP's Media Vault Pro mv5020 also have their place, and apps such as SyncToy will synchronise the Recorded TV folders on your PC with the relevant video folders on your NAS or server.

Just two things to be aware of: first, some Media Center Extenders won't work hand-in-glove with a straight UPnP server that isn't running Vista or WHS; second, you may need to transcode files from the DVR-MS format used by Vista into a format the server and streamer can work with. There are commercial packages that can do this and an excellent, if rather intimidating, free applet called DVRMSToolbox that can do the job. We'll talk about this later.

Streaming iPlayer on your TV

Wherever you store your programmes, your Vista machine will need to be switched on to record them. Instead of turning it off when you have recordings scheduled, put it to sleep. Of course, with a PC at one end and a Media Center Extender at the other, you're not limited to watching programmes you've recorded. You can also stream across any content you download from internet services such as iPlayer or 4oD. Simply share the All Users | My Deliveries folder using Windows Media Player 11 and you're good to go. Pick Add to Library from the Library tab, then browse for and add the folder. You can then go to Library | Media Sharing and check you're set up to share media files across the network. The DRM can cause snags on Xbox 360s and other Extenders - see www.pcpro.co.uk/links/172tv4 for workarounds.