Multimedia Home

[russellellwood]

I am about to have the walls of my house re-skimmed, before I do I have already though about a central location for sky distrabution, phone, internet and media server, Before I get the walls skimmed I am wondering if anyone has a cheapish solution for multiroom audio. If possible two sourses, computer and sky box, Into 5 zones (3 Bedrooms, bathroom and front room) Hope someone can be of some help,

Cheers

Russ

 

[Donkmeister]

An effective yet cheap option is to run speaker cables to each area from your central area, and use a manual switch box for the speakers. Downside of this is that you need to head to your central cupboard to switch sources, so isn't very swish if going for techy points.

Medium expense is to use a multiroom amp (such as a mid-high end home cinema amp) that will let you control 2 or 3 zones. That is quite swish but I don't know of any that does more than 3 zones.

I can see two obvious choices:
1) as you only have two sources and a pretty low budget, run two sets of leads to each zone (one for computer, one for Sky box). You can then plug an amp in at each room and use that locally, selecting either input as required.
2) run speaker cables to each zone, along with Cat5 or Cat6 cables, so you can upgrade from a manual switch (or 2/3-zone) when you're feeling a bit more flush, to something with panels in each room that control the system back in your node zero.

If you run 2 or more lengths of Cat5 cable then you can easily upgrade your system to carry high-def video later on.