Home Media Server

[Lee]

I'm looking for an extensible media server for my home that I can tuck away under the stairs but can serve the entire house. I want to be able to stream to my television or just speakers around the house for music experience. Is this possible?

Is it possible to set up which speakers are to recieve music and which arent? So I can play music in either all rooms, or certain rooms?

Also, is it possible to play music in certain rooms but movies in other rooms?

All served from a central media server?

Sorry, i'm pretty clueless in this field and google hasn't brought much to my attention.

 

[CTXMedia]

Ask these guys and gals: http://www.avforums.com/

Actually the forums are here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/

Massive site, lots of info, and a ton of video/audiophiles.

 

[Lee]

Thanks for the link, I will check it out.

 

[cmeinck]

This can get expensive, but is very awesome. My setup includes a home media server running Windows 7 Server. I set up a sync process on all of my computers (wife's) that moves all songs into a music folder. We then employ Sonos to play music from either streaming services (Sirius, Pandora, Spotify) or our music library to play music in the house. Sonos can get very pricey. We only have one that powers two zones (kitchen, living room). We have speakers throughout the house, purchased from Monoprice. Over time, I'm going to add more Sonos units.

As for TV, I rip my media and use a Mac Mini running Plex.

Depending upon your rip quality, you may be able to use Roku to playback material using their Plex app. I've found it to be good for DVD quality stuff, but it cannot handle the bandwidth of 1080p BluRay rips.