[Bucko04]

Hi all.

I'm really not a techie, so bear with me and my rather particular ideas that I can't quite put into action as I'm not sure how to implement it.

I intend to run XBMC with live TV integrated (SKY HD). My plan/hope is to have all media (incl live TV) run through my PC with distribution to several rooms around the home using CAT6. However, whilst this works in the simplistic manner in which it is written, I struggle to find something that will allow independent control in each of those rooms without changing or deviating from what has already been selected elsewhere by another room.

Again, simplistically, it obviously makes sense that if you have one source then you can only select media from that source once. However, I suppose I have 2 questions. Firstly, is there a way of getting XBMC to work to manage multiple rooms from one source - to be able to select the same media more than once (also, FYI at this point, I also intend to run 3 SKY HD boxes, so that's 6 sources of TV as one output on a SKY box is for viewing and the other for recording - does that mean, in theory, I can watch 6 different channels in 6 rooms?)? Secondly, and instead of, is there hardware that can manage this but linked back to the ultimate source (my PC) so that I don't have to independently manage each separate source in each room?

Hope this makes sense?

Many thanks.

[rocketpants]

You can look to sharing libraries via mySQL and a single server with the media source (see the wiki for details) and set up some cheap clients in each room (like an ATV2, Android or Raspberry pi) to allow individual control. I'm not sure about Sky integration

[Dantis]

With regards to Sky, each Sky Box must have at least one seperate feed from the LNB, two if you have a Sky+ Box, so if you have three Sky boxes you will need a quad LNB with three of the four outputs connected, if you had two Sky and one Sky+ boxes you would need all four outputs connected, if you had three Sky+ boxes you would need six ouputs connected from an octo LNB.

Basically you cannot 'split' the signal, each box must have its own LNB connection.

Hope this helps.

[ConfusedTA]

Plus, whilst the Sky+ boxes have twin tuners, if you plan on using the video output from the box, you can still only "view" one channel at a time.

The second feed/tuner allows the following scenarios:

1) Watch a channel, record a channel
2) Record 2 channels, watch one of the channels being recorded
3) Record 2 channels, watch something already recorded


That means, that with 3 Sky+ boxes, you can record up to 6 channels at any one time, but you can only ever view 3 things.