[badgerboy123]

Sorry if this has been covered, but I can't seem to find it through search. I am setting up a complete XBMC household system for a friend who is having a house built. I intend to have a file server that manages torrent downloads from RSS so it constantly has new media. This will connect via LAN to 4 small pc's connected to LED tv's in various rooms around the house. These small PC's will run XBMC with a network share as the main AV source. I have run speaker cable to 5 audio zones (4 for the TV's and 1 seperate audio only zone) back to the electric room. I have also ran speaker cable from the audio room to each of the 4 PC's. I want to be able to achieve multi room AV that can be controlled by one remote, hopefully, ipod touches or something similar.

Can anybody provide me on the best setup for this, how it should be wired? it appears that XBMC multi AV support doesn't work too well, has anybody had sucess with this, if anybody could point me in the direction of a good guide setting something up like this it would be much appreciated, or any troubles that I might run into, or, maybe XBMC isn't really suitable for this purpose, maybe there is another media centre solution that is suitable.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[PatK]

What you've laid out sound like a dream machine set-up, at least from my perspective. Having only run XBMC for little more than a year I'm probably not the right person to ask... but then this isn't really the area that your post would be most effective in attracting your target person. Try the HTPC area http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=112 XBMC can handle just about everything you've mentioned well, but it isn't a multi-headed end and although there are workarounds.. like controlling each version of XBMC with an Iphone, I'm unsure of the reliability and implementation. May I ask why you want multi-room AV?

Perhaps a wireless video stream might be worked out in hardware?

[rocketpants]

There is an add-on for syncing audio between different XBMC clients on the same network. I haven't tried it out yet.

If I understand you post correctly you will not have an XBMC client in the audio only room and will use a client in a different room to control the audio there. I assume that you will control the other XBMC clients separately (i.e. each will have their own remote) but you want to control any of the clients from the audio room?

You may be able to set up multiple clients for the ipad remote (haven't used one myself but you can do it on the android remote), each with their own IP. Then from the audio room you choose whichever client is controlling the audio, connect to it and bob's your uncle.

[badgerboy123]

Thanks for your responses. The way things are setup, I have 3 bedrooms, and one living room with 5.1 audio planned. The audio only zone will be outside around the swimming pool area. I would like to control all zones from each of the ipods. I could install xbmc on the media server to act as the xbmc source for the audio only zone, if this would help. I have tried the ipod remote and it does handle deifferent xbmc installations so I could choose between bed 1, bed 2 and living room ect. The info I really need, is, what hardware is required for the audio zones, the video is quite easy as I understand it because I can select from the ipod remote what movie will play in what zone (room). This will be delivered to each thin client which will request from the library of xbmc for that zone, this is all delivered over LAN, but, how do I setup the speakers so each zone plays the correct audio? just a little bit lost on this part. Thanks again for your help.

Badgerboy123

[PatK]

I see what you're after... I like your idea of a separate audio client on the central server... answers most of the issues. Not quite sure how you could port that audio around the multiple zones without wiring speakers direct, some sort of switching apparatus would be needed.

Windows 7 systems gives you to option of what playback devices are default, HDMI etc.. just not sure on how to do that switch but it might be something to look into... again move this question over to the HTPC forum, those guys already have done the hard work for you.

Might have a look at this thread. http://lifehacker.com/5634515/how-to-syn...eedfetcher