(2012-07-29, 12:06)HeresJohnny Wrote: Don't all digital receivers already do multi-zone support?
I think you're thinking of multi-
channel whereas they're talking about multi-
zone. Multi-Zone meaning that one box can run a set of 5.1 (multi-channel) speakers in the living room, and a separate set of 5.1 speakers in the bedroom and send synchronized audio to both, or different audio to each
This could be done without TOO much work on the backend using VLC. The previous addon accomplished this using VLC as an external player, but that made things feel a little disconnected and the audio was always out of sync due to the network lag. Here's what I'm thinking could improve this.
Setup an addon that launches VLC headlessly in the background, which broadcasts the AV stream. It then plays the stream in the native XBMC player. Now that the local player is also listening to the network stream, they should be much easier to sync. This has the added benefit of letting non-xbmc devices in on the fun. If you want to play something else in another zone, it launches another instance on VLC streaming the new content. If there is an xbmc device in that zone, that device could launch VLC and then report back to the original requester. A multi-master setup would help in distributing the load. You could get really crazy and set thresholds for RAM/CPU usage. If the master in that zone is bogged down, an idle master in another part of the house could take over the vlc streaming and let the 2nd master stream from it.