Synchronize music/video multicast-stream playback to multiple instances of XBMC

Hi...I have 4 modded xbox's in my house in different rooms that work great for everything, but I want to know how I can play the same music/song from my server/PC at the same time from each box. I want to make my house SHAKE!!!

Please help...I have been reading over the threads and can't seem to find a thread on this. If there is one, could someone please point me to it.

Thanks!!!

Thanks for moving my msg into the right place...but this issue doesn't seem to have a resolution?

Wouldn't you be able to run a web radio station from you pc/server then just like any computer connect to that ip and start streaming just like a normal web radio station? Whatever that radio station is play is what your xbox would play? Has anyone tried this??

I would understand video having some lag since you are streaming a much bigger file, but audio is so small and with a hard-wired connection thru out a house there should be no lag??

Thumper - I had the same dilemma as you. Ive 2 xboxs and wanted to synch them - I did some work with Videolan where i streamed a play list from my media server - I had limited success with this though and never got the two to play exactly the same thing and the same time.

Looks like this one is more complicated that I initially thought. Try it with videolan and let us know how you get on

Shane

Thanks shanedoyle...that really sucks! Thought it would be easier than what it has turned out to be and no one with an answer. Hopefully they will add it to the next version I guess. But I got a lot of xboxs to upgrade then

After reading this thread (which spans a long time) I dont see how this is ever going to be done. For some reason people have the idea that syncing actually works perfectly as a feature with other devices. Well, I have a few squeezeboxen (1xver2 and 2xver3) and I can tell you it doesnt work as well as many of you think. The ver3's work better then the ver2 do but they still more often then not lose sync. The loss in sync is very small but you can easily tell its off.

Not that I wouldnt love this feature, especially someway for XBMC to communicate with slimserver, I just dont think it will happen.

Thumper3322 Wrote:Thanks for moving my msg into the right place...but this issue doesn't seem to have a resolution?

Wouldn't you be able to run a web radio station from you pc/server then just like any computer connect to that ip and start streaming just like a normal web radio station? Whatever that radio station is play is what your xbox would play? Has anyone tried this??

I would understand video having some lag since you are streaming a much bigger file, but audio is so small and with a hard-wired connection thru out a house there should be no lag??

I have a lot of experiance using VideoLAN to stream video and audio to Xboxes. The apparent issue with your idea here is that the machines are not entirely synched up. While they will run very close, even if all machines have the same cache sizes, they can be up to 1-2 seconds lag between two machines even if they are reading off the same network. This is of course not an issue if your machines are far enough away from each other that people can't see two or more at a time and experiance that one is slightly off from the other, or if you're using them for sound that their speakers arn't so loud that they overlap, since it would produce a very strange echo, especially with each additional unit.

FYI; hare is a nice article on the subject of multiroom/multizone audio:

Quote:This trend has been growing every year at great rates, but 2007 really was this technology’s big-time coming out party. It ranked second only to home theater as the “hottest” category for integrators (16 percent) in the Pulse Survey.

Overall, two out of every three integrators say the category is very healthy.

You can read the full article here: http://www.cepro.com/article/multiroom_a..._spreading

Must admit multi-zone music would be fantastic!

Did notice while in PC World that the laim excuse for a media center that they sell... Netgear I think? actually does multi-zone.... Just a shame its naff and even more so wont run XBMC!

Gamester17 Wrote:FYI; hare is a nice article on the subject of multiroom/multizone audio:You can read the full article here: http://www.cepro.com/article/multiroom_a..._spreading

Thanks for the link. I see the article is about a year old now. If 2007 was the year of multi-room audio, here's to hoping that 2008 becomes the year of multi-room video.

Hey folks,

I wonder if it's possible to write a script so that if you are playing music or radio via the xbox it will play on all xboxes in the house.

My initial idea was that this might be possible by making use of the webserver functions and a timer to start off the playing.

Getting the sync right might be tricky though.

For talking radio it'll probably workwalking between rooms. If you're having a party or something and want several xboxes playing the same music in an environment where the volume is such that a slight time delay might be a problem could be a bad thing...

Perhaps a local countdown set off on the each xbox and adjusting the sync over a few seconds countdown before play begins?

Perhaps I'm the only person mad enough to have 4 xboxes in my house and use them all simultaneously!