Multi-Room Setup + Server

Hey,
Greetings from Bahrain,

I've been experimenting with MediaPortal for a year now, and now that MP 1.2 seems to offer the features and stability needed, I've decided to "flip the switch".

As the house is in the process of renovation, I thought it would be best to adapt, and create clients and a server that would best fit, for use all over the home. I haven't yet set up these clients, (Bought the parts & assembled, checked if everything works), waiting for the renovation to finish.
(I'll post pictures once that's done too), planning to finish the entire setup by the end of July.

What I've got up to now is,

The main server:

Case: AEROCOOL VS-9 WINDOWS SIDE PANEL
Motherboard: ASUS P8H61-M LE/CSM (REV 3.0)
Processor: INTEL CORE I3-2120 (3.3 GHZ)
HDD: 2x WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR GREEN 2TB 64MB CACHE SATA 3.0GB/S 3.5"
RAM: 4 GB DD3 Mushkin Blackline Edition
TV Tuners: 2x TBS6981 Dual DVB-S2 tuners PCI-E (For Nilesat 7.0 West. and Badr 4/5/6 26.5 East)
Capture Card: Hauppage Colossus PCI-E (for capturing from Showtime Arabia's ShowBox HD Decoder)
MCE IR Blaster.
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
(Software installed on server):
- TV Server (from MP1.2 Beta)
- Utorrent
- iPiMP Server (iPod Touch support, for Mum)
- TV4Home (android support)
- ComSkip

The Living Room:

LG 47" LED
Case: IN-WIN BP655.200BL 200W
APU (AMD's solution): Sapphire Fusion E-350 (1.6 Ghz), with ATI Radeon 6310
Disc Drive:Lite-on DVD Drive
RAM: 2 GB DDR3 Ram (Kingston, Value Ram)
HDD: 250 GB Maxtor Drive
Remote: Compro K-300
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

The Theater Room
55" Samsung 3D TV LED D7000 Series
Yamaha HTR-6030 (Surround Sound System)
Acer Aspire X5950
Specs:
Intel i5 - 650 (3.20GHz)
4 GB DDR3 RAM
1 TB HDD
Nvidia GT420
Blu-ray/HD-DVD Drive (Swapped out the OEM DVD Drive)
Remote: Compro K-300 or Dell Streak, using aMPdroid (my current phone)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

Downstairs Living Room:

42" LG LED TV
Case: Generic AOpen Case (as it will be stored in a cupboard)
Motherboard: Intel 945GL Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (1.8 GHZ)
RAM: 3 GB
HDD: 250 GB
Graphic Card: Nvidia 8600 GT (256 MB)
Lite-on DVD Drive
Remote: Compro K-300
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

Network Router: Buffalo WZR-HP-300N, with Netgear 8 port Gigabit Switch (with CAT6 cabling through the house)
Each room has the same Mustayaluca skin, however with different plugins, depending on purpose and usage.

I'm in the process of assembling and testing this setup,

However I was wondering if a service or program exists, that would allow me to obtain (OSN / Showtime Arabia ) EPG, similar to that of Schedules Direct?
And is it just me, or does the range of the remote (Compro K-300) really short?

Thank you for reading,

As I go through this setup, I'll be posting more,
Any suggestions and advice are more than welcome.

PS: Is there any specific section in the forums, that would perhaps cater to the Middle East, and setting up such HTPC's in the region?

Hi mmannai,

I'm a big fan of MediaPortal, and I see that you are planning to do something that is similar to what I'm doing.
A bit of shared information that can help you on the road:

EPG:
You will notice I'm not from the middle east.
To get my server into a trustworthy EPG status I'm using a combination of tvxb and mc2xml. I'm looking at channels from different countries (UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Turkey) and that makes capturing EPG from various spots a bit challenging.
Some information I get from various websites producing TV guides using tvxb, the others, in absence of a better solution are extracted from the MS server using mc2xml

Remote and blu-ray:
In the living room I'm using a gyration 3101. Combined with eventghost, Total Media Theatre (to play blu-rays) and AnyDVD HD.
Mediaportal for over a year now is providing me a spectacular result, and the WAF (wife acceptance factor) is OK.
Range of the gyration 3101 is very acceptable. Advantage of mouse usage using gyroscopic technology is awsome.

Currently I'm experimenting with iPimp with the aim to eventually use a windows mobile phone 6.5 as a second remote. If your remote has a range problem, this could be an option.

HTPC next to the TV: I'm a fan of silent operations. The big advantage of a multiseat approach is that you can put the server in a place where the sound of the fans does not disturb the family. That's why I went for a silent PC.

Hope this bit of information can help you on your adventure.

Best regard,
Berns

Hi mmannai,

Did you make any progress? Im planning on doing the same with OSN.

Webgrab+Plus can download the OSN EPG. WebGrab+Plus, an advanced XMLTV grabber - ServerCare home

Hey there I'm in Canada so I use Schedules Direct here and I'm about to set up my first clint for my parents. The thing I wanted to ask was if I were to use mc2xml along side SD could I map the channels to my HD-PVR so I can get spdif audio on it and on my colossus card that is mapped to sd? The next thing is do I just point the client to the server and thats it! I tend to make things harder then they need to be lol.

Hey!
Update: Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but thank you Calypsoo for your help. The program worked, however I needed to do some tweaking to the configuration files that came with it, as they did not support all the channels.

Since I've last updated, I've moved to the UK for University, while leaving the end result in the hands of my mum to use and hopefully enjoy.
So I'd like to apologize for taking things longer than expected.

Anyways, before I left, I managed to shoot some videos of the system working. The videos aren't much, but when I do get back I'lll update this forum post with more pictures.

Without further to do,

Hi mmannai, I see you are using Ipimp in a multi seat all windows 7 environment. Did you manage to get the the remote control function of Ipimp working?

Regarding remote control I don't use iPimp as the remote was laggy (due to it being a webpage), what I did was use WifiRemote and the iOS program developed by one of the developers on the forum (Can't remember the name of the application though. You could find it in the plugins section of the forum).

Hi mmannia.
Thanks for the information. As I'm using an android phone I could do the same with Ampdroid.

However, my primary purpose of using my android phone would be to tell my client to play a particular song from the song list.
The result would be that I could decide what song would blast from the speakers while having summer dinner in the garden, saving me walks up and down to the HTPC.

For that to work with IPimp, I would need the server to find the client. For whatever reason that doesn't work with me.
By the looks of things you have been able to get your windows 7 ipimp server to talk to your windows 7 ipimp client (with lag, but still working)
Did you do something special for that to work?

Hey Berns,

Over time, I've come to realize that for iPimp to work well, you'd need to have the static IP's for the devices, and configure it using the IP rather than hostname. Also, I'd suggest turning off windows firewall on both machines (at least for private networks). If security is important to you, I'd suggest either a third party firewall (that would allow flexible configurations), or from the router itself.

Let me know how that works as I'm planning something similar for the garden,

Best Regards,

MMannai