hi, basically im losing sky cos it costs a fortune, and theyve been messing me about, but to keep the family happy im looking to set up a home media centre. i currently have bt inifnity as my broadband supplier. looking to set up for initially for 1 tv, but eventually to supply 5 tvs in the house. my idea was to purchase an external hard drive with wifi, something like this - pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/seagate-freeagent-goflex-network-hard-drive-2tb-black-08753837-pdt.html?srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~Data+Storage~08753837&istCompanyId=9a35962d-802d-4e67-9721-0a3328ca1f02&istItemId=qrlqmil&istBid=t or this ebay.co.uk/itm/XTREAMER-PRO-Media-Player-Streamer-3-5-WIFI-USB2-0-/300507123695?pt=UK_Computing_Other_Computing_Networking&hash=item45f79ecfef connect to the wifi, which i assume i can do with an ethernet cable to the broadband router ? then transfer all my media onto this hard drive, so it was accessable by each tv. none of my tvs are "smart". so i need a way of connecting them to the house network, ive been looking at home media centres, android boxes etc. all of which look pretty good for streaming iplayer and such, which is nice but i also want them to have access to my home library(hard drive). dont want nothing to fancy, just good enougth to do the job(and therefore cut down on the cost) im assuming theres not much out there that can stream to 5 tvs at once, so i guess i need something on each tv with enougth memory, say 8gb. to store a couple of films at most. therefore if my daughter wants to view a film she can quickly copy from the hard drive to her device and watch. ive got £200 coming from sky from where theyve been messing me about, which ill be putting towards it. not nieve enougth to think this will cover it, but hoping it will go a long way towards it. thanks in advance for any help/advice offered.
interesting question and would also like some feedback on this. now personally i don't stream as have a primary tv box that feeds all the other boxes in the house as sky multiroom does. if you have 5 tvs most of them are probably non wi-fi. thry most likely just have scart connectors. can't see how it is possible to stream or indeed play media on such tv's. would like some input on this
Did you work this out? My guess would be that if your tvs cannot connect to the network you will need to connect another device to the network (e.g. custom made computer) and view this device through the tv. You would need a separate device for each tv (unless you can get a wifi adapter or whatever) and then connect your external hd to the network - you could use a nas - or build your own which would probably be cheaper e.g. - search for the havetheknowhow website for some info on how to do this That would be my suggestion but it seems expensive. Someone else may have a better answer for you.
For me you answered your own question, Android boxs, the have a load of Apps for films, sports the lot, the boxs that have XBMC are the better and can be added to and changed, but its a costly exercise for 5 tvs and you would need newish TVs for HDMI etc,you can stream to the boxs also,
