Sunday
Jan022011
Jan 2 Windows Media Center Controller for HD Home Sports Bar
Sean has created a Sports bar experience in his home using a Media Center PC and 4 Extenders. We're going to have Sean on the show next month so if you have any questions let us know and we'll pose them to him.
Reader Comments (2)
Definitely cool! Too bad DirectTV doesn't support CableCARDs, this thing would be great for Sunday Ticket. I don't know much about Windows Media Center, but could you use web streams as a source? I heard you may be able to stream the sunday ticket to your computer soon, and was wondering if something like this would be possible with that stream?
For a while I thought about using individual nettops rather than Linksys Extenders, because I didn't think one HTPC could stream to so many extenders so well.
I use the Direct TV Sunday Ticket To Go ($350 a year for 1 instance ) which only allows one device to log in at once.
Hopefully they'll allow you to log in on multiple devices if they do in fact open up the program to more users and more devices next year.
If you go the Nettop route, it would be dead easy to control - you could set up girder on each of the nettops as clients and from one central girder server you could send events to each of the nettops.
Or, you could do what I do for DirectTV today - I just use Synergy.
http://synergy-foss.org/
Using my web based remote, I can switch inputs on the HDTV over to my HTPC, and then I have that HTPC set up to listen to my laptop as the Synergy server.
Once the HTPC is on, I simply drag my mouse up my screen until I reach the top, and the cursor instantly transfers over to the HDTV - now all mouse events and keyboard presses work on the HTPC rather than my laptop.
I set up the Sunday Ticket To Go, and then return the cursor to my laptop.
You can set up multiple Synergy clients and orient them physically in the Synergy control panel which comes with the server so that you could easily navigate from TV to TV in your sports bar setup and interact with the individual PCs that control them.
Also, if Direct TV lets you run multiple instances, and allows those instances on one device (i.e. additional windows which currently is not supported) you could just get one HTPC and then get some extra video cards and drive multiple TVs / monitors with it.