New House - Narrowing down overall system architecture

[WhiteKnight]

I'm in the process of renovating a house that will be complete in a couple months and I'm trying to narrow down my system architecture. I've been in the HTPC game a long time but it's been several years since I've been up to date on the state of the market and new tech.

My needs are the following.
- Two TVs, one in family room and one in basement. Additional projector to follow in a few years.
- Upgrade existing HTPC, will run Win7 or Win8 WMC, Cablecard/tuners (Ceton InfiniTV 6?) to capture FIOS or cable broadcasts. Abundant HD space to store downloaded and ripped content.
- HTPC will be housed in server rack in basement
- Want to watch TV, downloaded content, streaming Netflix/Amazon Prime, and ripped DVD/BR on all display devices in 1080p
- Preserve EPG data, comskip, cover art, etc. at each viewing location

I can run cable anywhere and don't think I should run into any significant run-length issues (~50' max). I'm considering just running Cat6 everywhere and using HDMI extenders to get to the TVs where necessary rather than running individual HDMI cables/Redmere. Right now it seems like my best bet would be to get an X-Box 360E 4GB for each TV location, since I've heard mixed reviews on the only other current option, the Ceton.

Does this seem like a reasonable approach? Any suggestions for modifications before I begin purchasing parts?

 

[giantpandaman2]

CAT6 is a great idea. Only negative is that you'll likely have to invest in signal converters w/every new set of standards. I'm not sure if there even is a HDMI2.0/CAT6 converter yet.

My suggestion? Start w/cat6 and also make sure each room has conduit so you can run wires to wherever your central location is. Probably easier just to have an HTPC in both rooms and a NAS for all the data. HTPC's are pretty cheap to buy and build and they won't have the resolution limitations of a x360.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

XBOX 360s at each location will do what you are asking except for one problem - Blu-Ray rips. The 360 doesn't have the ability to handle many of the higher bitrates of a pure BD rip. You can downsample the rip so the 360 can handle it but that kind of defeats the purpose of Blu-ray.

As the other poster mentioned, another alternative is to use an HTPC at each location with an NAS in the server rack. A Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH can sit anywhere on your LAN (probably in the server rack as well) and both HTPCs would be able to access the tuners. An HTPC wouldn't have any problem handling BD rips. Each HTPC could run comskip on recordings and send the resulting files to the NAS. If it breaks down you can repair an HTPC. If an XBOX dies you are probably buying another one.

Like the 360 though, there are drawbacks with the HTPC. Copy protection flags come into play. Some programs recorded by one HTPC can't be viewed on the other or stored on the NAS. For FIOS this isn't a huge problem because most channels, except for the premiums, are marked copy freely. Also, there is no WMC plugin for Amazon Prime, at least not one that works well. You could bring it up in a browser but then you're stepping outside of WMC, which can be a problem if ease of use and a consistent interface is a requirement. It also means that each HTPC would require some type of keyboard input device.

Good luck with whatever you decide.