At the end of March, we finally moved into the new house that we’ve been building since last summer. One of the best parts of new construction is that you can pretty much have it wired any way you like if you get in early enough. For a geek like me, this meant an opportunity to have gigabit Ethernet to every room, a centralized structured media panel where all the house wires go to, and it even included an extra room we decided to use a ‘home theater’. Something that I decided up front was that I would have the builder just do the wires, I would do the speaker installation, build the theater, etc.

As part of this, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could use Windows Media technology to power both my whole house audio (and video!) system , as well as be the backbone for the theater, using nothing more than standard Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Media Center edition.

Part One: Audio
For the whole house audio system, I had the builder prewire 5 pairs of speakers throughout the house: the kitchen, living room, upstairs bonus room, master bedroom and the back porch. Each room had a wall plate that connects the room’s speakers, as well as a line going to the structured panel. Not wanting to spend a fortune on a multi-zone system, I found a great speaker distribution system at Parts Express.

At the speaker drops on structured panel, I wired up the stereo distribution panel which I would connect a old Sony receiver that we had lying around. Each room got an impedence matching volume control, as well as a pair of speakers (some rooms, like the kitchen, have round ceiling speakers, some standard in wall). After getting all of these installed, it was time to test it out. I fired up the receiver, plopped in a CD, and had great sound throughout the house.

Here’s where it gets interesting though: the integration of Windows Media throughout the house. I picked up an Asus Pundit running Windows 2003 Server and ripped all of the CD’s we own and stored them in the Windows Media library. The speaker out of the server goes to a set of inputs on the receiver, so that anything “playing” on the server will be broadcast throughout the house. I also installed the Tivo Desktop software on the box, so that I can route MP3’s and photos to my TV in the living room (which will be eventually replaced by a Windows Media Center box).

My plan is to write a small piece of software that hosts Windows Media Player and allows you to control what’s playing through a Web Service so I can use a PDA or another PC to act as a ‘remote control’ for the system. Although there is already a few really good options for doing this available, I thought it would be fun to write myself.

What’s next?
Well, I have two other ‘home’ projects that I’ll be writing about as I complete:

1) Distributed DVD jukebox. I’d like to rip my DVD collection to the hard drive on the server and use either Windows Media Center PC’s or the Gateway Connected DVD player to stream DVDs throughout the house.

2) Home theater construction. I’m going to build a Windows-Media based home theater using a MCE box and an overhead projector (probably the Sanyo Z2). This will take most of the summer to complete, but I’ll be documenting my progress here. Right now, the room is filled up with boxes from the box, and an old 13″ tv where the screen will be.

I did manage to get a remote controlled light dimmer installed today, which I’ll admit is pretty damn neat.

Questions? Thoughts? Discuss it on the Furrygoat Wiki.

To be continued….