1 Jan
2005
1 Jan
'05
10:22 p.m.
New to the group. Please forgive any unintended breaches of protocol.
I just built a house and had it prewired for stereo speaker pairs in 6
rooms / zones in addition to cat5 in each zone. My intention was to
purchase a
multisource / multizone audio system from a high end integrator. After
reviewing several options - Crestron and Niles primarily - I ended the
review dismayed
with the cost and overall approach of the "main stream" solution providers.
I'm a UNIX guy going back to 1983 - Altos8600 running a 5Mhz Intel 8086
with 512Kb RAM, 20Mb 8" Winchester hard drive and Microsoft's version of
Xenix.
I'm wondering if the present state of the Intel/AMD powered PC with
Linux is robust enough to control multiple sources (4, 6 or 8) like
digital cable box,
directv receiver, XM radio, CD player(s), etc. and route the output to
multiple zones/rooms (4, 6 or 8) in an effective and cost efficient manner.
The Crestron approach would cost me around $10K - so I've got some money
to invest on development if necessary.
Once again, my apologies if I've breached any list/group protocol with
this post.