Home Network plus home theater new setup..please help

T

thekipper

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 7, 2008
Messages
471
Ok, I am not a IT professional thus why I seek your help. Here is current status:

Upstairs: Cable modem>router and then wired to 360, secondary PC, and two PS3's in separate rooms. The router has no more connections, it's WNDR3700. Primary laptop pc is connected wireless.

What's coming: Finished basement that I would like to have wired network connectivity for gaming console, av receiver, tv and possibly a PC.

All my music is on the laptop and backed up to 2 separated external drives, one of which is USB 3 (lappy also is). I have lots of Steam games as well. i would like to access both of these in the basement.

How do i best do this? Do I need a PC in basement? Do I need a switch or something from the router going downstairs to get a wired connection? Cat5e or Cat 6? Can I just take the laptop (XPS15) downstairs and use as media server? Any experience with the Redmere HDMI cables that are supposedly better for longer distance runs? Conduit for all in wall lines? I'm guessing a foot or so away from electrical? Geez, this is all confusing for part timer like me.

Thanks for reading and for any suggestions you may have. Would like to keep this simple and as cheap as possible but still have the functionality I desire.
 
Last edited:
If you are want the cheapest solution I would endorse...
Buy a Netgear GS116E or a GS108E or BOTH (a better idea) and place the larger one in the basement.

Buy or run a single cat6 line from the router to a switch. Cat 5e will also work...but for the less than $3 price difference go with cat6

Ethernet cable does not have to be in conduit. Just try to keep it 18" away from power lines and do not run it parallel to any power lines. If you have to cross powerlines do it at a 90 degree angle.

Run the 360 the second PC and the (2) PS3 from one switch and or another line down to the basement where another switch is located.

These switches are very basic, have some management capability but the most important part is that they are far more reliable than the unmanaged versions. The MTBF is almost 12 times higher.

If you want even better equipment (more professional) consider the HP procurve 1810 series or Dell powerconnect 28** series.

as for HDMI cables...digital cables either work or don't work, expensive cables are usually not worth the premium. Typical HDMI spec cable works out to 35'. Some vendors have HDMI cables that are certified to work at 45', but that is fairly rare. Any HDMI cable over 50' is out of official spec and may not work at all.
 
Last edited:
Forgot to add the cable box upstairs as well. So it would look like this:

Upstairs: Modem > router > switch > 360/ps3#1, ps3#2, digital box, secondary pc, primary laptop via wireless

another cat6 line from the router downstairs to a second switch to connect whatever down there?

I had looked at the gs108e earlier so at least I was looking in the ballpark. Could I just use 2 of the GS108's? Seems that would give me plenty of ports.

How do I serve my music downstairs since it is on the laptop that is connected wireless upstairs? The laptop is really stationary so should I run a wired connection to it? I'm guessing I need a PC interface downstairs to do this, correct? As well as to play Steam games downstairs, I would need the same?

Thanks for the reply, it's like trying to put a puzzle together for me so I appreciate the help.
 
Last edited:
For long distance HDMI I personally use HDMI over CatX extenders and work brilliantly. Please don't confuse this with HDMI over IP which is completely different.

I just use a couple of 1m HDMI cables plugged into a HDBaseT sender/receiver and can view perfectly over 20m away on a single cat6 cable!

Can be a little pricy though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top