Hi all!
I am just about to move into a big house and am planning on spending quite some money on Apple kit.
I want to bring sound to all rooms in the house. Study and the neighbouring kitchen will be fed from the speakers connected to the computer. But I need to hook it up with the home theatre in the Living room and upstairs (in 1 or 2 rooms). So I plan on buying:
1x AirPort Extreme Base Station
3x AirPort Express Base Station with AirTunes
Now a couple of questions:
I found out that you can stream to multiple AirTunes at the same time, so this is answered. But:
1. Does anybody have any experience with using the AirPortExtreme Base Station with NTL/VirginMedia in the UK? I will have their 20MBit service. This base station just acts as a router, correct? So I just need to plugin my Cable modem and bob's your uncle?
2. AirPort Express uses the same 3.5mm Jack for analogue AND digital transmission? Especially for the home theatre I want digital sound. But I guess I have to buy this Stereo Connection Kit to get the digital transmission?
3. Now the crunch point and this is not really a technical questions. Imagine I run iTunes on the computer downstairs in my study. I am upstairs, but would like to change tracks. Obviously nobody would want to walk downstairs. Does anybody else face the same problem (about from suffering severe laziness
?
I have found this little absolute lovely looking gadget from Logitech. It seems to be able to do this quite neatly. If I understand correctly, it connects to your iTunes music library and you can access all the songs from the remote. Has any body here seen or even bought this? My main problem is the range, not necessarily between sender and receiver (I know this will be long enough), but between remote and computer.
And also, I like the fact that AirPort Express works as a standard Access Point repeater, so it extends my network.
But yes - has anybody found a solution to the "controlling your music" problem? I guess apple remote could kinda do this, but still - I can't visually browse my collection. I have used Salling Clicker on my phone, but if I want control from the whole house, I need a WiFi enabled handheld as bluetooth signal won't be strong enough - and I don't have one.
Well, I just want to hear some opinions from people. Have read the feedback on the apple store, but would like to hear some success stories from people which have a similar setup (large house with many rooms and a need to control music on the go).
Thanks for your time
Samuel
UPDATE:
I have sone some more browsing and have now found out that Salling Clicker is out in a new version with support for proper WiFi, and you can get something like a Sony Clie TH55 for as little as £50 on ebay. So maybe i look into this.
But most likely I go for the Keyspan TuneView, but am a bit worried about the range. When I have such a lovely big WiFi network with all these AirPort Expresses, I would like to use it for the remote too. But they claim 150 foot range. I just think Apple should really bring us an iTunes Remote Control, fully 802.11x enabled with LCD to browse the iTunes Library.
Does anybody have any experience with Keyspan TuneView? Does it work ok? What is the range?
I am just about to move into a big house and am planning on spending quite some money on Apple kit.
I want to bring sound to all rooms in the house. Study and the neighbouring kitchen will be fed from the speakers connected to the computer. But I need to hook it up with the home theatre in the Living room and upstairs (in 1 or 2 rooms). So I plan on buying:
1x AirPort Extreme Base Station
3x AirPort Express Base Station with AirTunes
Now a couple of questions:
I found out that you can stream to multiple AirTunes at the same time, so this is answered. But:
1. Does anybody have any experience with using the AirPortExtreme Base Station with NTL/VirginMedia in the UK? I will have their 20MBit service. This base station just acts as a router, correct? So I just need to plugin my Cable modem and bob's your uncle?
2. AirPort Express uses the same 3.5mm Jack for analogue AND digital transmission? Especially for the home theatre I want digital sound. But I guess I have to buy this Stereo Connection Kit to get the digital transmission?
3. Now the crunch point and this is not really a technical questions. Imagine I run iTunes on the computer downstairs in my study. I am upstairs, but would like to change tracks. Obviously nobody would want to walk downstairs. Does anybody else face the same problem (about from suffering severe laziness
?I have found this little absolute lovely looking gadget from Logitech. It seems to be able to do this quite neatly. If I understand correctly, it connects to your iTunes music library and you can access all the songs from the remote. Has any body here seen or even bought this? My main problem is the range, not necessarily between sender and receiver (I know this will be long enough), but between remote and computer.
And also, I like the fact that AirPort Express works as a standard Access Point repeater, so it extends my network.
But yes - has anybody found a solution to the "controlling your music" problem? I guess apple remote could kinda do this, but still - I can't visually browse my collection. I have used Salling Clicker on my phone, but if I want control from the whole house, I need a WiFi enabled handheld as bluetooth signal won't be strong enough - and I don't have one.
Well, I just want to hear some opinions from people. Have read the feedback on the apple store, but would like to hear some success stories from people which have a similar setup (large house with many rooms and a need to control music on the go).
Thanks for your time
Samuel
UPDATE:
I have sone some more browsing and have now found out that Salling Clicker is out in a new version with support for proper WiFi, and you can get something like a Sony Clie TH55 for as little as £50 on ebay. So maybe i look into this.
But most likely I go for the Keyspan TuneView, but am a bit worried about the range. When I have such a lovely big WiFi network with all these AirPort Expresses, I would like to use it for the remote too. But they claim 150 foot range. I just think Apple should really bring us an iTunes Remote Control, fully 802.11x enabled with LCD to browse the iTunes Library.
Does anybody have any experience with Keyspan TuneView? Does it work ok? What is the range?