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When we got our computer three years ago, one of the justifications was to be able to listen to the Buddhist Temple services in Bangkok, Thailand. We had a computer built that was robust enough to handle the task, in fact a lot more robust than was really needed. The system included the latest sound video cards and 960MHZ processor. We could now log on and listen and watch the streaming media at the computer.
This got tiresome and the rest of the family, my wife and mom (actually my wife's mom, but she is mine too since my mom passed away many years ago) soon had me turn up the sound on the 5.1 speakers so they could hear the services throughout the house and didn't have to stay in front of the computer.
This lasted until I was talking with friends who jury-rigged their computer to play on one of their TVs. I thought there surely must be a way to distribute the stream over as many TVs as I wanted. I began the hunt on the Internet about three or four months ago. I found CrossBar Media's site and began reading and writing to them. We soon ordered the beginners kit and it sat here for about 90 days until the fellow who was going to do the installation could find the time. When he came to install it there was no problem with the CrossBar equipment. In fact as soon as he finished we had video on nine TVs. Audio was a different problem, no fault of the equipment. It turned out the output from the Audigy sound card came from a male plug and the input to the MediaCaster had a male plug. No one makes a connector with a female plug at each end. We waited for the fellow who builds our computer to create the correct connections and now we have sound and video across the nine TVs.
In addition, because of the increase in use, we went through what I hope is our last upgrade. A P4 ASUS800C Deluxe, 2GB DDR RAM, Audigy2 Platinum sound card, ATI 9800 PRO All-in-Wonder video card and 1.5TB of disk on 12 drives. Our next step is to record the services including the video. We put our video camera output on the computer and we were able to use the Avcast kit to send it to the TVs. My wife is also into karaoke and we found that we could rip her Thai karaoke disks to the computer, create play lists and put the A/V anywhere she feels like singing. Her only problem with that is having to be close to the computer to reject a song she doesn't like.
I must say we haven't as much fun with the computer before the Crossbar equipment and I am continuing to think up possible applications, which may require more MediaCasters. We have five surround sound systems, it would be nice to have a central DVD system to distribute movies to the TVs and surround systems. We can with Crossbar, I just have to convince my wife it would be nice to do that.
I must say that none of this could have been done without the support of CrossBar's technical support. Any question, almost anytime was answered using email.
Sam, in particular, was as helpful and friendly as anyone I have ever dealt with and that made a big difference. If only CrossBar had all of the stuff we needed, I wouldn't have to go anywhere else. There are some companies I dread dealing with, CrossBar was one that was truly a pleasure. Thanks again, especially to Sam.
Michael
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