What are the experiences of fellow B&O owners with integrating a Media Center in a B&O setup. Current setup:

- beovision 3-28 with masterlink

- couple of rooms with beovision 6 connected via BeoLink

Desired functionality

- use media center as music and video hub to play media across the network of tv's

- use the media center to surf the web 

- manage the media center with a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo

Initial thoughts are to hook up the media center using DVI. If it is hooked up to the 3-28 will the masterlink distribute video and audio to the beovision 6? Other thoughts and experiences?

It can be done, and works very well.

We have been doing this for the last 5+years. Our PC is part of our A/V Beosystem.

All our screens are B&O and M-L linked. We use a Logitech DiNovo Edge keyboard (Bluetooth) which includes a built-in mouse, but we later added an optical Logitech mouse which we prefer. As other devices (phones, cameras, printers, etc) are all Bluetooth, everything can be connected, accessed, and optimized quickly.

If you are in BT range (10 metres), even upstairs, you can sucessfully connect to your PC.  You can then do PC work, and switch to TV, SAT, and DVD with the press of a button. We enjoy the ability to work and control background music (N.MUSIC and N.RADIO) via the Beoplayer. We burn downloaded music to CD using Mediaplayer, but use Beoplayer for everything else.

After a very enjoyable evening and detailed demonstration by the B&O Regional Manager at the Rodeo Drive store, we are now actively pursuing the addition of a BS 5 to our A/V system.

Where and how (to which device which connector for video and audio) did you hookup the pc?

thanks!

Simple.

Video: DVI to monitor ( or possibly RGB).

Audio: SAT TV + DVD to monitor, then out to A.AUX socket at the bottom of the BS 3200. ( I've tried TV analogue to the PC, but the resolution is abominable. )

Additional thoughts:

I purchased 10 BOSSCOM wall sets from our sponsor Lee, which include a very smart looking wall plate with an M-L and PAL connector ( or NTSC connector replacement ). But today, with 1080 HD you need component. For that I purchased a small roll of RG-6, pulled my own cable, and made my own connectors.

Expensive Component cables, even if Monster gold-plated, gold plastic encapsulated, or Swarovski " diamond " encrusted, is still simple RG-6.

HDMI, being digital audio and video of course solves this problem with one small cable connection, if under 4 + metres. Any further length requires a signal repeater, but some manufacturers are now building a signal repeater nub into the cable.

This works with our main, but somewhat older B&O system downstairs, and 2 BV 8 upstairs, all M-L linked. We have found that this also works in Europe as well as North America, at least for today.  Tommorrow ?  We see better potential in BS 5.