All in one entertainment system

[bestfriend]

I realize that there is a TV thread going on right now, and not too long ago, a stereo thread, and somewhere, a laptop/computer thread, but what about a COMPLETE system. I think we are at(or close to) the age where we could set up an entire system, run off a computer(?), that will control everything, even through an inverter. Onboard moondance, I have basically nothing. No inverter, an old stereo, no TV, bad speakers, no gps map system, etc. I hesitate to buy anything. I heard someone, I think it was sailingdog, talk about dropping in a mac mini to run everything. Wouldn't it be great to have a system that ran your TV, DVD, music (I don't listen to radio anymore except for baseball) ipod or itunes, map system, electric toothbrush (just kidding). Lets here some ideas! My brain seems to have some kind of "age" block. I need to spend some cash on Moondance to offset what I am spending on that "other" boat.

[sailingdog]

BF-

You can get TV and Radio tuners for the Mac or PC, that are USB or Firewire-based. This way you could effectively use one as the heart of a ship-board entertainment center. However, it takes a fairly fast machine to handle video, television, digital photography, music, navigation and radio, especially if you intend on editing video.

It also takes a fair amount of hard drive space, especially for video, digital music, and digital photographs.

I would highly recommend that you have a reasonable backup for the machine, if it is the core of the entertainment and navigation planning systems on the boat.

You can use either a small desktop or a laptop to do this nowadays. If you have specifc questions, let me know.

[sailaway21]

I've got a yellow Labrador for my all in one entertainment system. Seventy dollar initial investment, one hundred a year on maintenance, ten bucks a week on food. Best entertainment investment I ever made.

[sailingdog]

Sailaway-

You're either not getting all of his shots and meds or you've got much better pricing on those than we do here in New England.

[Freesail99]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

I've got a yellow Labrador for my all in one entertainment system. Seventy dollar initial investment, one hundred a year on maintenance, ten bucks a week on food. Best entertainment investment I ever made.

I hope this isn't going to turn into the sailing with dogs thread !!!!!!!

[sailingdog]

LOL, it won't be bad if the dogs aren't genius bull dogs..

[T34C]

I'm interested in much the same thing, entertainment wise, but I would like to run everything off a video ipod and keep the ships systems seperate.

Hey, look at me staying on topic!

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

LOL, it won't be bad if the dogs aren't genius bull dogs..

I understand they invented the Solar Stik.

[sailingdog]

T34C-

It's a bit tough to run everything off of a Video iPod, since you need a computer to change/add content to it... If you're worried about keeping the systems separate, do exactly that... make two identical computers, and use one for the entertainment system and the other for the navigation system. And then if one dies, you have a backup.

[bestfriend]

I am thinking of strictly entertainment. I have a laptop that I do my work/photo stuff on. I was thinking of a mac mini for the boat. It could run the nav software, play music, play videos or TV, and speakers could be hooked up to it. I like that it is small. I have never used an HDTV LCD as a monitor, but at 15" or so, I think it would work good. Problems off the top of my head, how do you watch a DVD below and listen to music in the cockpit? Maybe the addition of an airport express? There has to be a way to integrate everything on a small scale. The mini could hook up to the LCD via s-video or DVI, that way the TV could come in to the LCD via cable or vhf. Speakers run through an airport would allow several sets to be run individually. Hmmm. I like the video ipod idea, but the video is too compressed to look good on a bigger screen. We just used ours on a plane and it was good from two feet away with headphones, but not for more distance than that.