I am building a new home and want to be able to place all my components for the whole house in one room, and control them from each individual room. My question is what is the most appropriate controller to use, that will get the job done with the least expense. Is there anything almost as good as crestron and AMX that will cost less than these systems for this application? My Niles can only control one room, unfortunately. FYI, I will have (1) a dedicated home theater (arcam av8 preamp, arcam p7 amp, theta digital dvd, sharp dlp projector, satelite dish), (2) a plasma TV in the great room (need to still buy) with inwall speakers (still need to buy)and audio driven by the above arcam av8 preamp and a b&k 200.5 amp, (3) stereo in the library (arcam fmj c30 preamp, arcam cd92 cd player, proceed bpa amp, thiel cs2.3 speakers) and (4) outdoor ambiance music driven by the cheepest system I can find. thanks

How much control do you want

Look at the xantech 3.6" LCD Touchpanel. It is rather cheap and provides very flexible control and is used with basic xantech IR control systems. This unit will allow you to talk to your arcam equipment via RS232 or IR.

Mike

actually it is a 3.9" LCD

did they finally get the bugs worked out?

It sounds like you are taliing about two elements here. A home theatre, as well as multiroom control.

A few good RF remotes with built-in routing. (mx-800, RTI) If I understand correctly, you want all 4 systems to live in the same room, then distribute from there?

A practical way to go would be to have a keypad system with IR pass through and perhaps a Pronto remote control that can be used as the main theatre control system as well as a remote that can be used in any of the rooms to communicate with sources via the IR pass thru. Or, the keypads themselves could be used individually per room manually to talk to sources

I just went to a training seminar and Xantech has ironed out the bugs on the 3.9" touchsreen. With the use of the MRC88 you can do just about anything including RS232 Communication, local source input and IR Pass through. I have yet to install any of these new touchsreens yet so any feedback you guys have would be cool.

Mike

I can't seem to get a handle on what tcheater wants to do. It almost seems as if he has a stand alone theater, speakers for a plasma that will double as DA music, DA in library and DA outside.

If this is the case then 1) use Niles piece for theater if you like it. If not use a mx-800 or 3000. 2)use B&K 310 for library, exterior and plasma with B&K keypads for all 3 places with a mx-800 or 3000 for the plasma. stick you equipment in a middleatlantic rack and let it roll!