Articles and whitepapers

Multiroom Entertainment Servers - Issues and Solutions (1/4/2006)

By David Webster, Kaleidescape Europe

The desire to play any CD or track from a large collection of discs and in any room of the house has existed from the earliest days of CD players being integrated into multiroom audio installations.

Solutions using CD auto-changer mechanisms have been used with varying degrees of success, but at best are slow and have limited capacity. So with the arrival of very high capacity hard disk drives in recent years, the ability to store and catalogue large numbers of CDs digitally has led to the creation of new audio server products.

These have become increasingly popular as users realise the benefits of having their entire music collection available all the time, the ease of searching for tracks to play and the convenience of not having to handle the actual discs and boxes.

The evolution of entertainment servers

With the advent of DVDs and consumer hard disk drive (HDD) based video recorders it is only natural that users now expect audio servers to evolve into full entertainment servers and be able to deliver music and movies throughout the home. However, since the information on a DVD can be more than an order of magnitude greater than a CD, and this is just one of the technical issues with storing movies on HDD, creating entertainment servers that preserve the original quality and extra disc features, i.e. without data compression, has had to wait for even larger HDDs to become available.

Now that HDDs have capacities up to 500GB and are approaching Terabyte (TB) sizes, the problem of storing of many hundreds of standard- and even high-definition DVDs (when they become available), or thousands of CDs, is solved.

The Kaleidescape Server, Reader & Movie Player

Reliability

Of course HDD reliability remains an issue, as all mechanical components will eventually wear out, and users will expect a server to be protected against such inevitable failures. After all, no one will want the time-consuming task of importing all their content and creating personal playlists again, just because one drive has failed, and as PC experience tells us, very few people will ensure they have backups - especially if it requires user intervention. Although many audio servers have only one HDD, and so do not have any data protection, most entertainment servers do use some form of removable disk RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) storage. Unfortunately most RAID systems cannot be easily expanded to meet the needs of a user's growing collection, and so this can become an important purchasing consideration.

Because a single HDD failure in a RAID system can be tolerated by most entertainment servers without affecting the user's experience, it is important that it not go uncorrected before a second (i.e. unrecoverable) failure occurs. So, to make it easy for the user, some entertainment servers require an Internet connection that allows HDD and system health to be monitored and to automatically trigger an email to the dealer if there are any problems. The Internet will also often be used to provide software updates and to fetch disc data, cover art, etc. as used for automatic cataloguing, so generally a broadband connection is needed to access these services securely, which may be subscription based.

Searching the server by cover art

Multiroom distribution

AV distribution to multiple rooms can be achieved in two main ways; either as analogue signals from a centrally-located playback output, or digitally via an Ethernet network to a player located in the room, close to the display device. For use with conventional multiroom distribution systems, the former approach can be used and is particularly suitable for music, but to maintain movie quality by keeping the sound and picture in digital form, the latter is to be preferred. This also has the additional advantage of being usable with an existing home network and so avoids the requirement to run new wires.

Copyright

Frequently-asked questions about entertainment servers concern copyright and licensing issues. It is important that dealers and users be encouraged to check with the server manufacturer for satisfactory answers about how their products comply, especially as customers may need to enter into legal agreements before their product can be used. For example, the Kaleidescape system is designed and licensed solely for use in a single-family dwelling including private yachts and aircraft, and customers must sign a Service and Licence Agreement before their system can be activated.

Conclusion

The benefits of entertainment servers are many. Apart from the practical advantages of getting away from handling and organising collections of discs, which also protects them from accidental damage, there are the new ways that content can be conveniently enjoyed. For example, many rooms can be playing different movies at the same time, or maybe the same movie simultaneously or even at different points. It is also possible to listen to many different CDs in different listening zones, at the same time.

There is delight to be found in easily browsing collections and re-discovering movies and music that may have been overlooked, or even creating playlists of favourite music tracks or movie scenes. For families, there is the further assurance, on those systems that support parental controls based on movie ratings, that children cannot access inappropriate movies.

An attraction for the style-conscious and interior designers alike, may be the removal of disc collections from view, since physical access is no longer required. In some cases this may even result in significant cost savings by avoiding expensive custom-made furniture or by making better use of valuable space in the home. The latter is particularly true for yachts or jets where space is most often at a premium.

For dealers, entertainment servers allow them to provide new and effective solutions to their customer's entertainment problems, while adding value with installation, control system integration plus essential monitoring and maintenance services.

Today's systems are undoubtedly high-end products, with prices that may well limit mass market adoption, but the technology is evolving and is surely the way forward for all collectors of music and movies.

David Webster is Technical Sales Director EMEA, Kaleidescape Europe Ltd. Kaleidescape is headquartered in California and manufactures entertainment server products.

www.kaleidescape.com