a surprise gift for the gf.......a sybian.

Double glazing to keep the bloody noise out, well try to at least

Well, I will give you one feature that we are designing into our villa.

A company called Jung does home automation. We will have a "smart home" where we can control pretty much everything from our iPad / iphone.

Electric windows, electric blinds, garage door opener, sprinkler system, misting system, entire villa sound system, fire places, door video station, door opening, all LED lights, pool lights, water fountain, CCTV's and security system, aircons.

Basically, can lie in bed and put the entire house to sleep with iPad, or wake the house up, or set a mood of designed settings, I.E, lights, temp.

And don't forget a backup generator for when the electricity goes out.

good idea for a thread but ruined by a few innapproriate posts. Humans are not home appliances

Ice machine.

Does anyone know where i can buy one?

I have 2 things. The first is finding a contractor to convert my plunge pool in phuket into a jacuzzi. Even though i am prepared to pay whatever it takes nobody seems interested. The second is to get my hands on a kick ass HTPC. Although you can get something for $300-700 here in Bangkok it still requires major programming and upgrades and I'm to stupid to do that. I saw this site in the US that builds custom ones where a fully loaded one can cost around $5k . I'm not gonna pay that much but reading through the options available makes me green with envy.

You can buy one for like 100-120k THB including installation. Self cleaning just need to switch water monthly.

Thanks for the suggestion but the current plunge pool is 4.5m x 1.6m and built into the balcony

If I had the money, I would have liked to purchase the new version of TGAU.

Fully automated, self lubricated, with all warning lights flashing all over, when overused.

But as I can't afford it, I can still dream of it.

You want a Welsh secondary education? More Engrish less acronyms!

@jj sure the company is called assassin htpc and their address is http://www.assassinhtpc.com/performance.php

The one I was looking at was the Prestige model and you can see all the options by pressing the customize and buy button. It's an excellent resource as the customization page has drop down menus that explain the advantages of adding or dropping components.

The problem is that these things get old fast as the technology improves both on the htpc side and the Tv side and I would hate to spend $3-4k or even $5k on my ultimate gadget and then have to replace it after a couple of years. Right now I'm just playing around with $100 android boxes running xbmc and over the course of a few months I've seen major changes in both the hardware and software sides.

Please let me know if you end up building one as I may venture down that route myself .

You would cry if you had to setup XBMC years ago.. now a basic install has everything running.

Haven't spent $3,000 on a PC since 1995

Like the idea of Jung home automation

Well, I will give you one feature that we are designing into our villa.

A company called Jung does home automation. We will have a "smart home" where we can control pretty much everything from our iPad / iphone.

Electric windows, electric blinds, garage door opener, sprinkler system, misting system, entire villa sound system, fire places, door video station, door opening, all LED lights, pool lights, water fountain, CCTV's and security system, aircons.

Basically, can lie in bed and put the entire house to sleep with iPad, or wake the house up, or set a mood of designed settings, I.E, lights, temp.

You do realize that the electricity goes off quite a lot here, especially in the rainy season,

or i bet you have a back up generator,just don't run out of fuel !

regards worgeordie

@jj sure the company is called assassin htpc and their address is http://www.assassinhtpc.com/performance.php

The one I was looking at was the Prestige model and you can see all the options by pressing the customize and buy button. It's an excellent resource as the customization page has drop down menus that explain the advantages of adding or dropping components.

The problem is that these things get old fast as the technology improves both on the htpc side and the Tv side and I would hate to spend $3-4k or even $5k on my ultimate gadget and then have to replace it after a couple of years. Right now I'm just playing around with $100 android boxes running xbmc and over the course of a few months I've seen major changes in both the hardware and software sides.

Please let me know if you end up building one as I may venture down that route myself .

Actually it seems quite a number of people are interesting by building their own HTPC.

The Prestige model looks nice but I might go an other way, with my HTPC being part of larger network. The basic idea is nowadays with Mom, Dad, kids ... each using their own connected device, PC, tablet, mobile phone ... it makes sense to install a small "enterprise" network in your home.

Now keeping that in mind but just focusing on the "entertainment" part, it makes more sense to have your media files in a shared NAS and downgrading the HTPC to the basic "Mini" in your reference website.

For the time being it is just something I'm thinking about. But seriously enough to have started studying Linux that seems a more appropriate OS for this kind of system.

Well, I will give you one feature that we are designing into our villa.

A company called Jung does home automation. We will have a "smart home" where we can control pretty much everything from our iPad / iphone.

Electric windows, electric blinds, garage door opener, sprinkler system, misting system, entire villa sound system, fire places, door video station, door opening, all LED lights, pool lights, water fountain, CCTV's and security system, aircons.

Basically, can lie in bed and put the entire house to sleep with iPad, or wake the house up, or set a mood of designed settings, I.E, lights, temp.

And don't forget a backup generator for when the electricity goes out.

A generator won't solve all the problems. These electronic systems are more sensible to the micro cuts that most of the time people don't even notice than your average kitchen appliance. I had a couple of devices damaged because of that.

A Soundsgooderizer for the wife...with optional wife-ejector.