OT?: Multi-Zone Audio -- Software/Hardware

[nipsmg]

I've just bought a house I will be moving into in February.  We're going to have to run a whole bunch of wire from a "media cabinet" to a LCD we're mounting over the fireplace ANYWAYS, so I have been toying with the idea of a whole house audio system.

I know there are plenty of commercial solutions out there but all are prohibitively expensive.  I think this should work in theory but I just would like some feedback from some people who know about this.

Apparenly sound cards like SB Live! have 5.1 output and that includes 2 separate speaker jacks that can be used as 2 different audio sources with the right drivers (correct me if I'm wrong here).  If I got a server in a cabinet with 2 of these cards, I *should* have 4 separate controllable output zones of which I should be able to run 4 different instances of media players outputting on each zone, giving me 4 different audio zones *PLEASE TELL ME if I'm off base*.

Form here, I should be able to either amp the audio and run speaker wire, or run the line level audio out (which you can do over Cat5e or speaker wire or even coax, i've seen solutions using all 3) out to the zones I want and then allow administration of the zones through wireless touchscreen devices throughout the house pointed at a web application in asp.net (Get 4 or 5 older Dell Axim x50's off e-bay, etc).

should this work in theory?  Any other ideas on how to pull this, off?  Software/Hardware? 

Note: I am a developer and if i hvae to write something to handle this it's not really an issue. 

Thanks in advance.

[Barry Barcrest]

What happened to your touchscreen jukebox software you were coding?

[nipsmg]

I still have it somewhere.  I got about 1/2 way through it as it was a school project and got a consulting job so I stopped coding it and ripped the website down.  I may end up resurrecting it as part of this.  It came down to choose life:family or choose coding, so I went the other way.

I've been following yours a bit, the feature list looks amazing.  I may end up using that for mine.

[Barry Barcrest]

I really liked the graphics you posted up for yours, the glass buttons looked really cool.