My future home network.

[racerx]

I'm no expert on home networking but this seem like overkill^100.

[Matra et Alpine]

uh, uh. I'm not interested in stuff like SETI. XGrid is a tool that can be combined with applications like shake, the next Final Cut Pro and Compressor for distributed rendering and compression of uncompressed video material. It's nothing like small packets used to solve equations and SETI crunching. These are big blocks of uncompressed video. In fact XGrid is open and a developer can easily add XGrid support to his app. One of the great things in the upcoming OS X releasse.

hee-hee. Apple finally delivers what HP-UX had 10 years ago
I wasn't sure your intention with grid computation.
If you're SERIOUS about doing that then waht otehre machines are you going to get to do the rendering ?
BECAUSE, you'd be MUCH better going for a multi-processor system and do the job properly
How many videos do you plan to re-render in real time ??
One machine can EASILY re-render in real time if they integrate the graphics planes in their drivers.
Professional studios need things like that because they have dozens of artists workign on dozens of frames from dozesn of films. If this is YOUR house and family have moved out, it's you and you alone
AND for all the others it doesn't matter how long a render takes does it !
I think you're playing mental masturbation with this network adn whilst we dont' mind than, please let us know.
IF you just want the sexiest things then advice will be differetn from that for if you want a tool to do the job.

I will be capturing over the Ethernet network and editing video with zero compression. I KNOW for a fact that a 100mbit network can not support this. Even some badly designed gigabit networks can have dropped frames with DV streams.

Yes, becuse you're talking about gigabit backbones of large neteworks with THOUSANDS of clinet/server connections. This is a dinky network with at most 10 computers in your house and only one user !!!!

And dropped frames is not something you want or you can start over again with capturing. I have seen this happen with my own eyes. The perfect solution would be fibrechannel but I can't afford that.

Total overjill for a network.
The MAIN issue with dropped packets is to look at PACKET rate you will produce and the packet rate the HRGs will sustain and the processors will sustain. ONE user is WELL short of saturating a 100Mb network for these tasks ( we presume you DONT try to render to and from a disk on one machien and do the rendering in another - that's still, do it in ONEmachine. As you proposed with the xgrid, you distribute the file chunks and then render. BUT you have to do the maths and remember that LAN will always be roughly an order of magnitude slower than internal computer busses. So if you take something OUTSIED of the computer to do you ned to make it able to do it 3-5 times faster for it to be worthwhile !!

I have no idea what DVTS is, sounds interesting, but I'm pretty sure Final Cut doesn't support it so that doesn't matter anyway.

It's a protocol for streaming video over UDP at VERY high rates adn no packet loss. It is one of many still in the air for next gen.

I know that those things don't take up a lot of bandwidth but I still want a fast ethernet for file copying and manipulation (big Photoshop files for example, I use A LOT of Photoshop). The idea is to store all my big PSDs, DV streams and music files on the media server so I need the fast access.

Well actually if you want the FASTEST access then you run a transparent cache filesystem on your local machine and allow the network to leave files on the local machine and prevent them being re-read the next time. With 200Gb disks for very few dollars it makes more sense. ( Or of course you avodi the complexity of file cache management and do that bit yourself. That's what I do. The main server is the files tore, when I want to edit anything I bring it to one of the machines do the edit/creation task and when FINISHED I move it back to the server. No need for complexity - sometimes IBM were right with K.I.S.S.
On 'fast' transfer remember that the longest time for medium sized files for a LAN transfer is the setup time
You'll notice the difference between 10/100 on files greater than about 5M. For 100/1000 difference expect that for 50M.
Also, you need to remember that 1000base is only the max BIT transimssion rate. The PACKET rate and hence the ACTUAL throughput for files and streaming is determiend by the packet assemblers in both machines and many other settings in the IP code. You'll find if you want maximum performance there are a LOT of things to learn and tweak, othersise you'll have fast gigabit adn it running at barely 100basT speeeds

[Matra et Alpine]

HAving run aroudn trying to help I kind of got a deja-vu feeling about this.
The way there used to be kids come on and talk about the ir cars and what they were going to do and it turned out they actually owned a Vauxhall Nova 1.2 , worked in McDonalds and coudl NEVER own the car they were talkign aboiut ?

I sense a NEW-NEW Ownerships challenge - can I get this one named after me ? - and that is to take pictures of the computers in question with bits of paper sticking out fo orifice with UCP nickname on ANyone else up for it ??