What are people doing for TV distribution?

[BrettS]

I'm not sure if this is the best forum... or even the right board for this question, but hopefully someone can send me in the right direction

Like most people I have several TV's in my house and my wife just mentioned that she'd like to add several more. Because DirecTV charges $6 per month for each receiver and also for the sake of simplicity and convience I'd really rather not have to get a new receiver for each TV.

I'd love to be able to take two or three DirecTV receivers, one or two VCR's and two DVD players and install them in the basement and allow whoever is watching TV to be able to watch whichever device they would like on whichever TV they want. In my house it's pretty rare for more than two TV's to be on at once, so I think that this is a good assortment of input devices.

My question is this, however... how do I go about distributing the signals from all of these devices? How about controlling them from each TV? I have a number of programmable universal remotes, so I can reprogram the remotes as necessary, however, each of my existing DirecTV receivers are the same brand and model, so they use the same IR codes... and the same goes for my existing VCR's and DVD players. How can I isolate them so that the signal sent from the remote controls the device being watched on the TV?

Finally, how can I make this user friendly... preferably user friendly enough that someone can come into my house and pickup a remote and watch TV without having to go through a two day course on using my system.

What are my options?

Thanks much,
Brett

[CFGuy]

For the distribution part, here is a really good tutorial on how to setup modulators, splitters, etc.

http://www.hometech.com/learn/video.html

[Blade]

This is what I use and it seems to work quite well.

http://crossbarmedia.com/

[bruce l]

Blade - Does the AvCast seperate the IR control so that you can have multiple sources with the same IR controls ?

For example 2 identical DVD players, I want to watch one in the front room on one avcast channel. The AvCast will know which one I'm watching on only change that DVD or does it send all IR received to all Video sources ?

[Blade]

I would say if you can set the remote address, it should work

[BrettS]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Blade:
I would say if you can set the remote address, it should work <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What do you mean by this? Set some sort of remote address on the AVCast? Set a remote address on the DVD player so it will respond to a second set of IR commands? Something else entirely?

Thanks,
Brett

[BrettS]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bruce L:
Blade - Does the AvCast seperate the IR control so that you can have multiple sources with the same IR controls ?

For example 2 identical DVD players, I want to watch one in the front room on one avcast channel. The AvCast will know which one I'm watching on only change that DVD or does it send all IR received to all Video sources ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is what I'm having the hardest time figuring out how to do. Even if I did have DVD players that could respond to different IR commands or two different brands of DVD players I would have problems with usability... people would have to know that if they were watching Channel 3 then they need to use DVD1 on the remote and if they are watching Channel 4 then they need to use DVD2... and I really don't want that.

The only other option I can come up with is to use an Ocelot that will intercept all the IR commands. It would listen when you set up the TV and if you selected the channel for DVD1 then it would know to relay the remote commands to DVD1... if you selected DVD2 then it would relay the commands there.

I have never used an Ocelot before, so I don't even know if this idea would be possible... or feasable... you might need to have one ocelot for each TV you want to watch... or can the ocelot have more than one IR input... and be able to tell which input an IR command came from?

Surely Bruce and I are not the first ones faced with this problem... is there a solution for this?

Thanks,
Brett

[GenevaDude]

I have several sat receivers in the basement. The outputs go to a RadioShack cable transmitter that has a digital LED display of the channel. I use powermids to send IR to the receivers.
My home videocams go to a 9 input video unit, and it also goes to a RadioShack transmitter into the cable system. The Dish receiver is in the family room and is not yet set to go thru the same setup.

The Cable TV comes in to the house, into a 10 output or so splitter and to the TV's in the house. We also have a two way amplifier (Internet Cable I/O) at the input.
Signals from the RadioShack transmitters each go thru an amplifier because they are coupled to the distribution splitter.

Signals are good in all rooms except for the Master BedRoom, because we moved the TV about as far away from where the builders wanted us to place it. The very high channels (&gt;90) have some snow. This will be fixed some day. Right now I have about 50 feet of cable running around the room.

[fireball]

Not really commenting on this thread but just one of the comments in here. I love the little Radio Shack modulators that GenevaDude is talking about! You can pick them up for about $25, set them to just about any higher channel, and they work perfectly. Not only that but once you set it up you can forget about it.

[smee]

I also like the Radio Shack modulators. They are a real bargain at that price. Unfortunately, they seem to have been discontinued.

[bruce l]

Yes they have been discontinued - can't order them online either. I bought one last summer for video camera and it works great - but it doesn't have any IR control either.

Only way to get em now is if the local RS has em left over or off Ebay

[BrettS]

This is an incredibly old thread, but since I was the original poster and since I now have a solution that's been working (quite well, in fact) for a few months I figured I'd just post a quick followup for others who may be interested in this.

What I finally wound up doing was getting three of the RS modulators that GenevaDude mentioned and connecting them to my two satellite receivers and one DVD player. I used a simple coax 1 to 4 device splitter backwards (most of the can be used backwards to combine signals) to combine the signals from the three modulators and also the channel 3 output from my VCR onto one coax cable. This allows me to select my VCR, DVD player, or one of two Satellite receivers from any TV simply by tuning into the right channel. For IR distribution I used the radio shack pyramid shaped IR extenders - a receiver in each room with a TV and a transmitter by the video equipment which is in my home theater.

To make it easy for my wife and others to select what they want to watch and control the equipment I have a universal programmable remote by each TV. I used the Sony RM-VL900. Unfortunatly, I think Sony has discontinued that model, but any universal remote with macro capabilities should work. The Sony Remote I'm using allows you to send a macro when you press a component selection button. For example, I have the remote set up to turn on the TV, and select channel 3 when someone presses the VCR button on the remote. If someone presses the DVD button it will turn on the TV and select channel 71. (Which is what I have my modulator set to for the DVD player). Since this is done when the component select button is pressed, after the TV has been set up to view a particular source the universal remote is also set up to control that source. This seems to work very well and it only takes a minute to explain the system to my guests and they have no trouble watching what they want.

Here are some of my thoughts for others considering doing something similar -

Advantages -

Easy to use and set up and also fairly inexpensive. I paid $75 (total) for the three modulators. I already had the Radio Shack remote control extenders and the Universal remotes, but even if you had to purchase those you should be able to set up a system like this for well under $300.

Originally I was concerned about trying to set it up so that you could turn on a TV and start watching something that no one else was already watching. What I've found is that simply having two buttons on my universal remote for the two satallite recievers works fairly well. If someone is watching one of the receivers it's very simple for someone else just to push the other button on the remote to switch to the second receiver. It also makes it very easy for people to watch the same thing on multiple TV's. It's nice to be able to put the DVD we're watching in the theater up on the kitchen TV so if someone goes to refill their drink we don't need to pause the movie... or we can start watching a show on our Tivo in the living room, and pause it, then go to the bedroom and turn on the TV in there and finish it. I think I was overcomplicating things by trying to set it up the way I originally planned.

Disadvantages -

Mono signals - unfortunatly, the cheap modulators from Radio Shack (as well as most other consumer level modulators) will only modulate a mono audio signal. There are some stereo modulators out there, but they are several hundred dollars... way out of my budget. In the end, this didn't wind up being a really big deal for me because I figured that while the TV's in my living room, kitchen, and bedroom were able to produce a stereo signal it's not likly to make much of a difference due to the poor accoustics in those rooms and the fact that the speakers are only a foot or so apart on each side of the TV. The only place I was concerened about maintaining a stereo signal was in my theater. Since the equipment was already in the theater I just didn't use the modulated signal for the theater. Instead I connected the line level outputs of all of the equipment to my receiver in addition to the modulators. Most of the equipment I was using had dual outputs, but in the case of one of my satallite receivers I needed to buy a cable to split the signal. This way I still get a stereo (or better) signal in the theater where it counts and I still get to use the cheap modulators for the rest of the house.

Power management - Unfortunatly I couldn't come up with a good way to deal with turning the power to the video equipment on and off, so it stays on all the time - all the power button on my universal remotes do is turn the TV on and off. The problem is that if you set up the remote to turn off both the TV and the DVD player (in DVD mode, of course) and two people are watching the DVD in different rooms then when one person is finished and pushes the off button then the DVD player will turn off for the other person. The only workaround I can come up with is to have the remote automatically turn on the equipment with a descrete code when you push a component select button on the remote, then have a seperate off command for the equipment. That way if you were sure that no one else was using that device you could shut it off when you were done. Unfortunatly that's an extra step and will make using the system more confusing, so I decided to just leave everything on all the time. I can't imagine that the equipment uses too much power (although hopefully I'll know for sure when I get a kill-a-watt meter)

In any case, that's how I wound up setting up my system and I (as well as my wife) are very happy with it. Let me know if you have any questions or comments

Brett