Whole Home Video Distribution - HELP!

ccmichaelson

Active Member
New house under construction.  
 
Requirement
At each TV location I only want a TV - no DirectTv receiver, no DVD player, no xbox/playstation/etc.  
 
Wiring
I plan to home run all cables (CAT6, RG6, possibly HDMI or I'll use CAT6 w/ Ballums) from each TV location to the central closet.
 
Situation
I seat down in my comfy chair and I want to watch the superbowl.  How do I turn on the TV, DirectTV receiver (which is in the closet downstairs), and tune to channel 13?
 
Hope that makes sense!
 
I'm certain that there are plenty of ways to skin this thing... and there are probably a lot of dependencies. For example, do you want to share any sources (e.g. DVD player, BluRay, Xbox, Playstation) to multiple TVs or rooms? Do you want any of the rooms to have surround sound? What resolutions do the TVs support?
 
Re: HDMI, I have successfully used 50', 75', and 100' HDMI cables from Monoprice.
 
I've also used an inexpensive 4x2 HDMI matrix switcher to share 4 sources to 2 different rooms; there are plenty of them out there of various input/output variety as well.
 
Re: control, I've installed multiple Xantech IR extenders and have had very good results controlling IR devices in closets or remote locations. I have one of these on top of my TV now; I've also installed their flush mount model into a single-gang blank wall plate as well.
 
I agree with drvnbysound there are plenty of ways to achieve this setup. For HDMI I use BlueRigger cables from Amazon and I got 2 50 foot drops 1 feeding an Amazon Fire TV and another feeding a Ceton Echo with zero loss. I'm sure you could also get a Harmony remote and use RF or get IR extenders (I use an IR block) to universally control everything.
 
Allow me to expand my question...  I plan to have ~6 TV's mounted on walls throughout the two floor house.  I will have multiple video sources in my central basement room (multiple Direct TV receivers, blu-ray player, etc.) including multiple 7.1 receivers for certain TV locations w/ speakers.  I will also have at least one DVD/blue-ray player located upstairs.  
 
My wife and I always have at least our iphone/ipad with us.  I would love nothing more than to launch an app, select which room I am in, and hit the Watch TV button (which would turn on TV, turn on Directv receiver, perform any necessary A/V switching, and magically everything works).  I'd even be okay with switching apps (e.g. Directv app) to change channels.
 
Is this a pipe dream?
 
Look into Roomie Remote.  That's the app you'll run on your phone.  Then you just need to see what matrix switches it supports, or you can make work with it.
 
There's lots of gotchas involved with trying to run HDMI w/ surround sound through an HDMI switch to locations with different audio setups.  If one destination is just a TV with stereo speakers, and a different one is an AV receiver with surround sound, you'll probably only get basic stereo at the surround sound location.  Do a search for "lowest common denominator sound" or similar.
 
 
PS - There's at least one other iOS app that has similar capabilities, but I'm drawing a blank on the name.
 
I don't think your goal is a pipe dream, but finding the hardware to do exactly what you want... won't be an easy button.
 
Find someone else who has done this successfully and copy what he did, same hardware. Don't be a guinea pig. Put the time in, search on AVS. Don't reinvent the wheel.
 
you can do everything you want with Crestron but it won't be cheap and you'll need to learn Crestron programming. The way I would handle this is to break down what you're trying to accomplish into it's component parts, first you need to determine what you want to do
 
Goal: 
1. individual sources per TV: to me this means you do not want to be able to view the same source on different TV's, for example, your ps4 will only play on one TV and always the same TV.
2. Individual control of each TV and its sources.
2. Use 1 DVD player for all sources.
 
Hardware:
1. You will need 1 HDMI switch per TV, the number of inputs depending on how many devices you want to feed to your TV, here's a cheap 5x1 switch, 5 sources to 1 TV (http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011002&p_id=8203&seq=1&format=2)
2. You will need 1 pair of cat6 runs per TV for HDMI over cat6, there are baluns that will do this over 1 cat 6, I prefer to use the dual cat6 solutions. I wouldn't use conventional hdmi cables for anything longer than 20 feet straight run.
3. I would also run 1 cat6 for each TV in case you have smart tvs and they require internet, I prefer not to use wifi if I don't have to.
4. Run 1 cat6 for remote infrared, in case it's required by the blaster you choose, some blasters will work on a network, for others you can use the cat6 to send the IR signal to a remote blaster.
5. Your issue will be the DVD player, splitting a digital signal to be viewed by multiple devices at once can be tricky and may require a scaler at each destination device (or at the hdmi switch controlling each device). In the simplest terms, you will run a pair of cat6 for hdmi from the DVD to the basement. In the basement you will split the output from the DVD player into 6 outputs using an HDMI splitter, 1 output going to an input on the hdmi switch for each of the TVs in your house. That means whatever is playing on the DVD can be seen by all the TVs in the house should the TV's hdmi switch be set to that input. If all your TVs are identical, you may not have scaling issues. Here is a cheap hdmi splitter http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_id=10113&cs_id=1011308&p_id=8205&seq=1&format=2
 
Control:
1. Everything you're asking for can be controller through IR, I've never used RoomieRemote but from looking at it, it should do everything you need.
2. My only concern is that the blaster should work on a device specific manner, not line of sight. In other words, you don't want the blaster to send the commands to every device in the basement, just the devices it needs to control. You can accomplish this by segregating the devices for each room, so that the blaster signal from 1 room does not bleed into the devices for another room.
3. Normally, I would get 1 blaster, with individual outs and connect 1 output over the IR received of each device. You'd have to see how roomie handles that.
 
 
I'm not an expert and I'm sure there are tons of things I'm forgetting to leave out, but maybe the community can help build upon it and/or correct me where I'm wrong. If you want to go with better equipment, check out Atlona or snapav.
 
Hmmmm.. Thing I always have trouble understanding is WHY people want to do this? 
 
We have a 20 year old house wired with a plain old coax to each location.  We have a DirecTV DVR and 4 remote units. We have HD at every location, and each person can watch whatever they want live or watch recorded programs.  DVD players, Netflix, Amazon players, AppleTV, Xboxes are all so cheap that you can each at each location a whole lot cheaper than your going to distribute it through your house.
 
DirecTV even distributes your Internet through your cable, so if Wi-Fi doesn't reach your TV location, a simple transceiver gives Internet to you.  
 
Excuse my ignorance, but what does video distribution give you that you can't do without it?  Is the problem that you can't play a DVD through your whole house at once?
 
ccmichaelson said:
Allow me to expand my question...  I plan to have ~6 TV's mounted on walls throughout the two floor house.  I will have multiple video sources in my central basement room (multiple Direct TV receivers, blu-ray player, etc.) including multiple 7.1 receivers for certain TV locations w/ speakers.  I will also have at least one DVD/blue-ray player located upstairs.  
 
My wife and I always have at least our iphone/ipad with us.  I would love nothing more than to launch an app, select which room I am in, and hit the Watch TV button (which would turn on TV, turn on Directv receiver, perform any necessary A/V switching, and magically everything works).  I'd even be okay with switching apps (e.g. Directv app) to change channels.
 
Is this a pipe dream?
I pick up my DirecTV remote by every TV and press the ON button. (You could call this your "watch TV button.") It even turns on a separate amp if I have one.  I don't even have to select the room I'm in and I don't even need to carry around my iPad or launch an app. Magically everything also works, and the same remote that turns on the TV can even turn the channel or adjust the volume and I don't even need to launch a "different app" to do it.
 
(Most Smart TV's nowadays have plenty of apps if you feel the need to launch them.)
 
I agree with ano. I kind of gave up on the idea of a matrix switch for myself when whole house DVRs appeared.

For the surround sound TV locations, you can use extenders (Binary from SnapAV are popular, leaning toward that myself) to remotely locate the AVR, but you may want to keep a BDP local. Small zone amps can be located behind the TV as well. Use large recessed TV boxes/outlets, for power and connections, behind the TV.
 
There was probably a time in the past where sources were wide and expensive and copy protection was non-existent where video distribution made some sense, but things have progressed a great deal from there.  You can get hundreds of video sources on devices the size of a thumb drive, and copy protection stands in the way of everything you might want to do, if you could even figure out a way to do it and distribute it. Between the Internet and TV/Satellite being available everywhere, and shareable DVR's being the norm, is there really a need to distribute video anymore?  Maybe to view security cameras, but even those are IP based now, and Wi-Fi does a good job at distributing that without even using wires.  Just my views.
 
My wife and I always have at least our iphone/ipad with us.  I would love nothing more than to launch an app, select which room I am in, and hit the Watch TV button (which would turn on TV, turn on Directv receiver, perform any necessary A/V switching, and magically everything works).  I'd even be okay with switching apps (e.g. Directv app) to change channels.
 
Is this a pipe dream?
 
It is not a pipe dream.
 
You can do anything today with tablets / telephone remote control devices.
 
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