HD receivers on home distribution

[Belmont Ed]

I have a home system with coax running to many rooms. At present I have two sat receivers and a outdoor antenna feeding a Channel plus box. The channel Plus converts one sat reciever to ch 23 and the other to ch 17. This signal is distributed around the house.
This works fine for my wife and I, we just carry the remote to the room where we want to watch TV . The HD signal is over the air antenna.

I want to update my Satellite system to HD, but I was told I couldn't use this setup as the Satellite receiver has to be by the TV and use a HDMI cable. Is this true?
Ed

 

[Jim S.]

There are no satellite receivers with ATSC modulators because programming originators are terrified that people will copy their programming (never mind that with programming carriers slow to pick up HD channels, that may be the only way some people get to see them.)

How many HD TVs do you want to have? If you're saying you only want one and the problem is your satellite cables are running to someplace not near the TV, you can get long HDMI cables (don't buy expensive ones, cheap ones work fine.) If you're saying you plan on replacing all the TVs with HD models, then it'll be a lot more difficult.

 

[Belmont Ed]

Jim,
I have two HD TV's. I looked at long HDMI cables and had a heart attack. The problem is running them to the TV from my receiver locations room. If what you say is true, it looks like I need a HD receiver at the tv or be happy with over the air limits.
thanks
Ed

 

[harshness]

I looked at long HDMI cables and had a heart attack.

Coronaries are only warranted when http://www.monoprice.com prices them out of reach.

The answer to inexpensively distributing HD programming is currently no and it will likely stay that way.

 

[rickaren]

Lots of new products out there now or shortly to allow you HD over wire or wires-less. I presently have three HD LCDs and a HD computer hooked to coax and yes they are not HD but look really good. I can put HD to SD on any and control with whole house remotes, from both E* & D*. I plan to up-date my system of 22 cables to full HD in the near future. You might check out this LINK:
HANA Demonstrates Integrated Home HD Networking at CES 2008 (News Search) | SmartMoney.com

or search other Discussion Sites but you can or will be able to do full HD. If you do buy something now we would all like to know how pleased you are here, since this is not know to most.

Good Luck!

 

[Jim S.]

Jim,
I have two HD TV's. I looked at long HDMI cables and had a heart attack. The problem is running them to the TV from my receiver locations room. If what you say is true, it looks like I need a HD receiver at the tv or be happy with over the air limits.
thanks
Ed

Some (all?) of Dish's HD receivers will let you use HDMI and component at the same time so you can have HD on two TVs (only one channel at a time though.) The catch is that some of the movie channels may in the future restrict output via component. (Which doesn't make sense since any HD digitizer with anything other than an ATSC/QAM input is still expensive, and both HD optical disc formats are already cracked, but...)

I'm not sure if that helps you or not because I'm not sure how long of a run we're talking about. You can also get component-to-cat5 converters, but I think the cost would be a lot more. (Mass of cable certainly a lot less though!)