One for tvropro...

[jaray]

...or for anyone who can shed some light, I ran across this old thread, http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/179942-wvxf-switching-tv-3.html
The part where tvro mentioned sending his different receivers via coax on different channels throughout the house. Someone did ask for some specifics on how you did this but there was no response.
If your still doing it this way, or if anyone is doing something similar would you please post what equipment you used to do this? Maybe just some details so I can maybe draw it out in my head and come up with a plan for something like this.

thanks...

 

[Anole]

An ex TV engineer from KTLA moved off into the sticks.
He put an amp on his OTA antenna, followed by 3 filters to only pass the three local stations.
Then, he hung high quality modulators on the four outputs of his four Dish receivers.
All these signals, he fed into an RF combiner.
That was piped throughout the house and all he had to do was change channels to see his favorite shows.
Three of the four Dish receivers were left on dedicated channels, and the forth he used for surfing.

In another situation, my buddy took his incoming cable and ran it through a low pass filter.
That got rid of channels (or noise) above channel 80 or so.
He then took three Radio Shack (Sadoun sold a similar) synthesized modulators, which could be set to any OTA or cable channel (had an LED display) and fed that with Dish Network receiver, computer, and DTV converter box.
I think he used channels 81, 83, and 85...?
The cable signal and the three modulators were combined in a 4x1 RF splitter, used backwards, and fed throughout his house.
This is technically not proper, but it worked well for him.

I once read about TVroPro's setup, and it was far more complicated and professional.

 

[Dishman Dan]

This might help!

I use a "Channel Plus" brand channel modulator to feed my video throught the house on 4 uhf channels. Mine is a older model that is mono and some of the new ones are stereo plus have jacks for repeaters for remote control. I use X10 Powermids to transmit my remote commands from other rooms. These are simple to use and have a coax in/output plus composite jacks to hook up your AV equipment. I have a DVD/HDD recorder with FTA CATV, Bluray player with Netflix, 400 disc DVD megachanger and a VCR (???) currently hooked up. When I get the 4DTV up again the VCR will be history! The Channel Plus modulators can be found on Ebay and sometimes very reasonable. Just type Channel Plus on the search and you will find them mixed in along with other Channel Plus products. My model number is 5445 (The 4 designates 4 channels) and the units are available in 1, 2, 3 and 4 channels.

 

[hd fan]

I use a channel plus stop band filter on the analog cable feed that kills from ch 71 to 77 I think, creating 3 clean chnls , 72 , 74 and 76 that I use to send 3 different Sat channels throught out the house. Creating a personal analog cable, 71 from the local cable co and 3 from sat receivers (Bell TV included). Only one RF modulator since the Bell TV receiver modulates both tuner outputs.

A splitter used backwards becomes a combiner as it is basically the same as using a Splitter/Combiner branded device.

 

[tvro]

I have 6 channels I send around my house a 3 channel modulator and a 2 channel modulator and a single channel modulator plus 3 over the air channels I have 6 tv's and all you do is tune to one of the 6 channels or over the air channels and you have a picture works great now I am looking into using HD modulators when prices are better right now for HD I use either singbox pro hd or have run a HDMI or component cable to my 3 big screens that way I get my HD content on the ones I want it on but would like to get HD on all tv's. My channels are 4dtv with HDD 200 decoder, Pansat 9200HD, Starchoice 630PVR, Panasonic dvd recorder, Polaroid DVD PVR and my home video surveillance cameras which allows me to see my front back and garage 2 all on channel 73 on any tv in house.

 

[tvropro]

My stuff changes around from time to time, Right now I have OTA analog & digital fed into the system also DirecTV, 4DTV, Shaw (Starchoice) and DVB. This stuff is so simple, start with a simple building block 1 channel and build from there. Use modulaters, channel combiners, traps, filters etc.

Here is a link to how to build your own VHF trap I designed so you can inject channels.

TvroPro Electronic Lab

God, I wish I could get payed for this stuff. I can do it in my sleep.

 

[jaray]

It does sound pretty straight-forward. My issue that keeps creeping up every time I start thinking about this is cabling.
Right now, I have multiple coax runs coming into the house from a few different dishes...all running directly to my living room nice and neat and connected to their respective satellite IRD's.. I ran them direct to this area and did not stop in my utility room first to a junction block then on to the living room. ( I saw this as unnecessary splices, joiners etc...)So now I'm considering building a small head end in my utility room where all of my LAN stuff is and existing cable runs to to jacks in the house terminate.
So either I run a whack more coax runs from the dishes to this room in addition to the already full conduit and buy a second set of the receivers that I want to feed the head end with, or remove the ones from the living room into the head end area. The 2nd option to me has 1 big problem right away (picture quality). I'm not about to send hdmi, s-video etc original signals into a unit to be converted into a degraded coax signal which to me is the same as the days when all we had was analog cable from the cableco.
This is suitable for 2nd best TV maybe in the bedroom or kids room, but for any TV where I'd like descent picture quality how does anyone see this as a quality way to get signal around?

I'm not knocking anyones builds down, as it sounds very interesting but this is a good way to start a constructive thread of these kinds of issues. I can't be the only one in this predicament,

thoughts??

 

[tvropro]

I designed mine as an in house SMATV system. It is not meant to replace first generation video at specific tv's in fact I run composite video and stereo audio to 2 tv's away from my main receivers and main home theater. It's nice for the other tv's to watch what you want on any tv.

 

[Anole]

well, since you put it that way...

My issue that keeps creeping up every time I start thinking about this is cabling.

The 2nd option to me has 1 big problem right away (picture quality).
...This is suitable for 2nd best TV maybe in the bedroom or kids room, but for any TV where I'd like descent picture quality how does anyone see this as a quality way to get signal around?

When I started, I did run a coax to my bedroom and watched from the channel 3 modulator in my sat receiver.
Transmitting video wirelessly on a UHF channel didn't work for me, even 15 feet.
At the time, my big concern was getting remote control of the living room satellite box.

I'm not about to send hdmi, s-video etc original signals into a unit to be converted into a degraded coax signal ...

I bough a 50' Svideo cable for a buddy (who requested it), but that was for SD.
He snaked it from his master bedroom to his computer room.

But, as I've moved to more HD content and distribution, I certainly agree.
Today, the traditional ways to move HD would be:
- component
- DVI
- HDMI

I don't want to start a war here, but in my opinion, DVI is dead, Component is for short runs and 720, and only HDMI is interesting as a future solution.
And, I don't think HDMI over long cable runs (even with extenders) makes a lot of sense, if you demand distribution over a very large house.
If you can run a 12' HMDI through a wall to an adjacent room, you have a winner, though. - :up

... this is a good way to start a constructive thread of these kinds of issues. I can't be the only one in this predicament,

thoughts??

Since you put it that way, yes.
CAT5 and media extenders are the best way to move HD content all over a large structure.
Some have their shortcomings, but I feel this is the sandbox you'll have to play in, if your big house needs HD.
Several members have mentioned such a setup, and I refer you to them for best advice.

I'm just now setting up a core2duo laptop running Vista Media Center in the living room.
The dual tuner is remoted over the LAN, and not even in the same room.
For playback in the bedroom, I'll access video from a master hard drive , and playback with a bedroom computer or media box.
Adding more rooms would require just one CAT5 to the master video repository (server).

 

[pendragon]

The approaches outlined above are pretty much limited to standard definition television, and NTSC at that. If you're content with this, the technologies required are very mature and there is no reason to read further.

However this is backwards-looking as you're living with 1950s-grade standards. As technology progresses it will become increasingly more difficult to force fit solutions into such a scheme. A logical alternative might be to use a similar infrastructure but substitute ATSC modulators so HD could be distributed. However while there have been plans discussed for the past decade regarding low cost ATSC modulators, nothing has yet happened. There are technical and possibly legal issues with how this might work.

A different reason the ATSC modulator solution may not be happening is the same result can be already be accomplished at very low cost with a completely different paradigm. You already have the coax lines coming into one place of your house where all your receivers are located. That will make things much easier. What you would need to do is set up a media server that can grab the transport stream data from all of your media sources and control their tuning. You then simply run Cat 5 or 6 Ethernet cables to the rooms where each television is located and set up either a PC or a media extender to render the data for the screen. Each viewing location has live and recorded access to all of your media sources, and as long as there is no conflict, people can watch whatever they want simultaneously.

We implemented such a system nearly four years ago using SageTV, but there are other approaches. We don't have to buy multiple receivers for each room or string all the coax that would be required. Cat 5/6 cable is about as cheap as one can get wire and easy to route. You may already have it strung for your house computers. The media extenders are around $150 each and will run just about any resolution/frame rate imaginable, along with most audio formats. I've worked with Sage to ensure they support 4:2:2 HD on their latest extenders. The only thing missing is Dolby E

This is really a dream system as everyone can set up recordings from anywhere for any receiver, and watch them or live programs wherever and whenever they please. The on-screen menu system is very logical and easy to run from a remote control. At the moment our receiver pool has 2 x OTA, 2 x FTA, 2 x Dish Network and 2 x Shaw Direct units under Sage control. I've tested it with up to 14 tuners, including 4DTV, meaning very complex input configurations are feasible. We currently have six media extenders for feeding the screens, but more could be added. A setup this size does take effort, but if you can set up FTA systems, the complexity is no more difficult.

 

[jaray]

Now that's the kind of discussion I'm looking for! I eat CAT5 and build networks in my sleep, lol. But, haven't got too much into the "media slinging" I currently run a Patriot Box Office streamer via CAT5 streaming all my network shares and movies. I can purchase another 1 or 2 of these no problem and put them wherever I want them, but I guess the part I'm missing is how to get my sat receivers into a common streaming server source. What are you using to "mux" your multiple receivers into and what are you using for media extenders? I don't want to move my receivers from my living room, but would like to access they're channels from a bedroom as an example. I don't necessarily require them to be able to be view in 2 places at one time though, so that might help simplify things.

 

[jaray]

More specifically, how are you catching the image from the sat receiver and feeding it into a LAN?
Perhaps a media computer to receive with some sort of streaming software? (ie SageTV)
I have a media PC in my entertainment area, and another PC with all my network shares running Tversity (when transcoding is needed), but I don't like having to use a computer to stream from if I don't have to.
With 4 PC's already idling, 1 for my Asterisk PBX, 1 hosting all my network shares, another for a PTP file sharing server and various laptops all running at any one time the last thing I want to do is have to dedicate another PC for a new task. An embedded box of some other sort is fine but not any more PC's if I can help it.

 

[pendragon]

You should be able to run something like SageTV on an existing computer if its location works. The load on the machine is normally very small. Sage runs on Windows, Linux and Macs. There are other options, such as MythTV, but I only have dated and cursory experience with those.

In terms of getting the data into the server, there are quite a few options depending on what you want to receive. FTA is easy, as almost any Windows tuner can be connected to Sage through apps such as DVB Dream and DVB Viewer. These are only used for recording and normally you would turn off rendering the audio/video to keep the processor usage low. OTA is also easy because there are a number of units that mesh easily. We use HD HomeRun which is a little net box that can siphon off any two channels to Sage per unit.

Cable, DBS and 4DTV are doable, but require some extra effort. There is a box that takes the HD component and audio outputs of a unit and re-encodes them as H.264 for Sage. I prefer the original transport streams and use Nextcom's R5000 product to extract these into a USB interface. This works with all 4DTV and Shaw Direct receivers, many cable boxes and certain Dish Network units.

In terms of media extenders, that depends entirely on which media server approach you take. Some of these just deposit recordings into file systems, which many media extenders can access. Don't expect those to handle FTA peculiar formats like 4:2:2. The Sage extender handles these formats fine, and is much more closely integrated in that you deal with programs and schedules rather than files. This is far more natural for non-bit-heads, if you have those in your house.

 

[Tron]

Today, the traditional ways to move HD would be:
- component
- DVI
- HDMI

I don't want to start a war here, but in my opinion, DVI is dead, Component is for short runs and 720, and only HDMI is interesting as a future solution.
And, I don't think HDMI over long cable runs (even with extenders) makes a lot of sense, if you demand distribution over a very large house.
If you can run a 12' HMDI through a wall to an adjacent room, you have a winner, though. - :up

If you need to move uncompressed HD, you have two choices: HDMI and HD-SDI. HD-SDI is the better choice for long runs, as it can be run 500'. It utilizes very high quality coax (such as Belden 1694), and BNC fittings. The converters to and from HDMI are a bit pricey, though, as is the cable...