Trying to make sure I wire my house correctly

[duhskier]

I am trying to design a layout of the wiring for my new house and would like some input on what I should wire for. Here are the known issues so far.


1. This is new construction and my walls are open for another 3 weeks.
2. I have decided on using Direct TV (HR44 is what I want so far) and will be a new client as I left them over a year ago when I moved away to start construction on this raw land.
3. I do not want any boxes at any TV and have a AV closet built into the house with plenty of ventilation.
4. If I have to have one at a TV, it will be in the Bunk room as this is the only one with a hutch close to put it in/on.
5. There are 6 TV's being installed
6. I will buy 4 RVU prepared TV's for the primary viewing
A. 1 TV is in my "Loft" and will be used for early morning news and late night movies
B. 1 TV is in the Kids Bunk Room and will be used for our young children and their movies and games when old enough
C. 1 TV is in our Family room and will get the most use every day
D. 1 TV is in my game room and will be the main movie and NFL TV. If this is on, the loft will not be used
E. 1 TV is in the same room of the Game Room TV and will only be used on sports days to watch two different games. - NON RVU
F. 1 TV is an outside TV and will only be used rarely - NON RVU

7. We are a family of 5 with two small grade school children so using more than 3-4 TV's at a time would be rare
8. We rarely record anything except some programs for the kids and football games. I would estimate only 10 items a month at most.
9. We use Apple TV for most movie watching.

I cannot figure out how to set up a Genie for 4 of these TV's and then have two sets at other boxes, or use a splitter or???

I am not ordering the equipment now, just getting the internal wiring ready for Direct TV but I cannot order the install yet as there is not power.

I believe I need the following installed in my walls, please let me know and give any advice you feel I should know.

*** FROM AV CLOSET TO EACH RVU TV:

1 RG6 from HR44 (hopefully left in the closet but if I cant, I will run these from this box in the Bunk room)
1 CAT6 for Sonos Sound Bar then CAT6 to Samsung RVU TV for SMART TV
1 CAT6 for Apple TV
Pair of Cat6 for a HDMI Extender (Not sure what I will use this for but Just in Case)

*** FROM AV CLOSET TO THE TWO NON RVU TV's

1 RG6 from a Direct TV box - Not sure what
1 CAT6 for SMART TV
Pair of Cat6 for a HDMI Extender (Not sure what I will use this for but Just in Case)


I think I need to run 4 cables for the future DIRECT TV Install from the roof placement to the AV Closet

Obviously power is needed everywhere and where I have a loacl router/wifi station, I will grab the CAT6 from there instead of the AV closet.

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[texasbrit]

I have several comments about this plan.

First, IMHO the idea of placing all the DirecTV equipment in one place and then driving Tvs in different rooms in the house is very "iffy" to say the least. RF control through walls in the house often does not work very well, and the devices that carry remote commands back through the cables are not too reliable either. Additionally you do not seem to realize that if you have a DirecTv box in a central location and want to connect a non-RVU HDTV to it, you will need an HDMI cable running from the box (long, in-wall quality, expensive), through the walls to the remote TV. RG6 will not work for HD.

So let's look at the configuration.

First, the HR44 will need to go somewhere where it can drive a local TV and be connected to the whole home network. This really should be in the family room, because the client boxes and RVU TVs will always be slower than the HR44 and I think the longer response time will drive you crazy.
The RVU TVs and DirecTV genie clients are NOT connected directly to the HR44, they are connected to the Whole Home network which runs on the RG6 carrying the satellite signals, so the cables run back to the AV closet.
If it were me, I would install an HDDVR in the Kid's room. Putting a client in there (either a DirecTV client or an RVU TV) is NOT a good solution because you can't stop the kids watching anything in the HR44 playlist (Clients do not have their own parental controls), or deleting stuff in the playlist.

Your non-RVU Tvs would need to be connected to a DirecTV box using HDMI. You could use a client box, or a small receiver like the H25, your monthly cost will be the same. The H25 can be wall mounted like the Genie client so that would avoid a long HDMI cable run.

Let's assume for the moment you put the HR44 in the family room. If you have four RVU Tvs, you can only use three at a time anyway, so the one in the family room would not use RVU because it would be directly connected to the HR44.
One other thing to mention. With an HR44 and one HD DVR you are using up seven tuner slots. If you have another HDDVR, say in the game room, that will use nine slots so you will get an SWM16 as part of the install. If you do this later it will be expensive.

So if it were me I would have:

HR44 in family room.
HR2x DVR in kids room
HR2x DVR in game room.
RVU TV in loft
Directv client driving second game room TV
Direct client driving outside TV.

That way I have a maximum of three RVU TVs/clients, I get the response time I need in the family room and in the game room, and I can keep the kids on their own system which can have parental controls and does not share the main playlist

 

[blueliner17]

I'm thinking about ordering an HR44 (when available in my area) Will this setup work? I only have 2 TVs. Do I need a CCK? sorry for all the newbie questions.

HR44 in family room (coax + ethernet available)
C41 in bedroom (coax available but no ethernet)

 

[harshness]

I'm thinking about ordering an HR44 (when available in my area) Will this setup work? I only have 2 TVs. Do I need a CCK? sorry for all the newbie questions.

You would be better served (as would the original poster) by creating a new thread.

 

[harshness]

Your insistence that there be no boxes is going to be an ongoing problem. Unless all of the TVs are going to be mounted flat to the wall, I'm not sure this requirement is necessary.

Engineering a system around something as proprietary as RVU (there are still no certified RVU servers) probably isn't a good idea. If you choose to leave DIRECTV again (or if DIRECTV updates their technology significantly, you're going to end up with boxes.

As the whole home technologies develop, there's probably going to be some changes and you certainly don't want to have to change out your TVs when that happens.

texasbrit makes man very important points and you need to look at them carefully and see if your model considered them.

 

[dbean]

had a very similar set of questions for our new build, we finally moved in last Sat. !!

http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/307947-dtv-genie-and-clients-in-central-location

I also wanted everything centralized in server rack, but I've been finding out it's difficult to say the least. I went the extra step and installed high quality 23awg shielded cat 6 for the hdmi over cat6 converters and they still do NOT work to send signal from a genie client, (C31) to a remote TV. A dish vip722 receiver and Sony BluRay player work fine over the same exact HDMI converter. Im also finding out that the RF remotes from DTV are sub-par.

I finally got frustrated last night and moved the c31 client to the TV and zip tied it onto the back of the TV, out of sight. Easy enough, they are a little smaller then a check box. I was 10 feet away with the paired RF remote and it would not work! 10' feet...come on!! It would not reliably work until I removed all my zip ties and had it in plain view.
What's the point of an RF remote if won't work w/out line of sight?

The genie, HR34 does work when left in the server cabinet. It seemed to function normally using hdmi over cat6. The remote also worked OK.
Seems like the c31's just don't have enough...everything, remote range, or hdmi signal strength.

If I were to do it again, I'd get 3 regular boxes and network them together. Not very versed on DTV, whatever models support whole home networking, maybe 3 HR34's?

I also had a samsung RVU TV, but the installer said he was changing it to a C31 client...too many issues with RVU.

something to think about...

 

[dishcomm]

I have several comments about this plan.

First, IMHO the idea of placing all the DirecTV equipment in one place and then driving Tvs in different rooms in the house is very "iffy" to say the least. RF control through walls in the house often does not work very well, and the devices that carry remote commands back through the cables are not too reliable either. Additionally you do not seem to realize that if you have a DirecTv box in a central location and want to connect a non-RVU HDTV to it, you will need an HDMI cable running from the box (long, in-wall quality, expensive), through the walls to the remote TV. RG6 will not work for HD.

So let's look at the configuration.

First, the HR44 will need to go somewhere where it can drive a local TV and be connected to the whole home network. This really should be in the family room, because the client boxes and RVU TVs will always be slower than the HR44 and I think the longer response time will drive you crazy.
The RVU TVs and DirecTV genie clients are NOT connected directly to the HR44, they are connected to the Whole Home network which runs on the RG6 carrying the satellite signals, so the cables run back to the AV closet.
If it were me, I would install an HDDVR in the Kid's room. Putting a client in there (either a DirecTV client or an RVU TV) is NOT a good solution because you can't stop the kids watching anything in the HR44 playlist (Clients do not have their own parental controls), or deleting stuff in the playlist.

Your non-RVU Tvs would need to be connected to a DirecTV box using HDMI. You could use a client box, or a small receiver like the H25, your monthly cost will be the same. The H25 can be wall mounted like the Genie client so that would avoid a long HDMI cable run.

Let's assume for the moment you put the HR44 in the family room. If you have four RVU Tvs, you can only use three at a time anyway, so the one in the family room would not use RVU because it would be directly connected to the HR44.
One other thing to mention. With an HR44 and one HD DVR you are using up seven tuner slots. If you have another HDDVR, say in the game room, that will use nine slots so you will get an SWM16 as part of the install. If you do this later it will be expensive.

So if it were me I would have:

HR44 in family room.
HR2x DVR in kids room
HR2x DVR in game room.
RVU TV in loft
Directv client driving second game room TV
Direct client driving outside TV.

That way I have a maximum of three RVU TVs/clients, I get the response time I need in the family room and in the game room, and I can keep the kids on their own system which can have parental controls and does not share the main playlist

By havinmg all of the equipment in one place ,you might be creating problems for yourself.
As an OP Stated, remote signals do not travel all that well through lager homes. They are subject to interference and slow reaction to the remote. The lag would drive me batty.
Second. If you have the budget, by all means, run 2X of everything. Except any long runs of HDMI. Although, those can be had at lower prices. Or you can use cat 6 instead of HDMI...
Anyway, the reason for 2X runs is simple. If one fails, you can just hook up to the other one.