Video Asylum

RE: HD Structured Wiring?

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Audio Snob

In Reply to: RE: HD Structured Wiring? posted by blue_z on July 28, 2007 at 18:39:39

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I don't know that I would drive all with one tuner. One the other hand I certainly don't want to rent eight HD cable boxes from the cable company at $10 per box per month. I was thinking that 2 or perhaps 3 boxes total would provide enough choice for various family members. BUT the problem is how to get the 2 or 3 boxes to distibute a HD signal to the eight outlets. Not all outlets would have to have access to all 2 or three boxes. It could be a situation where one box feeds 2 outlets, and 2 boxes feed 6 outlets. I'm just thinking that if I have distribution capabilities I'm not sending $80 a month to the cable company just to rent boxes on top of their programming fees.

Thanks for any additional insight.

Follow Ups:

RE: HD Structured Wiring? - blue_z 13:53:00 07/31/07 (1)
Hi there
Some miscellaneous thoughts:
. the 8 STB "solution" has the highest recurring costs, but has the lowest installation costs (money, time and knowledge) and needs ony RG-6 coax. It will also be the least likely to become obsolete over the next 10-15 years (assuming you rent the STBs and can upgrade them).
. you'll probably need to find out what kind of outputs are available from your cableTV company's STB. Is it the full gamut of s-video, component, DVI and HDMI?
. the output of an STB is intended to be connected to a nearby display, so distribution of that video + audio signals is not trivial. HDMI is the single-cable solution, and there are HDMI splitters but HDMI cable length is a concern. But from what I've read, I wouldn't put any HDMI cable into the walls until the source to display connection was tested out.
. are all the displays at the outlets digital TVs? If you plan on using any analog TVs, then converting STB svideo+audio to RF (channel 3 or 4) will lose some signal quality but could be distributed over RG-6.
. a computer network may be the elegant solution. It would use Cat5e cable, and a tuned channel could viewed at any or all outlets. But it has high costs, and since you're using cable TV rather than OTA, only the clear QAM channels could be received and distributed over Ethernet.
Regards

Edits: 07/31/07
- RE: HD Structured Wiring? - Audio Snob 18:48:51 08/01/07 (0)
  Thanks for the thougtful reply.
  
  Looks like current solutions to HD are neither simple or cheap.
  
  Thanks

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