DVD hookup up with Multiple TVs

I have been studying this issue for some time. One of the best solutions I have seen can be found on Cross Bar Media.

Reply to
Dennis Slater
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Does anyone know of a DVR system that can be hooked up to several televisions so that anyone of those televisions can utilize stored videos? What I'm actually seeking is a distributed t.v. system that run's off one DVR or computer that can access a DVD changer so it can select from a library of say 100 DVDs (or more) and play back any movie that is request to whatever television it is requested on throughout my house. I'm not familiar with current trends and this may sound more like a fantasy, but if cars can have CD changers, why can't homes have DVD changers?

Reply to
Mark Friesen

You can. Just be prepared to pay a lot of money for it.

What you can do with *any* video device is push the signal out onto channel

3 and use an RF amplifier to send it to as many TVs in the house as you like. Those amps are generally under $50. There's distributed video. Then add remotes that use RF signals to control the device from anywhere in the house. Either using plain IR remotes and IR-to-RF repeaters or RF remotes and an RF-IR base station. These repeaters are generally also around $50 each.

Just as you can take the channel 3/4 signal and amplify it you can also get additional RF modulators that will let you put other video devices onto other RF channels. Put the Tivo on channel 3, DVD on channel 30, VCR on channel 40, etc. These RF modulators are generally about $75 per channel and can be had in single, 2, 4 and even 8 sources. This lets any TV in the house watch any of the sources. You could add as many modulators and sources as your budget allows.

This is RF channel quality. Since you're going directly from video devices into an RF amplifier it's going to look as good as any other perfectly tuned TV signal. The audio is likewise going to be as good but you may want to consider stereo RF modulators (and these cost more). It's not home theatre surround sound but it's as good as most folks would likely need. Drive the home theatre or main TV watching area with s-video and surround sound. Let everything else just use RF channels.

The downside is that if you want to watch different things simulatneously you need to have different devices. If you wanted to watch different DVDs on each TV then you'd have to install more than one DVD player. There are DVD changers that will *hold* multiple DVDs in a carousel but they generally only PLAY one of them at a time. But if you're OK with manually putting a DVD into a player then it's a reasonably cheap way to go about it, just add a DVD player and an RF modulator, tune the TV to the right channel and have at it. Just make sure your remote can control more than one player and that if they're from the same vendor that they can be selected independently. Sometimes it's better to get players from different vendors just to avoid the trouble. As in, two DVD players from company X each see the same remote signal and think it's for them. Versus two DVD platers from different companies each with their own format of IR remote signals. There are ways to setup IR distribution networks that work around this but prepare for spending a lot more.

You could certainly make use of a PC with multiple video output cards to act as the sources. Trouble is you'd need a pretty powerful PC with a lot of disk space to handle more than a few DVDs. Either as movies copied on the the hard drive or as multiple DVD-ROM drives. You're still faced with the question of how to distribute the signals to the rooms as well as how to control it remotely.

Bottom line is that for every signal you want to watch you've got to have a source for it. From either individual video devices or multiple video output cards. And then as a direct video connections via some sort of multiplexer (ie Crestron) or as modulated RF channels.

-Bill Kearney

Reply to
wkearney99

Bear in mind that a PC with enough disk space, CPU and the video output cards may well cost CONSIDERABLY more than what just adding more standalone DVD players might cost. That and if a DVD player breaks it's pretty cheap and easy to replace. If the PC craps out you're really screwed. This isn't to say using a PC server device is a bad idea; I do it here. Just that for many consumers it might be a lot more work than they expect.

Think about it some. A cheapie DVD player can be had for around $50. It makes little or no noise and has few critical components in it. A PC with mutiple video cards (a pain in the ass to even configure) has quite a few more critical parts, generally tends to make a lot more noise, consumes a shitload of electric and is a lot more expensive to repair in the event of failure. The noise can be mitigated by spending more on cases, fans and cooling gizmos. But the cost to repair and tedium of getting it all configured is NOT trivial. At some point it may well become trivial but that time isn't quite here yet.

-Bill Kearney

Reply to
wkearney99

Dennis, This looks close to what I was looking for..many thanks! Are you aware of any DVD changers or entertainment devices that can store a lot of movies, preferably on DVDs or just maybe something maxed out like a multi-gigabyte computer???

Reply to
Mark Friesen

You are looking for mythtv

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It is a linux based PVR system based on a client/server paradigm. The backend(s) is where the storage and the TV-tuners are and recording takes place. The frontents serve to watch live or stored contents. While the backend need a decent amount of power, you can get away with an X-Box as frontend (needs modding for linux, though).

Markus

Reply to
Markus Baertschi

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