Wireless or Homeplug HDTV is wanted for my home, what do you suggest?

[carygott]

My home is wired with Coax cable and I cannot rewire it for the signals required for HDTV from a single source (Directv HD) to 4 HD TVs. All TVs watch exactly the same program.

What system or equipment can anyone suggest?

 

[scotty]

My home is wired with Coax cable and I cannot rewire it for the signals required for HDTV from a single source (Directv HD) to 4 HD TVs. All TVs watch exactly the same program.

What system or equipment can anyone suggest?

I'm no expert on DirectTV (I live in Canada personally), but I'm under the impression that DirectTV is the same as all other digital TV services, and you need one of their boxes on each one of the TV's on your household in order for it work on that TV. You can have as many boxes as you need, but you do need one for each TV.

Typically, you have the cable coming out of the demarcation piont in your home (from the cable company) and going into a splitter of some kind. From the splitter, it goes to each room in your home that's wired. In each room, you have a DirectTV box hooked up to a TV set. I don't know much about DirectTV personally, but I'm assuming it's no different than most Digital TV and Satellite providers. This being the case, you need to go buy more direct TV boxes. No re-wiring should be necessary. You may need to buy a splitter, but it sounds like you already have one.

 

[msabo]

My home is wired with Coax cable and I cannot rewire it for the signals required for HDTV from a single source (Directv HD) to 4 HD TVs. All TVs watch exactly the same program.

What system or equipment can anyone suggest?

D-Link and Netgear have announced retail MoCA devices you could use for this application. Four of these will cost you ~$450. HomePlug AV is another good choice and costs roughly the same as the MoCA solution. For this application, I would likely choose one of those over WiFi.

 

[scotty]

D-Link and Netgear have announced retail MoCA devices you could use for this application. Four of these will cost you ~$450. HomePlug AV is another good choice and costs roughly the same as the MoCA solution. For this application, I would likely choose one of those over WiFi.

Excuse my DirectTV ignorance, but even with this kind of solution, wouldn't you still need multiple DTV boxes? Unless of course the intention is that all 4 TV's can be on the same channel...

 

[carygott]

only one signal to all TVs

My system will have all TVs locked on only one channel (the same show). Change the channel on the DirecTV tuner and all TVs are watching the same show.

I do not want each TV to be able to get a different signal.

Sooooo, all TVs are watching the same show/channel. What I need is a way to get a decoded HD signal to each TV (monitor in this case).

Wireless or HomePlug.

What do you suggest to use?

 

[carygott]

what is MoCa ?

what is MoCA ?

 

[msabo]

MoCA = Multimedia over Coax Alliance. You can turn the coax in your home into a whole home backbone.

 

[carygott]

MoCA

where do I get info about equipment?

thks

 

[thiggins]

What I need is a way to get a decoded HD signal to each TV (monitor in this case).

How are you getting the decoded digital signal? My DirecTV HD DVR doesn't do that.

Neither D-Link, nor Netgear are shipping their MoCA boxes yet.
You can get Motorola NIM100 MoCA bridges from ebay.

See this thread.

 

[carygott]

the HD "decoded' signal (info from a non-expert)

Lets see if I say this correctly

I do not have the HD DirecTV receiver yet but I would suspect that it puts out a MIDI or a 4 wire video/2 wire audio component signal that is ready to go to a HD TV monitor.

I want to get that HD information to TV monitors that only have coax as their path back to where the DirecTV receiver is located.

Will the Motorola NIM100 do that?

Is that clear (as mud?) ?

thanks for the help

 

[scotty]

I'm [probably] confused. My understanding of the NIM100's is that they convert ethernet over coax, essentially allowing you to use your coax as ethernet providing you have NIM's on each end (whilst not affecting your existing cable connection). I'm probably missing something here, but I don't see where NIM's or Ethernet fit into the current scenario - you're not wanting to put Ethernet data over coax - or are you? (some sort of fancy streaming setup)

Again maybe I'm oversimplifying things but it sounds like the 'ultimate objective' is to get your DirectTV HD signal on all of your TV's in your home, correct? I'm not seeing where Moca fits into this. Your coax connection is going to go into a DTV box, and out from the DTV box via. component [Red/Green/Blue RCA] <--- You need to get that signal out to all of your TVs, using only 1 coax run to each location. That's a tuffy - and again I'm not sure where moca fits into the equation. You can indeed run RCA over Coax (same thing except for the connector) - that's easy, but you'd obviously need 3 coax runs to each room plus audio so that's the issue.

Wouldn't it be easier (and close to the same price anyway) to just put a direct TV box next to each TV set? This is pretty standard and how everyone and their dog splits a standard coax line across multiple TVs, using only coax...

Coax In (from Direct TV, presumably in basement)
|
Splitter (presumably in basement)
/ | | \
Location 1/2/3/4 throughout House --> DirectTV Box --> TV

I must be missing something painfully obvious because this seems like a no-brainer. NIM's are about $50ea but you can usually buy cheap HD boxes from the cable co's for $50-$75. There must be something else at play here that I'm kssing because why would you want to run the decoded signal (what the direct TV box gives you, the component connections) back out through the 1 coax line. In it's basic form, not sure if that's possible. I'm totally missing something, or at least I hope I am.

I ran this by a friend last night who has worked in the Cable, Satellite, and home automation industry for over 25 years and his thought was that 'something's not right, because this should be painfully obvious'.

 

[thiggins]

Lets see if I say this correctly

I do not have the HD DirecTV receiver yet but I would suspect that it puts out a MIDI or a 4 wire video/2 wire audio component signal that is ready to go to a HD TV monitor.

I want to get that HD information to TV monitors that only have coax as their path back to where the DirecTV receiver is located.

Will the Motorola NIM100 do that?

No, it won't. It converts Ethernet to coax and back.

The only way to do it will not give you a HD signal. You basically need to take the composite video signal from the DirecTV box, modulate it, then distribute that signal via the house coax. Then the TV's can pick up the signal with their built-in tuners.

Plenty of Video modulators to choose from.

 

[msabo]

Sorry carygott, I assumed you were up to speed on HD video streaming technology. If you were thinking of going the uncompressed video distribution route, then you would normally pull component video/audio or HDMI to a switch and distribution throughout the home. But you said you can’t pull new wiring. A workaround may be the, soon to be released, Gefen HDMI over Coax extender. Looks to be about $600 on preorder.

http://gizmodo.com/340522/gefens-hdmi+over+coax-means-no-new-wires-for-hdtv-everywhere

Or you could hold off for the DirecTV MoCA.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS105177+06-May-2008+PNW20080506

Also, here's an interesting video regarding MoCA.

http://www.mocalliance.org/en/index.asp

The point is that if you want to use wireless or HomePlug AV for this application, you need to compress and stream the HD video. Then uncompress it and connect it to the TV on the receiving side. You can't just dump uncomressed HD video onto those technologies.

 

[thiggins]

Or you could hold off for the DirecTV MoCA.

Given DirecTV's record, I wouldn't hold my breath for this.