[Locoblade]

Hi All

I believe one or two of you on here have used the above to distribute your AV around the house over CAT5 cabling?

Ive read what the info on the bluedelta website but I wonder if someone could answer how exactly the IR passthough would work with Sky / Sky+, for either a Milestone Master socket, or the Milestone Smart Scart (which is the same but allows multiple SCART inputs to output to CAT5). Does it plug into the RF2 socket on the Sky box to directly feed in the IR signal as a Magic eye would do, or does it rely on its own IR sender to try and control the Sky box via the conventional IR sensor on the front of the Sky Box?

Also does anyone have any comments on the picture quality achievable? My current distribution setup is over RF, where the RF2 signal from Sky is piped back up to the RF splitter in the loft so I tune the bedroom TV into the RF signal from the Sky Box, but Ive just upgraded the bedroom TV from a 21" CRT to a 26" HD Ready LCD and its this change thats prompted me to look for a better solution because the new TV shows up the rather poor picture quality available over RF, so considering I already have CAT5 around the house, I was hoping the Milestone system would be a better alternative.

thanks
Chris

[dlocke]

I've used these systems for a couple of years now to distribute sky+. For IR you get an IR receiver for the remote TV and a IR transmitter for the sky+ box. You need to attach this to the front of the sky+ box over/near the sky IR receiver. Works well and does not interfere with the IR signals from the sky remote control when used directly with the sky+ box.

Picture quality is very good. I used to use RF transmitters but got fed up with the quality and interference issues. I normally transmit the BlueDelta signals to a 29" 4:3 TV. Picture (to me) looks as good as if the sky box was directly connected.

Just one negative to the BlueDelta system from my experience. I wanted to distribute to 2 TVs so invested in their 4 port hub. This has been nothing but problemtatic and initially resulted in them having to send me 4 different hubs each with slight modifictions to them. Once we finally got a system working it was great, but over time the hub has failed first for IR transmissions, but then for picture. I'm going to be taking this up with them come January. for straight through (no hub) connections, I'd have no hesitation in recommending them.

[Locoblade]

Originally Posted by dlocke

I've used these systems for a couple of years now to distribute sky+. For IR you get an IR receiver for the remote TV and a IR transmitter for the sky+ box. You need to attach this to the front of the sky+ box over/near the sky IR receiver. Works well and does not interfere with the IR signals from the sky remote control when used directly with the sky+ box.

Many thanks for the prompt reply, sounds promising even though it doesn't feed IR into the Sky Box directly. I guess if you didn't want the IR dongle sitting in front of the Sky box though, you could simply plug in a Magic Eye into the RF2 socket on the back of the Sky box and put the Milestone IR transmitter around the back next to it, so controlling the Sky box from the back.

The router issue is a bit of a concern though, at the moment it would only be distributing to one bedroom TV but Id like the option of adding additional rooms at a later date.

Since posting that Ive seen a couple of other options, one being the more expensive Kat5 system, and also the Madnat system which seems to offer quite a few different options, including distributing RGB signals which in theory should be better quality. Does anyone have any comparable experience with these?

cheers
Chris

[brendank]

any update on this