Question 2 Questions - IR Over Cat 5 or Coax & Viewing same 2-3 Sky boxes every room

[ladypickers]

I am not sure if this is the best place to post this as there are two issues but they could be linked depending on available cabling hence posting this as one post


IR

I have an AV cupboard behind our living room. Everything is working fine except the issues we have not being able to control the equipment from in particular the living room. When we built the house we had single cat 5 run to every room in the house and the same with coax. HDMI only ran to the living room from the AV cupboard although it does run to two places in the living room as does the cat 5 coax and speaker cables as we weren't sure at the time where we wanted the TV positioned

Can anyone advise on what is the best way to extend the IR so I can use the native remotes rather than apps which are unreliable as internet goes down alot and being a partial new build internet struggles. Apps are fine for other rooms where the amp isn't required or used much. We dont really have an option of drilling through the wall and placing a IR receiver in the living room as there is a fireplace and considerable wiring and piping in the vicinity so need something that can use either Cat5, coax or maybe the existing HDMI (which is being used by the TV). Any thoughts


Equipment is

Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090
Sony STR-DN1050 AV Receiver
SVS SB2000 sub
Monitor Audio radius 90's (fronts) &200 (centre)
Q-AV Rears
PS4
Blu-ray TBC
Various Sky HD & non HD sky boxes
Apple TV

Sky
Currently I have sky HD 1TB box (box 1) housed in the AV cupboard distributing sky to all rooms except the main bedroom using a TV link F280. I have a 2nd Sky HD box locally installed by Sky in the main bedroom (box 2).I want to house all the sky boxes in the AV cupboard (boxes 1 & 2) and distribute both boxes to the living room, kitchen and bedroom as I heard you can do this and switch boxes via the TV monitor rather than going to the cupboard itself. Please note there is no HDMI from the AV cupboard to any other room other than to the living room. Also later I might add my old normal sky boxes with freeview cards to distribute to the other bedrooms, although it was suggested that this may be a waste of time now as it would be cheaper and easier to have small freeview boxes locally in the rooms where the TV's do not have freeview built in.

Any help would be much appreciated

If I have posted this in the wrong place do please let me know.

 

[Member 581642]

Hi

Can you clarify a few points

Do you want HD around the house from the HD Skyboxes or just SD ?
How many cat5/6 cables at each TV location and are they all run back to the AV cupboard?
Is there also a coax running to each TV position back to teh AV cupboard (i assume there is) ?

For the living room in the short term use, assuming a coax from the AV cupboard to the TV in the living room, a SKy Magic eye remote over the coax just for IR control. if controlling more than just the sky get an external IR transmitter version.

 

[ladypickers]

HD for the living room, master bedroom and kitchen, and poss HD for 2nd bedroom and loft bedroom if poss unless too expensive. I mentioned in the AV bit its single cat 5 to each TV point and yes everything runs back to the AV cupboard except the retro sky cabling we put in for the mater bedroom to temporarily have our 2nd box working. We are already using a magic eye for the living room over coax.
Re controlling more than just the sky get an external IR transmitter version. Thats what we were asking about for controlling the other equipment - what can we use though when we cannot drill through the wall and cannot rely on IP as the internet is unreliable

 

[Member 581642]

IR - Sorry I meant an external version of the Sky Magic eye still uses coax but has a "breakout" to an IR emitter/transmitter.

 

[ladypickers]

its just standard magic eye plugged in the back of the TV with coax connected to it. This isnt the only issue I need amps etc to use it

 

[Member 581642]

HD Distribution

The neatest solution would be a HDBaseT 4x4 Matrix with 4 x HDMI inputs and 4 x HDBaseT (HDMI Over single Cat5/6) outputs with 4 HDBaseT receivers.

This would cover all bases as it would allow up to 4 rooms to watch any 4 HDMI sources in any combination, it would also handle Infared routing to control selecting sources and controlling the sources themselves

Professional 4x4 HDBaseT Matrix with 4 Receivers - 4K2K Version limited stock

 

[Member 581642]

its just standard magic eye plugged in the back of the TV with coax connected to it. This isnt the only issue I need amps etc to use it

I understand so you would get a triple headed IR head so the IR signal from the TV location can be routed to 3 or more devices depending on their physical location

 

[Member 581642]

or have a look at Satcure site that may explain it better than i am

tvLINK-Plus lets you control Sky Digibox

 

[ladypickers]

Hi Sebastian

Thanks for your comments - the Matrix you mentioned is way over our budget unfortunately. The TV link version looks promising do they do one that can handle more than two pieces of equipment. Also still need to find a more reasonably priced way of viewing multiple sky boxes

 

[Member 581642]

The Satcure TV Link can handle more than one device you would just need to position the IR emitters so they can control (see) multiple devices.

You could use 2 x HDMi modulators as long as the TVS have HD Tuners which would offer a lower cost solution. These work in the same way as your current system but "inject" the HD feed into the coax aerial system as new HD Channels.

http://store.aclasstechnology.com/digital-single-channel-full-high-definition-modulator-2070-p.asp