BeyondTV on all the TVs in the house!

[bthornto]

My apologies if this has been posted, but it seems the perfect compliment to BeyondTV and eliminates the need for a bunch of PC scattered throughout the house.

It appears to convert the VGA out of the PC to an ATSC signal and uses the in house coax to distribute the signal. Comes with a keymouse, remote etc.

Super cool- I preordered this morning-

http://www.geekbrief.tv/gbtv-0355-geekbrieftv
http://www.zeevee.com/home

[cditty]

Looks good, but I would be interested to see how it works using cable. That is, I have cable service at home connected to my btv server. How do I use it then?

[cditty]

Never mind. It looks like this is strictly for internet only viewing.

[BeerBrewer]

Actually it has full functionality to display anything on your computer to your HDTV(s). It creates a new HD station and broadcasts it locally on your in-house cable.

I used something similar to this a few years ago that modulated DVD video/audio and computer video/audio in a standard cable signal and made it available to all the TVs in the house, but this actually encodes it as high def video and 5.1 audio so you need a digital tuner on the TV to decode the signal.

If you read the product description here you can see it could be very useful for distubuting content:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018L7NUA

Problem is you only get one channel (i.e. can't watch different stuff at different TVs at the same time).

[btvfreak]

I'd like to see a real world demo of this. I'm pretty skeptical on the quality of modulators, especially one for HD. Does this device somehow change the HD cable signal, so if an encrypted HD signal is passed through the ZeeVee can be recorded by by something like BTV?

[BeerBrewer]

Agree!

I would expect that it could be recorded by BTV assuming you could get the channel into the lineup (one of the problems I had with my modulator as BTV tightened up the guide integration with later releases). The quality on my modulator was fine for standard TV, but once you get used to HD, your standards go way up.

Plus at $499 a pop, I can think of better options and other placed I could invest the money in my distributed media network.

[Bigbird999]

btvfreak
Here is part of post #19 in this thread http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...php?p=13769361 over at AVS
"I felt the same way a few minutes ago seeing this on my Engadget feed. Eww, that's going to degrade the video signal. Eww, that's not going to do HDMI or next-gen HD audio formats. Then I thought about it for a second. This box is creating your own HDTV broadcast channel in your home. I needed to let that sink in.

It's QAM, at the highest resolution and highest audio format currently being broadcast OTA. So, yes, it comes with a 150' range RF remote with trackpad built in to control the PC,"

To me that means that you play back material that is already on your PC (it doesn't matter how it got there) and input it to this box whch then converts it to a HD QAM signal that is distributed throughout your house on a dedicated HD ZV channel. If you tune that channel on a QAM capable HDTV, you can watch the video from your PC (BTV server). It only accepts VGA video and audio by USB so there is no way to use it to decrypt HD signals. It just encodes whatever you want to HD QAM.

Why are you skeptical of modulators? I know nothing about them except that for many years, SD modulators that take svideo or composite signals and RCA stereo audio and convert it to analog cable CH3/4 signal that you can feed into your ancient, cable ready CRT TV are available for $20 and work great. Is it such a stretch to think that with today's technology you could take a HD VGA signal and 5.1 audio and hardware encode it to HD QAM?

I think it is very pricey at $500 and doesn't do anything for me, but for some folks it might be what they need/want, especially if they already have a coax wired house. Post 23 of the thread answers a lot of questions.

BB

[btvfreak]

Yes, I do think it's a stretch to think a v1 product like this may not produce high quality HD video and I'd rather not find out at $500. SD modulators have not been the best based on my experience. I'll take a wait and see approach to this as I'm not really sure if this is something I'd really use.

[bthornto]

Let's assume the VGA->QAM doesn't degrade the picture significantly, or let's at least hope.

This then becomes a intersting product. TVs in the kitchen, livingroom, bedroom, and shop all having access to all the content on the PC in the basement. I'm assuming this includes, and audio on the PC, any live (w/ pause/record funct.) or recorded BeyondTV content, and DRM content, and internet content (hulu, youtube) in additional full PC functionality in each room?

Not to mention the benefit of a zero-footprint/zero net-new power/zero net-new noise solution. Hang the TV, hook the cable to the exisiting coax jack and it's done.

Want to add a TV in the shower? No additional cost to tune the ZV channel there.

(agreed the major limitation is going to be the same content for all TVs at the same time - of course if you want the same music playing every where for a whole house audio system this could be a plus)

The only other way I can see to accomplish the same is a computer in everyroom. Assuming you want quiet, low power you're looking at $300+ for the hardware then you've got the cost of the operating system and hassel of patching and harddrives dying, bluetooth keyboards and or/ remotes.

Personally I'm hoping this quality is good.... great would be ideal and this is the solution I've been hoping for.

-brad

[BeerBrewer]

I used a this product for distributing SD television signals:

http://www.channelplus.com/

Looks like they have expanded into HD signal distribution as well.

My ChannelPlus system (almost 8 years ago) added 4 SD channels to my cable lineup and (I used three - VCR, DVD and computer for BTV/BM). It also pushed stereo sound.

I found that the added stations' signals were not as clean as I would like depending on the noise in the Comcast signal. Maybe this is not as much of an issue with QAM.

I also had to add the channel creation/splitter device at the front end of my cable feed. The physical Video/R/L RCA hookups were part of the main unit that feed power and the new signal over RG6 back to the splitter.

This setup required some specific wiring for RG6, so I would be interested in how it deals with distributing the signal back over a RG6 wiring that may have one or two splitters bewteen the device and the HDTV.

[bthornto]

I wondered the same thing. I'd have to guess that my house is wired with RG59? Maybe some RG6 from the satellite dish installation the previous owner did.

I do know this- I've got a antennae on the roof, the feed hits a three way splitter- two lines to ATSC tuners in the PC and the other feeds the TVs in the house. I've never had a problem tuning broadast HD channels on any of the jacks.

So in my simplisitic view of the world- If the signal strength of the ZV is as good or better than what the antennae on the roof is pulling in, my house wiring should be sufficient.

Now I wait until July to see how the ZV does the A->D, VGA to QAM(mpeg2?) conversion before buying another mac mini.

Now I find myself wondering if I can just get a ATSC out PCI card for the PC and be done with it...

[BeerBrewer]

I wondered the same thing, ATSC out PCI card would be nice - but it's a worm hole. Check out this thread on AVSforum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archi.../t-851974.html