This is a brain bender...HELP

[darinmartini]

Hi there. If you can help with this I will be eternally grateful. Anyway, we have a building with 4 different rooms, each with a plasma screen in it. What we are wanting to do is feed an audio / video / both to the various rooms. Heres the things, I want to be able to send and manage 4 different feeds (DVD / CD / Camera etc) and send any one of them to any specific room.

For eg : Room 1 I want to send a live feed...Room 2 - I want to send a video clip from the PC...Room 3 - I want to send the video from a DVD.

Our current system is setup to send various signals but only to all the rooms at once...we need to split this.

At the media room - We have various feeds going into a kramer switch (DVD, CD ,Camera etc) as well as various converters and then a simple video switcher that would control what people see in the rooms.

Heres the question : Is there a hardware / software solution that will allow me to accept various inputs and then be able to send them out to various outputs...Your help will be great

[darinmartini]

Hi there. If you can help with this I will be eternally grateful. Anyway, we have a building with 4 different rooms, each with a plasma screen in it. What we are wanting to do is feed an audio / video / both to the various rooms. Heres the things, I want to be able to send and manage 4 different feeds (DVD / CD / Camera etc) and send any one of them to any specific room.

For eg : Room 1 I want to send a live feed...Room 2 - I want to send a video clip from the PC...Room 3 - I want to send the video from a DVD.

Our current system is setup to send various signals but only to all the rooms at once...we need to split this.

At the media room - We have various feeds going into a kramer switch (DVD, CD ,Camera etc) as well as various converters and then a simple video switcher that would control what people see in the rooms.

Heres the question : Is there a hardware / software solution that will allow me to accept various inputs and then be able to send them out to various outputs...

Thanks

[bladeaudio]

You have two options.

1. Send all 4 signals to each room, put a switcher in each room that will let you select the signal to use on the TV.

2. Use a video matrix to route multiple inputs to multiple outputs.

The issue with a matrix is that it will usually only be dealing with all the same kind of signal, as the one above, so you would need to convert/scale all your video signals to that before going in to the matrix.

[jonack]

You need a switching Matrix. It isn't going to be cheap to do something like this especially because you want to be able to send anything to any one of the rooms. Something like this by Extron is what you would be looking at.

[northerntech]

A matrix is the right answer, but there are many levels and price-points depending on what type of video (composite, component, VGA, HDMI) you are using. For example companies like StarTech or Kramer make decent matrix switchers at the lower end of the spectrum but if you're doing HD then expect to pay more. Is this multi-room functionality the only thing you are doing with your DVD, CD ,Camera, etc, or is it an add-on to a more conventional system used for integrating services?

[daver2]

The best solution is the matrix switch.

A 'cheap and cheerfull' solution is a simple patch panel. One socket for each video source and one socket for each destination monitor - with a series of patch cables and a selection of amplifier/splitters. The patching would be manual so it depends how many changes to the patching would be required over what time frame. Just a thought.

Dave

[daver2]

Isn't this the same question I have just posted to on another thread?

Dave

[[Admin] osborn4]

Originally Posted by daver2

Isn't this the same question I have just posted to on another thread?

Dave

I have merged the threads.

[darinmartini]

What about a Cat 5 solution?

[sempei13]

Did you actually say that you have different cables for each source to each room that run back to where sources are (video room, etc.)? If you have one cable, that's a totally different answer than if you have say 2 cat5 for each source to each room.

Paul

[sdpiowa]

Another (cheaper) option would be to run RF cables to each room and assign each device to a different channel.