The mother of all HDMI switchers?!?

It's for centralizing and distributing your high-quality video sources throughout a home, bar, restaurant, etc.

Many people like to only have one BluRay, one AppleTV, one or two DVR's, one HTPC, and put them all in one central place in the home, then throughout the home, they can have multiple TV's that can pick and choose from any of those sources. Then multiple people can be watching the same bluray in different rooms; etc.

Honestly I think a lot more people would do this if it were easier but right now it's very cost prohibitive and unreliable - you either have to be able to run the special cables or rely on extenders which can be problematic, expensive, and unreliable.

For example, that one listed showed a MSRP of about $12K but it can be found for about $6K.
 
With SageTV being out of business, I really am thinking about doing something like this, moving my media players, etc all to my basement. But doing this cheap, while still being very reliable is something I haven't figured out yet.
 
I think the newer switchers with HDBaseT chips are pretty reliable (from what I've read). The keydigital also claims to handle all of the HDCP authentication and does EDID management which sounds like it would offer very fast switching...

PS: Thanks Work2Play for looking this thing up. I didn't see the $12k MSRP on their site, but I was worried it would be expensive... Even at $6k (I'm assuming this is close to dealer cost), it is waaaay over priced. I might be willing to throw down $1k for one of these, but it would have to have the same features this one does in a smaller size.

The cheaper Vanco 4x4 switches look OK, but they don't have the features this one does and I'm worried about hand shaking issues and running long distances: http://www.amazon.com/Vanco-280707-Matrix-Selector-Control/dp/B005I6GN8E/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1340980031&sr=1-3&keywords=vanco+4x4
 
SnapAV also has some matrix switchers that are much more reasonable; I can only quote MSRP which is $3,999 for an 8x8 - what you can get a dealer to do is a different story since they watch us pretty closely; but that one also uses some special tools to capture the EDID info from the TV and lets you program that into the matrix ahead of time to avoid handshake issues.
 
Work2Play, would you be willing to sell Sn*p*V hardware, to interested parties?

If you don't type the name out, they're less likely to find you. ;)
 
I'd be more than happy to help anyone from CT acquire the products they need! There are certain dealer terms which I must abide by, but within those constraints, I'd be happy to help - I'm a reseller for most of the products discussed in CT, and so many more. PM me for any such needs and I'll provide my Cell number and any design assistance needed.
 
Depending on the details, this sort of thing can be done fairly cheap by using simple hdmi splitters and multiple hdmi wires. I have 3 sources in my central room each with 4 way hdmi splitters (roughly $50/ea on ebay) and 3 each 50, 75, and 100 foot hdmi cables (prices from $20 to $40 ea on ebay) running to each of 3 tv's in the house (one tv is less than 50 feet, one less than 75 feet, and the third just shy of 100ft). It ends up costing a few hundred dollars to have a what amounts to a 3 in put 3 output matrix letting the individual tv pick from the 3 sources. The 100 foot hdmi runs surprisingly work just great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

F
Single HTPC for content to all of the rooms.
2
Replies
20
Views
3K
aksor
aksor
S
Whole House A/V Distribution Hardware Options
Replies
10
Views
11K
DrunkenLizard
DrunkenLizard
electron
Chat transcript 05/28/2005
Replies
3
Views
1K
electron
electron
electron
MSN Q & A : Windows Media Center 2005
Replies
2
Views
13K
electron
electron
electron
Chat transcript 08/05/2005
Replies
0
Views
2K
electron
electron
Back
Top