TV Distribution over Network

[John Duncan]

Right, here's my problem. I have a few video sources around the house - Virgin STB in the living room and Humax PVR in the kitchen - but am adding a TV in the bedroom. It'll have freeview built in, but it would be useful to have PVR functionality as well. Now with all these sources around the house, I had this idea of distributing them to the new telly wirelessly so that i didn't have to buy another PVR (and anyway that doesn't really help if I've recorded downstairs but forgotten to upstairs, for example).

Now, video sender is out of the question because a) it'll be rubbish and b) it'll interfere with my wireless network, so I was looking at Slinbox to see if it could distribute a signal from my other sources to the new one. Seems there's a product called Slingcatcher which acts as a TV source for slingboxes around the house, but it's about 200 quid (plus 100 quid each for a slingbox for each source), which is more than I wanted to spend.

Is anybody aware of any other products that I can use to distribute TV signal wirelessly to another TV?

 

[professorhat]

I've been struggling to think of another way of doing this and can't think of anything wireless without a video sender which as you say, could interfere with the wireless network. I've seen a couple of senders which have different channels like this one which should (in theory) prevent this. It doesn't help on the "it'll be rubbish" front though!
How about Cat 5 cable - could you run a length up to the bedroom? If so, you could use something like this...

 

[John Duncan]

No, cable running is absolutely out of the question, having just spent umpteen grand on doing the house up, with particular attention paid to ultra-smooth plasterwork. Course, if I'd thought of this beforehand we might not be having this conversation. Dur.

I did do some research myself, and could only come up with the Slingbox/Slingcatcher combo, which whilst absolute genius (though not terribly well reviewed, it has to be said) is a bit on the pricey side. Oh well...

 

[daveh75]

since wires are out the question, a tv sender or the slingbox/catcher combo are all i can think of.

btw in regard to the senders/wireless network issue's... ya do know that you can get sender's now that use a 5.4ghz signal to avoid this problem. although, tbh it seems pretty hit 'n' miss as to how well they work. i've tried a few in the past with varying results from excellent to very very poor

 

[John Duncan]

Yeah, not terribly optimistic about that solution (or the number of little satellite dishes required around the house)

 

[daveh75]

agree completely,

just another thought... and i may be barking up the wrong tree here,but doesn't that linksys media extender thingy that gerrard has have the ability to stream live tv etc.

 

[John Duncan]

I am assuming only from a PC, but haven't really investigated. That specific one wouldn't work for me though as think is PC only.