Thanks again, Larry. I will check those links out. I'm thinking that having an HD input into one's house might be like the ruling years ago that the phone co. couldn't charge for every extension phone.
Once you have the service into the home, extensions should be the homeowner's business. The satellite and cable companies won't like this view, I'm sure, but what is the difference? Once one pays for the signal it should be available anywhere one wants on those premises. Just my .02 on that one.
The difference is that analog tv is done, so now they require a cable/fios/satellite tuner in each room - to decode the digital signal. You can do what you are saying, but will have to stream the output of the same channel (from the cable/fios/satellite provided tuner) to every room.
If all you care about are locals, and a few others, digital broadcast television is a great solution. There are over 30 free channels available in my city, and more in some bigger cities. They're all totally free, and in HD quality. Any TV made in the past 4 years has the digital/hd tuner to receive them built in. There are also external tuners for about $10. This technology uses a powered "rabbit ears" type antenna, a roof antenna, or can piggybag on to your cable signal often to pick up a signal from that (although the channel numbers will be different than those offered by the cable/fios provider, decoded with a box of theirs).
My dad is in an assisted living place and I recently switched him from BASIC CABLE ($25 per month, with 22 channels - and several of those were foreign, selling you things, public access, or informational) -- to BROADCAST HD. ($0 per month, with 31 HD channels. There's even a channel with old movies, called ME) He loves it! This may be an option for the satellite rooms in the house?
In our house we have digital FIOS(fiber optic from Verizon), with the DVR in the living room. It has a large 1TB hard drive and can hold dozens of shows. In the bedroom, we have a FIOS tuner only. However, the two devices network to each other, transparently. (they do so over the regular RG6 wire, at a data frequency that runs transparently with the other info) If I push the DVR button in the bedroom, it shows all the recordings from the other room. I can play them in either room, or pause in one room and move to the other to finish watching something. That's pretty much how all cable/satellite/fios providers are doing it these days. In our second living room, which we rarely use, the TV is using broadcast HD TV. (we only get 25 channels out here in the forest) This is a good backup plan if FIOS goes down for any reason. (note it hasnt, not even during the hurricane last year when neighbors had no cable for over a week) We couldn't justify renting another box for the second living room, since we rarely use it. I also have an old RF MODULATOR on the output of the dvr upstairs, and an extra RG6 wire that goes from room to room. The basement family room CAN watch what's playing upstairs, if i switch that tv to "ANALOG Channel 3". (but tbh we've never done it)
Before switching to FIOS 15 months ago, we had DirecTV for about 19 years. Loved DTV's reliability, but their box was very slow and the picture quality and compression dont measure up to the new stuff. DTV has a few more channels and sports packages, but the picture quality and box is better/faster/more capacity with FIOS. In the end, the bundling discount is what got me to change. (about a 50% reduction in price from what we were paying DTV for tv + Cox cable for internet. for telephone we are using VOIP for about $10 per month)
Mike
