Hello there,

I've owned B&O equipment for more than 10 years now, building my system brick by brick, both from new and second hand items. Now is the time where I am turning my AV system into a mutl-room system.  Now is also the time when technology is more complex than ever... everything is becoming digital.

My goal sounds simple enough : my main AV system is in my living room and I'd like to enjoy most if not all my media (music, photos, videos) in a secondary room (a bedroom, or a study, or whatever). The most important media source is the AppleTV : it has my music, but also my photos, and my movies (on an attached hard drive). Movies are DVD ripped, resolution 720 with AC3 sound.

Now the specifics : my main AV system is a Beovision 7-40 Mark IV (MKIII updated, without blueray). My secondary AV is a Beovision 3-32 : this is an analogic TV with very little input ports (scarts and RF). I may choose to replace the BV3 set with a digital TV : BV6, BV8 ? Second hand, on a budget...

Attached are 3 schematics to help discussing the issue :

- CURRENT SET UP : this is how things are working now. This is the standard old fashion Beolink set-up  where video signal travels thru a RF cable between the TVs. It is working as advertised --- although when you read the fine print, some disapointments are on the way : the Beolink is not very digital friendly so forget about feeding the AppleTV content to the link room.
I am currently experimenting with this set up with free cables as I am not ready yet to cut grooves in my hard walls...

- OPTION 1 :  basically this option is the traditional Beolink set-up with a twist --- in order to send the APPLETV signal to the link room, I pull a HDMI cable from a HDMI distribution box (splitter) to a HDMI video scaler (translates the digital signal into analogic for the BV3). With this option I could probably keep my BV3 for a few more years. But I'm not even sure this would work !

- OPTION 2 : this solution was inspired by a thread on Beoworld some time ago (Tripenglish was the author).  I'm thinking "if the world is going digital, we might as well go digital all the way" !  So the idea is to replace the RF cable by a HDMI cable with distributors (one per source) and a smart scan switch. The smart scan switch recognizes when a signal is coming from one the ports and forward it to the TV -- no need for a remote to choose a source.  This option seems the most advanced, ie "modern" and requires a TV with a HDMI input. Again, I'm no expert and I haven't tested the idea.  Will it work ?

I am looking for feedback on these ideas : am I going in the right direction ? Any advice is welcome ! Any tips about the various HDMI boxes (brands, models, prices, features) are welcome !

I can PM the original Powerpoint file to anyone who wants to edit it --- for the forum or personal use.

Best.

Flycub

Hi,

The masterlink would work well enough for the audio part, but why not just getting a second apple tv to connect your BV3 ?

Might just be the simplest and most cost effective solution for the video part .....

Hi cooldude -- yep it's another option. And not a bad one :)

thanks.

Just to give you a clue, the next generation Masterlink (coming quite soon apparently) will be based on Ethernet cables..offering digital & analog audio-video-data, so this time it might be worth the wait, if you want something truly efficient & future-proof.

My dealer today told me about that but with no clear timeline. His bet was on Q2 2010. He mentionned some sort of hub system with boxes on both end of the cable.

The wise choice for me is to hard wire my rooms with ethernet and wait...

flycub:

My dealer today told me about that but with no clear timeline. His bet was on Q2 2010. He mentionned some sort of hub system with boxes on both end of the cable.

The wise choice for me is to hard wire my rooms with ethernet and wait...

Indeed, but make sure its cat7 type cable

Hello all,

Regarding the new Masterlink based on Ehthernet Cat7 and the spacs I've seen seems to think/require a whole bunch of cables from each equipment. What I mean is the "wall-tubing" for managing all those is not existing in existing housing. It's only new buildings or refurbishment of walls that will be able to handle this...

Wonder if anyone have though about existing housing with earlier ethernet cablings.

Where did the Masterlink concept that my service guy put in place: One master link cable per floor with connected branches per equipment.

Can't a similar setup be done/proposed with the new masterlink? If so I'd like to have B&O draw up such schematic solution

Regards

Cjocc

If it is fully ethernet based, that can be realized quite simple by placing ethernet switches on each floor and connect these. Pending on the versions you buy you can have at least 4 ports (up to  48 which standard of the shelf low cost units)  on each floor.