So here is the dilemma,
Small venue (Campus Bar), across two rooms.
Yellow marks the cable box, red the monitors/screen.
The main room currently has two HD cable boxes and a scaler for the live video guys who come in on the big DJ nights.
HD boxes are component video to the two plasma's across from the circular bar, and the scaler and S-video out of the cable box runs into a Kramer SD matrix switcher which can also send the low-res content to the plasma's.
This is basically a legacy S-video backbone with upgraded component feeds from when the Plasmas were installed.
The back room has a single cable box directly to both TV's and the two rooms are not tied together at all. The desired outcome is somewhat flexible, and I'm currently in the process of pulling Cat cable for networking and a Soundweb which is going into the back room for audio, and I figure I might take a crack and making the video system better too.
The ultimate goal would be to integrate everything as it is for the audio, but I doubt there is the budget for that and the formats seem to change too quickly to make that a wise investment given the modest needs.
The most basic goal would be to allow everything to be controlled centrally, but I know HDCP (or whatever the current crop of DRM is) compliance makes this challenging. The video guys can for now do everything in SD without issue, but I'm trying to come up with something that doesn't require running 5 or more cable boxes. I also don't want to buy something that is expensive but won't work with modern laptops for presentation hookups but I fear that may be where things are headed.
Any insight?
Sorry if I missed any obvious and necessary details. If it helps, running cables to and from just about everywhere is not an issue.
Small venue (Campus Bar), across two rooms.
Yellow marks the cable box, red the monitors/screen.
The main room currently has two HD cable boxes and a scaler for the live video guys who come in on the big DJ nights.
HD boxes are component video to the two plasma's across from the circular bar, and the scaler and S-video out of the cable box runs into a Kramer SD matrix switcher which can also send the low-res content to the plasma's.
This is basically a legacy S-video backbone with upgraded component feeds from when the Plasmas were installed.
The back room has a single cable box directly to both TV's and the two rooms are not tied together at all. The desired outcome is somewhat flexible, and I'm currently in the process of pulling Cat cable for networking and a Soundweb which is going into the back room for audio, and I figure I might take a crack and making the video system better too.
The ultimate goal would be to integrate everything as it is for the audio, but I doubt there is the budget for that and the formats seem to change too quickly to make that a wise investment given the modest needs.
The most basic goal would be to allow everything to be controlled centrally, but I know HDCP (or whatever the current crop of DRM is) compliance makes this challenging. The video guys can for now do everything in SD without issue, but I'm trying to come up with something that doesn't require running 5 or more cable boxes. I also don't want to buy something that is expensive but won't work with modern laptops for presentation hookups but I fear that may be where things are headed.
Any insight?
Sorry if I missed any obvious and necessary details. If it helps, running cables to and from just about everywhere is not an issue.