I'd need to take out a second mortgage to have the local cable company set up our 5 sets. Can I do this without loosing much signal quality...

I have 4 TVs in the house that I would like to have access to the same Time Warner Cable DVR. 1 set is HD and uses component cables, the other 3 TVs are SD and only need coax. All the coax (mostly RG6) cables are routed to the same area (behind our HDTV). Can I use the component output for the HDTV and split the coax output to feed the other 3 sets?

I'm looking at using a IR over coax kit (such as the Xantech Xtra Link) for the remotes. Chances are only 2 sets would be on at one time (most likely the HDTV and a SDTV). Additionally I have a 5th TV which has its own HDDVR which isn't part of this mess, except for it it splits the signal with the second HDDVR.

Basically, I want our 2 HDTVs to have their own boxes, but the other 3 SDTV throughout the house to have full channel and DVR access.

(note, I first posted this on perhaps the wrong forum -- sorry for the double posting)

Take a look at http://www.smarthome.com/7717.html and see how that would meet your needs....

Are your HDTVs cablecard ready? This way you can have those 2 with full channel lineup, and use the STBs for 2 of the SDTVs.

Otherwise, I can't see the 2 SDTVs having independently full channel access, because I imagine you'd want the full lineup on the HDTVs. DVR access to all - yes, that's do-able. Use one of the HDDVRs for the HDTVs (for full HD rez recordings) and the other HDDVR split out to the SDTVs (for SD recordings).

Clear QAM/ATSC/NTSC are all do-able on all of the TVs, but not independent full lineup without cablecards or proprietary STBs...