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Video Distribution.

post #1 of 5
1/5/10 at 6:59pm
Thread Starter 
Hi guys,
I first off would like to thank you all, this has been such a great resource for many of my projects.

I am not quite sure if you guys can help me with this but I thought I would ask anyway.

I am currently building a house (in the paint stage) that has quite a bit of Home Automation within it.

I am attempting to create a home security system that will be viewable by all the tvs in the house. We have pre-wired for 3 Cat-5 cables and 2 Co Axe cables to each TV (approximately 10 TVs in the house). We are going to install approximately 8 surveillance cameras around the exterior of the house and 1 inside the house. Like I said we would like to be able to view all the cameras on all the tvs.

3 of these cameras (Pool, Front door, and Kids Media Room) will need to be able to be full screen, the rest of the cameras can be view together on 1 screen.

I am not really even sure what Surveillance system we will be using, any recommendations for a system that would fit the above would be great. We know we want it to be controlled via a Desktop computer. (If you know of a system that will work with macs please let me know)

All of the TV wires are home runs (We will be placing all of our Dvd players and DVRs in one place and using 1 or 2 of the cat 5 cables to send the signals) if you have any suggestions on this to that would be great!!!

Thank you in advance.
~TheSoundGuy_16
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post #2 of 5
1/5/10 at 7:49pm
If you're going to use a Cat5-based HD video distribution system, be aware that your camera system will need to output component video (or yikes HDMI) to fit into that system. Alternative is to run the surveillance system through a modulator (or use one that supplies a modulated coax output) and use one of your coax drops per set to distribute the SD channel(s).

As an aside, putting all your DVD players in one place may not be the best move. Having to go across the house to put a disc in every time you want to watch something is quite annoying. Better to dedicate those to key locations, and maybe put one in the central closet to cover the whole house for when that's useful...

Jeff
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post #3 of 5
1/5/10 at 11:09pm
A couple thoughts for you. First you may need to tell us more about what you are thinking with your security cameras. Are you looking for something that records all the cameras, movable cameras with control from a PC, etc? Or are you thinking just 8 fixed cameras with the ability to monitor them from any TV desired?

To simply see the camera feeds on any TV in the house two ideas come to mind, assuming you are doing standard def that you can run over composite.

First if you are not running an analog TV signal to all the locations, or have channels available, you might modulate each of the 8 signals onto its own channel and run this via one of the coax to each TV. Then you can just tune the TV to the appropriate channel to watch the camera if desired.

The second way would be to use a matrix switch. I have an Extron 8x8 matrix switch that will do composite or s-video (plus audio which you likely would not need) that I would part with, but if you want to do 10 outputs you would need a bigger one. There is a 16x16 on ebay right now for just under $500 that would do the trick if you needed more ins or outs. You would need to control this switch through a computer running control software.
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post #4 of 5
1/6/10 at 6:03pm
If the security system will be managed by a dedicated computer, it is easy enough to just drop an S-video or Composite video splitter on it, and split it's monitor output (or secondary monitor output if you have two video outputs) to all the TVs through the appropriate Cat5 balun. So in essence, every TV in the house is the computer's monitor (or secondary monitor)... at that point, you can toss as many feeds as you want on that monitor, and to watch it on any TV, just change inputs to the S-Video or Composite input coming from the computer.

Unless you need high resolution images of each feed on each TV, there is no reason to make this super complex where you can control which camera you are viewing from every room in the house. Just make it so all of the camera feeds are up on one screen, and split that screen to every TV.

Let the computer do all the work of formatting how the cameras are laid out on the screen, and just leave it the way you like it.

As for having all of the DVD players in the same place, I think it is a good idea, at least for the way I do things, because my DVD collection is only in one room, not spread out all over my house. if you have to go there to GET the DVD, you may as well put it in the player in that same place.
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post #5 of 5
1/7/10 at 12:35pm
I run all my cameras to an ON-Q quad tiler (2 of them) and then each camera into a stardot ip server for remote viewing. The Quad tilers feed modulated inputs of a bocs system (It is cheap as that is my company)... That way I have 8 cameras home wide mixed in with my comcast cable TV and can also access remotely.

Just a thought.
David
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