Home tv distribution or ethernet with android box?

[Tammasus]

My parents want me to wire the home tv cabling at their new house. They currently have AppleTv (hdmi), and dish (coax OR RCA), so my question is, how to distribute both signals to the tv room, kitchen and gym? I’ve used HDMI over UTP converters in the past with mixed results, I’ve also considered using coaxial cable and distribute everything over analog video, this means converting HDMI To composite and loosing definition. I’ve also considered installing TV boxes running android on all the TVs and run ethernet cable in every room. But this means I would have to encode the video from the Apple TV and the dish onto a server on the fly and somehow have the android TV detect the server as a video source. What would you guys do? What is the most cost effective solution that yields the best posible video resolution? An Apple TV in each room is out of the question.

[johnmeyer]

We just had a somewhat similar conversation in this thread:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/395181-Looking-for-a-reliable-Wireless-HDMI-Extender

I specifically asked about both HDMI over Cat5/6 as well as HDMI over RG6. I got some good advice and then did some research. I have not yet purchased anything, but the two "Mirabox" products I linked to seem very intriguing and, (FWIW, YMMV, etc.), get pretty decent reviews on Amazon.

[ozymango]

My parents want me to wire the home tv cabling at their new house.

Hi, Tammasus. When you say "wire" and "new house," are you saying you actually have access/permission to design and install wires in walls before all the finishing work is done? Because it's gonna make a HUGE difference in how you might wanna proceed, depending on what kind of physical/electronic systems you have better or worse options at dealing with here.

If by "wiring" you just mean all construction is finished and you are just charged with getting remote TVs to work with whatever it is that's already installed, it'd be hard to beat just getting some kind of wireless HDMI system (see others for good advice on systems depending on your budget), plug everything in, voila, you're done. And whatever you buy/set-up, it'll be obsolete in a few years and/or something better/cheaper will come out that you can then get your folks to get, you upgrade in a while, there's always that.

If you actually have the option to string wires through studs and all that fun construction stuff, then by all means run Cat6 network cable in every room, and do two parallel runs: One for computer networking, one for video/future use. There's no solid way to do long runs of HDMI cable that won't be a frustrating challenge to get a clear signal over (HDMI cables can be really finicky past a few feet), and while HDMI over Cat6 can be $$$ for the best hardware, it's also a very standard way of doing HDMI distribution over distance so there'll be many more options for future support if you start out with cheaper equipment and then upgrade as prices go down or your budget goes up. And then you just plug/play over existing wires.

Personally I go for wired connections every time I possibly can, just because it saves me a lot of configuration hassle -- wireless can be wonderful, and it can be a real pain when signal drops and you can't figure out what the @#$# is going on.

Good luck and have fun!

EDIT: If you do actually have the Cat6 cable option, you'll wanna get shielded cable, which is of course a big rabbit hole to go down because there are all sorts of options, DTP, FTP,STP,SFTP,SSTP ... well anyway for the wall wiring I'd probably spring for Extron DTP (SF/UTP) for the video, whatever your other equipment purchases.

[johnmeyer]

I'll defer to others who know for sure, but my impression is that all HDMI wireless links compress the signal, whereas some of the wired solutions do not.