[mythtv-users] distributed simultaneous playback

[Mark Wedel]

On 08/28/15 12:22 PM, Jerome Yuzyk wrote:
> On Friday, August 28, 2015 11:44:29 AM Mark Wedel wrote:
>> On 08/28/15 09:31 AM, Jerome Yuzyk wrote:
>>> What options would I have to display MythFrontend playback simultaneously on monitors in my living room and kitchen, about 40 feet apart? I can use wired gigabit and only do SD so bandwidth shouldn't be an issue. I only need a screen in the kitchen, I can get enough sound from the living room and the remote has a clear line of sight.
>>>
>>> VNC? Long HDMI cable?
>>>
>>> Taking this a step further, to provide full sound and remote in the kitchen, is there any way to set up MythFrontend to do this?
>>>
>>
>>
>>    I do something like this at home - I'm only one person, so do not need
>> discrete outputs.  I'm presuming you want the simulateously playback because you
>> may wander from the kitchen to the living room and back, so if you fast forward
>> one, you want the other fast forwarded, etc.
>
> Right. Pretty much for sports. My kitchen layout precludes a view of the monitor in the living room.
>
> I have an nVidia card with DVI and HDMI. I use the DVI to my main monitor and sound from the onboard soundcard. So I could use the HDMI output to drive the kitchen display? I don't need much for sound right now, but with HDMI I could use a display that has sound built in to give it a little more presence there. An IR repeater - never thought of that, good idea. I thought I might just try a well-placed mirror. :)
>

  So the nvidia cards do support cloning - outputting the same image to multiple 
outputs.  So that is the simple way to do that without splitters.  However, 
cloned images run at same resolution/refresh - not an issue if both of your 
devices are 1080p for example.

  However, audio gets a little trickier, because the audio that the hdmi devices 
uses and the audio that is from your onboard motherboard are different devices 
(if you look at you system, you'd probably see 2-3 different audio devices - 
onboard, hdmi, and possible DVI, even though the DVI spec does not officially 
support audio)

  I don't think mythtv has any method to duplicate audio to multiple stream 
devices.  I think this can be done through some pulseaudio, but it isn't a 
simple 'click this button' and it is done.

Presumably you are displaying over DVI because the monitor lacks HDMI input?

There are some hdmi -> dvi adapters that also break out the audio, but those 
tend to be more expensive (and then you would also need an hdmi splitter)

  Presuming the TV in the kitchen has an audio input jack, it might just be 
simplest to get an audio splitter (passive - probably a few $), and when you run 
whatever cable to the kitchen, also run an audio cable - probably cheapest to 
just get some speaker wire and solder on the RCA jack on each end.  I'll presume 
you are using analog audio, so running speaker wire that far probably won't be 
an issue in terms of quality.