Hi Lucid, sorry for the delay.
Once again, that so much for the write up, that made everything 1000x more clear now.
Just some small issues
For all the rooms except the main lounge all the sound goes through one Sonos Connect:Amp per room. So in each of those rooms you have a TV, a Sonos Connect:Amp, and a pair of speakers. The Sky boxes are in the comms room. Any local sources such as games consoles etc plug in to the TV. In turn the TV optical out via the converter connects to the Sonos. Any sound that would have come out of the TV speakers comes out of the Sonos/speaker combo instead.
Just wondering if there is any delay in processing using the optical to RCA converter + the 70 millisecond delay of the sonons connect:amp? I assume there is but its not going to be problematic, because of your explanations before?
Is this the converter any good or would you recommend something else?
http://www.cables2u.co.uk/spdif-opt...-p-1166.html?gclid=COfG27ftgroCFfMQtAod80gAIQ
The Connect becomes another source input to the AV receiver. You would connect HDMIs from the Sky box, a Blu-ray, games console etc to the AV amp. You would connect the audio out (optical/coax or stereo) of the Connect to the AV amp. The HDMI out from the AV receiver connects to the TV on the ARC-enabled input. This is how you get Freeview sound in to the AV receiver.
The TV switches between either the DTV tuner (for Freeview) or one HDMI input. This would be the one with ARC. When switched to this HDMI input then the TV "sees" whichever video source is selected from the AV Receiver. When it's time to play music you select the audio input on the AV Receiver that has the Sonos connected to it. You can switch the TV off. The music comes out of the same 5 speakers that it does for movies and TV etc.
Thanks for the explanations but just one quick questions, I know that HDMI ARC means that the sound the TV is producing is sent back over 2 pins that were free in normal HDMI to AV receiver. But if the TV is switched onto freeview, I am assuming the TV sends sound signal down the HDMI ARC which is connected to the AV reciever, but how does the AV reciever know to play the sound, I am assuming logically I would just pick the option on the AV reciver that says TV?
also could you be kind enough to recommend me very good quality AV reciver, rather me just pick a random one or most expensive one or at least a reliable brand?
If money isn't a consideration then go for baluns instead of active cables. At least you'll be able to change the head- and tail-end electronics as technology changes.
Unfortunately I have measured the distances involved and I am looking at over 25-30meters because of the long distances and not being able to drill in some places. This would mean that i will have to use Balkans as you
mentioned.
when you say Baluns, do you mean I have run two Cat 6A twisted pair cables with one of these devices?
http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/hdmi-cat5e-cat6-extender-50m.html
also there is version that works with only 1 cat 6 cable
http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/hdmi-over-cat5-extender.html
Shall i run 2 x cables or go for 1 x cable??????
but I have also read on many forums that baluns don't work very well with sky hd boxes? or not all of them
and only possibly the neet brand works and aslo some of these baluns don't work with some HDMI splitters.
Because I need to split the HDMO signal 2 way( 2 bedrooms) and also 3 way( main room, bathroom, kitchen)
I just need some equipment that works well with each other from the word go, really cold not care about price.
Could you offer any advice here please, not sure on what equipment to order and or comparability.
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Regarding the sky App+ and the delay, I wanted to build some redundancy into this thing, just encase the delay
is not acceptable and was thinking of running some RF cable from the sky boxes and using magic eyes with
amplified splitter" which is SkyLink compatible and using magic eyes to control the boxes. But one thing I am not sure about if you have 3 rooms linked to one sky HD box, can you use 3 separate remotes or are you stuck with
just 1 remove?
is there any other way around this without getting too complicated??? or is my solution good? I would really like to have one remove in each room if possible, even though they all control the same box.
If i implemented this, I am assuming its still possible to use the sky APP+ in conjunction with this?
the equipment cost is not issue, but I have read there is large equipment incompatibility with IR receivers and transmitters and sky boxes that require programming and all sorts of weird stuff.
or could i use one of these baluns?
http://www.lindy.co.uk/audio-video-c2/extenders-c181/hdmi-c184/hdmi-ir-cat6-extender-pro-40m-p6757
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The only thing I'd recommend is that the Sonos Connect:Amps live in each room. The digital amp in the Sonos box isn't hugely powerful. Driving very long speaker cables to speakers that might in themselves be difficult loads (low efficiency/large phase- or impedance variations) just seems like a recipe for trouble. The other factor though is purely practical. If the apartment is close to wireless signal saturation then do you really want a big distance between the phone in your hand and the box it's trying to talk to?
I am willing to accept your recommendation and leave the sonox boxes in the respective rooms, but I am worried that there might be wireless saturation or weak signals some places and would really like to have some faile safe measure in place before we seal the walls. What I was thinking is to install extra cat six cabling or Ethernet wire from sonos boxes in the rooms all the way to the comms cupboard and then to connect these wia a Ethernet switch and then connect one port of the Ethernet switch to my internet network? at least this way they will on a wired network just encase the wireless network is poor?
what do you think? is this even possible? worth a try?
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bye the looks of it, I am going to have to install to each room 2x more cat cables and RF cable, this means more
ripping out big chunks of wall
thanks so much for all your help and taking time to reply, I really appreciate it
and i thought computers were complicated
