Tech geeks

I'm a pastor at a church in Elma, wa and am interested in hosting a church SB party. The NFL has issued an official statement that they are fine with this . . .

We have comcast TV, but it is in a remote part of the church. Is there a device to hook up to a cable box and transmit to another part of the building?

What kind of distance are you talking about? It's probably easiest & cheapest to just get a long HDMI cable to run straight from the box to the TV, to be honest.

Opposite side of a building, several hallways and stairwells . . .

That tells me nothing. How many feet are we talking, here? Also, do you have a coax outlet in the wall anywhere near the TV? If so, you should simply be able to move the cable box to that one and have it work.

without knowing the particulars of your facility first thing I would look at is putting up a temporary coax run so you can put the cable box with the tv. I'm sure you can locate a cable installer through your congregation, can't be more than one or two degrees of seperation at most right? Someone who buries short drops for a living could make you a cable in a few minutes that you can store and reuse as needed.

Is WiFi available where you're holding the event? Most cable systems support online viewing. Just set up a laptop & use your projector/tv as video output. Cheaper & easier than snaking cable.

You can do HDMI over ethernet but it's probably a few hundred for the boxes plus wiring if you need to do that.

Happy":3bu9eodt said:

without knowing the particulars of your facility first thing I would look at is putting up a temporary coax run so you can put the cable box with the tv. I'm sure you can locate a cable installer through your congregation, can't be more than one or two degrees of seperation at most right? Someone who buries short drops for a living could make you a cable in a few minutes that you can store and reuse as needed.

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Excellent idea. I was thinking of running from the box to the TV, not from the wall to the box.

It is literally hundreds of feet. HDMI is not an option, but coax is . . .

McGruff":3rb9zbqj said:

Happy":3rb9zbqj said:

without knowing the particulars of your facility first thing I would look at is putting up a temporary coax run so you can put the cable box with the tv. I'm sure you can locate a cable installer through your congregation, can't be more than one or two degrees of seperation at most right? Someone who buries short drops for a living could make you a cable in a few minutes that you can store and reuse as needed.

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Excellent idea. I was thinking of running from the box to the TV, not from the wall to the box.

It is literally hundreds of feet. HDMI is not an option, but coax is . . .

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Exactly. A few hundred feet is no big deal for a coax run, and the materials are cheap. Trying to do video over wireless non line of sight over that distance for a temporary solution would not be an efficient application of resources .

Just use a coax splitter and a long coax cable, then. Definitely the cheapest way.

Comcast could put a cable outlet in the room you want to watch

It's about $20-$40 for 100-200ft of cable on Amazon. I'd think you'd get better quality running a long cable from the wall to box, then a HDMI or shorter cable from the box to the media device.

you should measure and use less cable if possible if you are getting into hundreds of feet you will get some loss and worse reception, RG6 is the typical standard http://www.w4rp.com/ref/coax.html

I don't know the specifics, but I know that you CAN convert HDMI signals to regular network CAT5 or CAT6 (the internet cable you probably run all through your building), which is probably better for signal loss. Never tried it but I was going to do it to run cable into the the home study/office at one time.

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=1 ... 1&format=2

I think you can get them on Monoprice and I am betting ebay has them too (since .net wants us to use ebay with the .net link if possible).

Obviously if you are running the cable more than 300ft you have to look at other options, but network cable usually is easy hide under carpet or along walls. I don't know the limits on cable length to keep adequate signal strength for coax. It might just be cheaper to call the cable company and have THEM install an additional jack somewhere closer.

A couple hundred foot coax run is likely to need a signal amplifier. They're not very expensive.

While you could easily do this yourself, if you're not very techie, I would echo another poster and recommend calling xfinity. They'll run a line, ensure you have adequate signal strength and put the outlet where you want it. If you ever think you would do something like this again, that would be my vote.

You'll have loss with hdmi to cat 6, too, fwiw.

Happy":1iyo32ix said:

Trying to do video over wireless non line of sight over that distance for a temporary solution would not be an efficient application of resources .

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Just out of curiosity, why not? I've done it a few times without incident. Didn't need LOS as long as signal strength was fairly robust. Granted, no idea of the topology, but for a one-off it's simple and non-invasive to test.

Maybe a tv tuner card on a pc? then if you have a good enough wifi router, I would think you would need better then wireless N, or even just a super long cat5, but basically just run the stream from the pc with the tuner card, to a laptop hooked to a hdtv?

Russellmania3":3ccg58fi said:

Comcast could put a cable outlet in the room you want to watch

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Just remember they will only make cable runs along the outside of the facility and will only put an outlet in on a wall facing the outside (they will drill from outside in).

You could cancel Comcast and subscribe elsewhere and maybe get the install for free? Just a thought.