Personal "Network" Receiver, Does it exist? (1 Viewer)

[Xander H]

Sorry in advance for the length of the post but I (much like Martin Luther King) have a dream, and while mine may be much smaller in scope and much less important it is nonetheless something that I hope to one day see become a reality and for that I need help from you guys!

For those of you who want no details but have the massive knowledge to help with just the barebones facts, please skip down to the TL;DR and toss in your two cents.

I recently refinished my basement and built myself a home theater, and the room next door as my bed room, and on the other side of the basement as my music room with all my instruments and soundproofing, etc. I was hoping that it would be possible, practical, and cost-effective to run everything down here in my own little cocoon of entertainment through a single receiver with the right accessories and wires but I'm not sure it's possible and I know that if anyone will know the answer it's the people who read here.

Right now I've got my 56" TV with my 7.1 surround sound hooked through my Pioneer Elite VSX-01TXH. I am using an SVS sub and I've got a set of 7 JBL Northridge speakers that are way bigger than I thought they would be when I bought them (If I'm not looking at the numbers and I get higher than a -12 or so it'll just click and turn the whole receiver off.) The current inputs for my receiver are my HD Satellite and my PS3 which serves as my Blu-Ray and DVD player. I would like to expand this to cover many more inputs and another HDMI output as follows:

I have a massive awesome new PC that I built earlier this year and I would love to be able to play games on my big screen with 7.1 surround. I will need another HDMI input for that. I will also at some point be picking up an XBox 360 and will need an HDMI input for that. Furthermore despite me owning my own, friends bring over their PS3s a lot and it's a hassle to unplug and remove mine and plug theirs in and then undo it at the end of the night, so a front HDMI input would be fantastic (but I guess isn't truly essential).

Obviously all that is standard so here's where it gets to the grey parts that I don't know what to do about. I would like to be able to run an HDMI from my theater into my bedroom and be able to watch my dish in here or in bed.

The problem with that is, almost every receiver I see only has a single HDMI output and also, I don't know if this is what would end up happening but I can't have the speakers out here in my theater blasting the sound for my TV in the bedroom. So that's yet another weird feature I'm looking for; the source for both audio and video is my satellite, so for one of my receiver settings it would need to output video to my theater TV and audio to my 7.1 but the second setting it would need to output both audio and visual to my bedroom TV.

Is there a word for this? Is it possible to do it with any other types of cables (composite, for example)? I would like to run two cords over to the music room on the other side of the basement for two TVs over there. Again though, I would need to be able to toss both video and sound over there.

The last little problem is that if I do get this all setup properly I am going to need some way to take advantage of how incredibly cool it is, but the walls will make it quite difficult to hit my receiver from every room. What good is it being able to watch a blu-ray from my PS3 while I'm riding my exercise bike in a totally different room if I have to get up and walk across the width of my house every time I want to pause or something? So I was hoping there was some sort of a relay or gadget or I dunno, wave of the future that would help me out there.

TLR
If you waded through my rambling then kudos and thanks! If you didn't, here's a summary:
I want a receiver to act as a hub for my whole basement, multiple rooms and all different kinds of inputs and outputs. Things it needs to have:
-- 7.1 surround sound
-- At least 4 rear HDMI inputs, preferrably 5 or 6 to give me some room to grow
-- 1 front HDMI input would be awesome, not absolutely necessary if it'll be a dealbreaker in finding something that works
-- Some way to take the signal from my satellite into my receiver and output it either to my big screen TV and 7.1 surround here in my theater, or take the video AND sound and output them both on the TV in the bedroom
-- If it's possible to do the above, then it would also be nice to be able to output composite signals to my exercise bike TV and to be able to run another composite cable across the basement to my music room so I can watch Rock Band while I sit in front of my actual drums and make charting songs easier.
-- Control, I need to be able to hit the receiver from any one of these locations to adjust volume etc. etc. What should I be looking for here. And hopefully it's something that will work with my Logitech Harmony One universal remote because I would love to be able to walk around the house with that using it on every TV and all the lights, etc.

So what kind of receiver do I need? What terms should I be looking up and then looking out for when I'm doing my scouting? Is this just a pipedream, too impractical or expensive to get it done, should I just be finding quicker ways to connect and disconnect stuff and move it around all the time?

Any help or advice or even commentary is very welcome, thanks for reading!

 

[Robert_J]

Get a Monoprice 4x2 HMDI matrix switch box. The equipment that you want to view in your bedroom should be connected to it. One of the 2 output goes to the bedroom TV. The outher output goes to your A/V receiver. Buy 4x1 HDMI switch box for your theater room only components. Leave an HDMI cable or 2 connected as free inputs for friend's PS3's.

Composite signals - Use a composite switch box from Monoprice or even Wal-Mart. Connect your equipment directly to it.

Control - I'd go with a Harmony 890 since it has RF. You can also get an IR to bluetooth adapter to control the PS3. In fact, I'd get one for each room that has a TV. I've done that with Harmony 880's. No need to remember where I left a remote. They don't leave the room.

 

[CaseyL]

Hey man. Here's what I personally would do in your situation:

The Denon AVR 5308ci I think has at least a majority of the specifications you're looking for. It's got 2 seperate HDMI's out, it is networkable, but won't act as a network Hub. It can simultaneously run 2 separate Theater zones, and as it has both IR in and dual RS232 ports you have a whole world of control options.

As for the HDMI situation, if you want to run one up to your bed room, there's a whole plethora of products that will run HDMI over Cat5e/Cat6. That'd be the way to get it upstairs, provided you have cable infrastructure. JustAddPower makes a device that you can run HDMI across a standard Network Switch.

As for front panel HDMI, sorry, no go, but using a wall-plate pass-through, you could put one anywhere, on the front of your rack, or even right on the wall in your theater! Put it next to an outlet, and you can plug anything in there. Then you wouldn't have to unhook your PS3 when friends come over, it'd just be on the spare port.

For control, I'd reccommend the new URC line of MX remotes, either the MX6000 or the MX5000, which are functionally identical, but physically quite different. You can get a base-station to do either IR or RS232 directly into the receiver, DVD, SAT, XBX, and PS3 (The PS3 needs a little extra help, but it is possible) and control from anywhere in the house. The URC's also feature a 2-way on screen feature that communicates with this denon Receiver (via RS232) where you can get the Volume readout, and source info right there.

If you have any further question, or wanna talk about it, you can PM me.

 

[Xander H]

Sorry to raise a bit of an old thread, but I've been a bit busy with holiday stuff and just recently got around to reading up on all this and doing a bit more research. Some great suggestions (I especially like that wall plate!) and I think I've come up with something that should fit my needs without being prohibitively expensive. Just wanted to run it past everyone here though since everyone here is so experienced with all of this and I'm sure someone has had some personal Onkyo experience if not the specific receiver I'm looking at who can let me know just how good their product is (I did some quick searches in this folder and it seems like there are a fair number of people who seem to enjoy their Onkyos, so that bodes well!).

This is the one that I'm looking at and the place I'm looking at getting it from, I haven't found anyplace cheaper in my shopping and it's also got free shipping so you can't beat that!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882120138&cm_re=onkyo82-120-138Product

Onkyo 9.2-Channel Black A/V Surround Home Network Receiver TX-NR3007
Price: $1,499.99

• THX Ultra2 Plus certified
• HDMI V1.3a repeater (7in (1 front)/2out (simultaneous), 1080p compatible)
• 4 Independent Power Supply for clearner sound
• isf Video Calibration
• Internet Radio Streaming (Pandora, Rhapsody, Sirius Internet Radio, vTuner)
• HDMI 1080p upscaling powered by HQV Reon-VX
• Dolby PLIIz Processing
• Dolby Volume
• Audyssey DSX Surround processing
• Component Video Upscaling (up to 1080i)
• Front USB input

Hopefully that's got everything that I want, and hopefully it will also output both the audio and video to my second TV through the second HDMI output. If not of course I can always run optical audio or whatever, it would just be nice to not have to deal with that hassle.

Anyone who could chime in about this receiver, if it looks like a decent buy, a good price, if you've had any experiences with it in particular or any good/bad experiences with Onkyo receivers recently that would be great! Thanks so much for reading and sorry about the long post!