A client wants two TVs in the gym, one being the main entertainment TV and the other, say, the sports scores or CNN crawl. He's thinking of one TV mostly being silent, too, but I'm wiring up audio from the cable box of each TV.

Audio may be from the TV but may alternatively be from an existing whole-house system.

He hardly cares about the appearance of these TVs. I could get a Samsung and a Sony and he'd be Satisfied. Or if you know of a medium expense 40ish inch TV with a wired IR input, we could go that way, too.

I'm not going to get so complicated as to control these (and their Motorola cable boxes) by IP.

What other questions come to mind?

Wired IR inputs like on Sony?

Nah, I don’t think anyone makes those

If a control system is out of the question i would go with two different model TVs.

TV #1 would be wired so that cable box audio is routed through the whole house system.

TV #2 would not be connected to the whole house audio system and it would always have the volume set to zero so that you can only see video.

The client would always use TV #1 for "listening and watch" and TV #2 for "watch".

IMO this is the least expensive least confusing way (for the client to operate) to do this.

Mac, that's definitely the default simple solution. Fins, uh.....

Here, Fins, I found this reply elsewhere:


Me not also, too.

But this time it's about controlling a Sony TV via wire from, say, a URC receiver. The seventy-four seconds I've put into researching this tells me that some Sony TVs come with an IR blaster that lets me control a set-top box, but does not allow me to send an IR code INTO the TV to control it.

Know where this info is?

Thanks.

Well, not so fast... each TV will have a cable box. I have to work out a way to keep from switching both boxes at the same time.

You mentioned URC- did you know the IR output jacks are assignable?

If you don't want the IR emitters to be visible, look for some naked emitters.

IR routing?

who’s The cable company? Cox, spectrum, Comcast all have boxes with rf controls. That would work for the different tv brands idea.

Comcast and spectrum both have decent streaming apps. You could use those on Roku tv’s if you add the Roku rf remotes them. Comcast could run on appletv app in the nicer Samsung TVs that use rf remotes.

Streaming tv (sling et al) instead of cable boxes using Roku or Samsung tv's and their respective rf remotes.

Other then that, you’re at a really simple control system with ir routing. That could be nice since you can macro up on commands, default channels etc.

I had to go back a couple times and make sure this wasnt a thread that was bumped from 2001 or something...

Is there some sort of crazy budget constraint in play here? is this why we're making this way more complicated than it is?

An MX-780 and a MRF-350 is all you need in this scenario. the TV's can be the same. The Cable boxes can be the same. you just assign the ports to their devices and call it a day.

So unless you left out a whole bunch of information, why isnt this solution thats been around for over a decade (with varying versions of the remote, but essentially the same RF receiver/IR Router) not a no brainer?

He just didn’t give us enough info to help.

Never does.

We MUST have model number, room size and more....;-)

Here, newbie

[Link: remotecentral.com]

Is this thread for real?

Ernie,

If you can get cable boxes with RF remotes and IR emitters, pair the remotes with their TV/cable box -- done.

Use different brand TV's if there is any danger of IR leakage from TV to TV or if the cable box remotes emit IR directly, rather than through their respective emitters.