Room to room DVI connection?

[db]

i've just moved into my new house, and so am busy putting up units and reorganising things so they look all purdy.. my previous place being a 1 bedroom flat, i had my media PC setup in the living room, which allowed me to browse t'internet without being cooped up in my bedroom as well as watching all my downloaded content on my LCD TV via DVI.. well, now i have the luxury of a separate dining room and living room, i want to take the media PC out of the latter and have it live in the former.. are we all following so far?

my problem is, the TV is now about 4 metres away from the PC, and separated by a concrete wall and double doors.. i have a nice sturdy 6m DVI cable, but it's not long enough to run along the skirting board from one room to t'other.. even if it did, it doesn't go round corners particularly well (cos it's so thick), and it's black so rather unsightly against the light carpet..

has anyone else been in this situation, or got any suggestions how to get around it? i'm thinking of looking up an electrician in the yellow pages and seeing if he can install a DVI port in the wall of one room which routes to a DVI port in the living room by the TV.. this would obviously be the neatest/most convenient, but i have a feeling it will be pretty costly - that's if it's possible at all..

come on people, startle me with your ingenuity!

 

[Jheych]

I haven't t foggiest bud , flippin rare anyone ever hears me say that !
However I have a friend who loves this sort of thing and is pretty good at it .So will have a word and see what he says Shall I pm you if the joy bell rings ?

 

[tek-monkey]

Option 1) DIVX player, £30 but need to burn all your stuff to CD/DVD

Option 2) Video sender, about £40 or so, wireless on the 2.4GHz spectrum, but usually analogue.

Option 3) Seperate PC in the living room, just for TV? Thats what we have, had some spare parts luckily

Option 4) What you said, extend cable

Remember that the DVI from a PC doesn't usually carry sound, just picture.


EDIT: Forgot you can get AV HD caddys for about £35. Plug in through USB to the PC, drop files on, plug into TV throughS-Vid. Cost about £35 without HD. Not seen a DVI one but must be able to get?

 

[db]

I haven't t foggiest bud , flippin rare anyone ever hears me say that !
However I have a friend who loves this sort of thing and is pretty good at it .So will have a word and see what he says Shall I pm you if the joy bell rings ?

yeah, please.. or just chuck any info in this thread (unless it's personal, i guess)

 

[db]

Option 1) DIVX player, £30 but need to burn all your stuff to CD/DVD

all my content is HD (usually x.264) which standalone divx players can't handle.. plus, i like the convenience of hard drive storage!

Option 2) Video sender, about £40 or so, wireless on the 2.4GHz spectrum, but usually analogue.

yeah, i looked at these, but as you say they are analogue.. my TV does 1:1 pixel mapping with a digital (i.e. DVI or HDMI) connection and the picture is incredible, so i'd rather keep that quality if possible..

Option 3) Seperate PC in the living room, just for TV? Thats what we have, had some spare parts luckily

this is my media PC lol.. i have my main PC upstairs in the office, which is on 24/7 downloading and whatnot.. this media PC is in a nice Silverstone case, with a Zalman CPU fan and a Seasonic S12 PSU, but it's still a bit too big a noisy to live in my living room.. as i say, in my old place it lived under my TV, but that's because it was a 1 bedroom flat and i didn't really have any other option.. now i'm in a big ol' house i'd like to move the PC out of the living room, so ms. dirtybobby can play on The Sims 2 and stuff uninterrupted (there is a 17" LCD monitor connected to the primary video out, the LCD TV is connected to the secondary output and used exclusively for media output)..

Option 4) What you said, extend cable

Remember that the DVI from a PC doesn't usually carry sound, just picture.

yeah, given all of the above i think running a big ass cable twixt the two rooms really is my only choice.. i might pull the carpets up today and see if i can somehow hide it under there.. the audio will travel along a regular little 3.5mm audio cable, which is really skinny and can be any length so that's not too much of a problem.. the DVI is a bitch because it's so thick, and can only be so long due to signal degradation

 

[tek-monkey]

Can you get a DVI-HDMI cable? AFAIK they carry exactly the same signal, but the HDMI can carry audio too. Also, do you have surround? If so, you really want a digital audio connection too.

Looking around there are lots of companies doing specific DVI extensions up to 200' - at over £1k a piece!

 

[db]

Can you get a DVI-HDMI cable? AFAIK they carry exactly the same signal, but the HDMI can carry audio too. Also, do you have surround? If so, you really want a digital audio connection too.

yeah, DVI-HDMI is pretty common (HDMI is basically just DVI in a different form-factor, with audio connections chucked in) but it wouldn't really solve my problem.. i'd just be running an HDMI cable across my living room floor instead of a DVI cable! i don't have surround sound - audio will just be a regular stereo signal over a cable with 3.5mm jacks on each end.. i hear what your saying about unifying the signals into a single cable, though.. i might look into getting a DVI+Audio to HDMI cable, as this would make things a little neater..

Looking around there are lots of companies doing specific DVI extensions up to 200' - at over £1k a piece!

indeed, that's the problem i've been running into lol..

 

[Moley]

What about a WiFi media centre. Picks up your wireless signal from your router and provided you PC is turned on you can select (initially) the folders to be accessed from the PC. The centre is plugged into the old telly and you simply select from your hard drive (via the signal) what you wanna watch. Darshiva has one you can ask him about it, it's pretty good think they retail for around £150

 

[My Name is URL]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinnacle-ShowCenter-Digital-integrated-802-11g/dp/B000E5LIBQ

Mixed reviews on it, but might be worth a try!

 

[tek-monkey]

Even a cheap 10m DVI cable is nearly £50, but at least its white:

http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/LINDY10.html

 

[Darshiva]

Afternoon Forumites - thought I should maybe post especially as Moley quoted my name; I indeed have a Philips Streamium - its a fantastic piece of kit, you simply put the files you want to play on your media PC and then the streaming device acts as your media center.

I can play HD divx, xvids over the wireless connection and it upscales lower quality files.

When something is streaming from it, it uses between 2 - 3% CPU so you can use the PC normally.

It also has a nice display on the front so you can play MP3's without having to have the TV on which is a huge bonus.

You can get them on Amazon now for £69.99 which is a bargin.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Streamium-SL400i-Wireless-Multimedia/dp/B0007QNKCM

 

[Jheych]

Thatdoes

bugger ! start again yes I know about the edit bit !

and all I was going to utter was "that looks like a nice piece of kit!" !

there all done now

 

[db]

Afternoon Forumites - thought I should maybe post especially as Moley quoted my name; I indeed have a Philips Streamium - its a fantastic piece of kit, you simply put the files you want to play on your media PC and then the streaming device acts as your media center.

I can play HD divx, xvids over the wireless connection and it upscales lower quality files.

i had a look at a similar product a while ago - the netgear eva8000.. unfortunately, none of these devices seem to be compatible with matroska files, which almost all HD content is these days! netgear are promising support with a future upgrade, but reading the forums it looks like this has been "pending" for a while now.. still, they look like nice solutions, so i'll keep my eye on them

Even a cheap 10m DVI cable is nearly £50, but at least its white:

http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/LINDY10.html

yeah, i'm starting to think carefully routing a mahoosive DVI cable really is my only option.. fortunately, one of the benefits of working for an IT reseller is that stuff like this doesn't cost anywhere near as much as advertised! my current DVI cable - this 6m one here - only cost me £14 including VAT and delivery i didn't realise they ran as long as 10m - i'll check that out, thanks tek-monkey!


edit: i think you're onto something, tek-monkey.. i've just found a decent looking 10m DVI-D cable, which not only is white but looks thinner than my existing one, which should aid routing.. less than £20 as well

thanks for all your suggestions though, people.. those media receiver doobries would be the bee's knees if they supported more formats!

 

[Moley]

Afternoon Forumites - thought I should maybe post especially as Moley quoted my name; I indeed have a Philips Streamium - its a fantastic piece of kit, you simply put the files you want to play on your media PC and then the streaming device acts as your media center.

I can play HD divx, xvids over the wireless connection and it upscales lower quality files.

When something is streaming from it, it uses between 2 - 3% CPU so you can use the PC normally.

It also has a nice display on the front so you can play MP3's without having to have the TV on which is a huge bonus.

You can get them on Amazon now for £69.99 which is a bargin.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Streamium-SL400i-Wireless-Multimedia/dp/B0007QNKCM

Hey hey hey Darshiva, you've stopped snooping and finally posted. Up for beer this weekend?

 

[UltraSBM]

Mmm...Beer...

 

[db]

ah, i forgot about this thread.. if anyone's wondering, i went ahead and bought the 10m DVI cable mentioned in my previous post and it's been working beautifully ever since