Playing the same thing on multiple extenders . . .

[Fuzzy]

The zvBox itself is actually a great device, though I'd question it's cost-worthiness in a residential setting. It is best suited for places like hotels and hospitals, where multiplexing many channels onto the same line make sense. A single zvBox in a house seems overkill, and I'm guessing it'd be cheaper to run Component over CAT5 to the locations than it would be to purchase the zvBox.

[eric3a]

ooh, can you describe your ZVBox setup in more detail? Input devices, connection method, etc.

I was very intrigued by that product when it came out, more for its QAM modulator potential than its interface.

I'm basically using it as a QAM modulator.
The only input is the computer, and the output is 720p on my own "channel" which is picked up by all my HDTVs (6) in the house.

The zvBox itself is actually a great device, though I'd question it's cost-worthiness in a residential setting.

For me it worked out a lot cheaper because my house was already setup for SD modulation over coax from a central location. It was also a lot easier, and didn't involve crawling under the house with a power drill, making new holes in the walls for new plugs, etc...
Balun prices may have dropped now, but I got the ZvBox as soon as it came out, and back then getting 6 component baluns, 6 faceplates and cabling was a lot more than 500 bucks.

Also, I can easily move my TVs around if I want to redecorate the house (I just changed the layout in my home office for exemple), or add a TV somewhere on the existing coax network: Any TV will already receive our "house" channel on any coax plug. No additional purchase/installation required.
With baluns I question how feasible this would be -say in 2 or 3 years- to add new recievers and cables. The other solution of course, would be to prewire all locations (about 12 in the house), but that'd shoot the price up a lot and may never be used.

I am hoping that in a few years 1080p QAM modulators will have gone down in price from the 2,500 they are at now and I'll replace my ZvBox with one of those.

Eric

[dfitz43]

+1 for Sage sync across multiple extenders. I've asked about this in the past, and think it would be fantastic, particularly for the Superbowl party application, among other features.

The Zvbox sounds freaking awesome, actually. Would be great if 1080p, but I'm sure that'll come. I take it this is attached to your Sage server? How do you do remote control of your Zvbox?

cheers,
Dave

[ryanroat]

Thanks, Eric.

[inskeepp]

When I looked into the zvBox it seemed like it was fairly limited to use as a QAM modulator. I asked and they said it was meant to be connected to as the primary display. It also could only do 720p. I think the sound was also usb based.
So for my setup with a htpc hooked up to my main tv it did not seem to be a good option. I wanted to enable video cards second dvi with component output as a mirrored 1080i secondary display and split the audio into the box and have that send out over QAM. Can it do that now? I'll have to go back and look some more.

[Fuzzy]

no, the hardware in the zvbox is still limited to 720p encoding. I'm not sure, but I think it will accept higher resolutions, but will downsize it to 720p before encoding it to mpeg2. Audio, i believe, is via USB, analog inputs, or SPDIF inputs.

[eric3a]

The Zvbox sounds freaking awesome, actually. Would be great if 1080p, but I'm sure that'll come. I take it this is attached to your Sage server? How do you do remote control of your Zvbox?

It is attached to the SageTV server indeed. No need to remote control the box: I always "ZvCast" as they call it.
The one problem I had was that the ZvBox software control (ZvManager) can't start sending the computer picture out automatically on reboot but needs user intervention to do so.
I solved that with a short script.

When I looked into the zvBox it seemed like it was fairly limited to use as a QAM modulator. I asked and they said it was meant to be connected to as the primary display. It also could only do 720p. I think the sound was also usb based.

Correct.
My main use for it is a backup for those moments when we want to watch the same program on all TVs.
I honestly see little difference between 720p and 1080i but I do see a significant difference between the computer picture quality and the HD picture, with the latter being much more vivid.

Eric