Hello there,

I've owned B&O equipment for more than 10 years now, building my system brick by brick, both from new and second hand items. Now is the time where I am turning my AV system into a mutl-room system.  Now is also the time when technology is more complex than ever... everything is becoming digital.

My goal sounds simple enough : my main AV system is in my living room and I'd like to enjoy most if not all my media (music, photos, videos) in a secondary room (a bedroom, or a study, or whatever). The most important media source is the AppleTV : it has my music, but also my photos, and my movies (on an attached hard drive). Movies are DVD ripped, resolution 720 with AC3 sound.

Now the specifics : my main AV system is a Beovision 7-40 Mark IV (MKIII updated, without blueray). My secondary AV is a Beovision 3-32 : this is an analogic TV with very little input ports (scarts and RF). I may choose to replace the BV3 set with a digital TV : BV6, BV8 ? Second hand, on a budget...

Attached are 3 schematics to help discussing the issue :

- CURRENT SET UP : this is how things are working now. This is the standard old fashion Beolink set-up  where video signal travels thru a RF cable between the TVs. It is working as advertised --- although when you read the fine print, some disapointments are on the way : the Beolink is not very digital friendly so forget about feeding the AppleTV content to the link room.
I am currently experimenting with this set up with free cables as I am not ready yet to cut grooves in my hard walls...

- OPTION 1 :  basically this option is the traditional Beolink set-up with a twist --- in order to send the APPLETV signal to the link room, I pull a HDMI cable from a HDMI distribution box (splitter) to a HDMI video scaler (translates the digital signal into analogic for the BV3). With this option I could probably keep my BV3 for a few more years. But I'm not even sure this would work !

- OPTION 2 : this solution was inspired by a thread on Beoworld some time ago (Tripenglish was the author).  I'm thinking "if the world is going digital, we might as well go digital all the way" !  So the idea is to replace the RF cable by a HDMI cable with distributors (one per source) and a smart scan switch. The smart scan switch recognizes when a signal is coming from one the ports and forward it to the TV -- no need for a remote to choose a source.  This option seems the most advanced, ie "modern" and requires a TV with a HDMI input. Again, I'm no expert and I haven't tested the idea.  Will it work ?

I am looking for feedback on these ideas : am I going in the right direction ? Any advice is welcome ! Any tips about the various HDMI boxes (brands, models, prices, features) are welcome !

I can PM the original Powerpoint file to anyone who wants to edit it --- for the forum or personal use.

Best.

Flycub