Household cable switching system

[Books]

I'm looking for a device that can take, say, one satellite TV receiver and allow it to support a house with more than one TV, providing no more than one TV is on at any time. It seems to me such a switching device should exist somewhere, such that if I live alone and have 5 TVs, I don't need 5 receivers . . . I have a switching device at the receiver source that can receive a command and switch the signal to a single selected TV in the house. Obviously, such a system would have to be expandable to however many TVs I want to support. But in the end, I only need receivers for as many TVs as I want to operate simultaneously.

Does such a device exist? If so, where would I buy one?

[jimdandyvi]

You really don't need a switch.

If you take the TV out port of a single satellite receiver then connect it into a multi port amplified/splitter and then run cables to each TV. Then all five TV's will get whatever channel the primary receiver is tunned to. Only the TV hooked to the receiver will be HDTV capable. You could do it with Slingboxes, but additional receivers would be less expensive.

If you then want to get fancier hook an A B switch to the back of each TV and then run another cable to an off the air antenna.

The one gadget that might make this set up more user friendly is to purchase a remote extender so you could get the remote to work in other rooms of your home. Never used one so I can't help you with this gadget.

Jim

[jayn_j]

I'm looking for a device that can take, say, one satellite TV receiver and allow it to support a house with more than one TV, providing no more than one TV is on at any time. It seems to me such a switching device should exist somewhere, such that if I live alone and have 5 TVs, I don't need 5 receivers . . . I have a switching device at the receiver source that can receive a command and switch the signal to a single selected TV in the house. Obviously, such a system would have to be expandable to however many TVs I want to support. But in the end, I only need receivers for as many TVs as I want to operate simultaneously.

Does such a device exist? If so, where would I buy one?

Actually, there are many solutions available. If you are on DISHnetwork, their dual tuner receivers have the ability to output the signal in NTSC on a UHF channel. This is fed into the household distribution system and can be read throughout the house on any antenna jack.

If you want to have HD available, you could look into the HDMI switchers and splitters available from Monoprice.com among other places. That involves running HDMI cables between rooms though.

If it was only 2 devices, you could feed the HDMI to one TV and the component to the other.