Installing a Complete Multiroom HDMI Distribution System - OREI UHD48-EX230-K 

just wondering why the ps4 and 5 at the same time? digital only ps5?

The PlayStations are my partner's so I don't really know - think there's something that only runs on the PS4 or maybe some old game saves that can't transfer across? My own PlayStation experience ends with the PS2 back when transferring a game save involved moving a memory card!

@@camerongray1515 Great video. I just picked up a similar hdmi/Cat6 distribution hub myself. Would you consider sharing your node-red flow?

For a newbie to this it seems really alot.

Would this work with cat5 as well?

Yeah, I've never really understood why people would only run one cable to each point - the cost of cable is minuscule compared to the time it would take to run an extra cable in after the fact once the walls and ceilings are all patched and decorated! I even have things like a couple of CAT6 cables sitting in the walls behind light switches from when I was doing some lighting upgrades - I already had access opened up to get new cables down to the light switch so decided to run some CAT6 in while I could. I'm not using it currently but it could be an absolute godsend if I ever wanted to install some sort of PoE wall control panel.etc.

Who's laughed at you for that

No one laughed at you for that... It's standard practice

@TheHenmistro So all those data centres have 1000s of redundant ethernet cables? Everyday is a school day.

@@DJBlu2003 yes their are desperate railways for redundant connections :) when laying cable it's a cheaper cost to lay 2 cables because the contractor wouldn't charge extra and only for the extra material. If you have them come out again the call out fee and installation fee is many many more times expensive then the material.

This is definitely something I'd like to do now that I'm doing a fair bit more home automation stuff and the system is finally getting a bit more "polished" - I have a few more things to finish off first but will hopefully get around to it at some point early next year.

I too have harmony remotes, and i guess i would place the hub near the box (where ever that is ). Because the system has IR blasters it should send the ir over the cat6, or RF from the remote to the hub and send the commands almost straight to the devices. I thing i would have at least 2 hubs near the box😂 and so IR blasters would not be needed imho...

This product is only hdmi 2.0. It can achieve only 4k 60 hz. There arent currently any hdmi 2.1 cabable broducts out there. Atleast reasonable priced. Best u can do is using hdmi 2.1 extender with 10+15 meter hdmi cables and separate cable for usb if needed.

Lolz as I watch at 1.5x

@@DmitriyKhazansky nice to meet you mr Flash Gordon "D

Not sure if it would be suitable for this. There exists the possibility of lag with the remote screens. Moreover I assume this sharing is for the “beer run” to stay in touch with the goals in FIFA on either Sky or PS5.

@@chriswatt2702 yeah I would t be playing FIFA but it was an interesting concept. Might work if I had one or two systems to use, but I have at least 6 modern systems that could be accessible on HDMI. Then there's the other 12 retro systems. But I guess it's ok. Thanks for the response.

Same question. Do the remote and game controllers work over the IR setup you have?

This is why I'm pretty particular around having smart home stuff that is relatively unobtrusive - physical light switches, AV system controlled by regular remotes.etc. That said, it does make for interesting tech support calls when I'm out and "the light switches have stopped working and I can't turn the lights off and need to go to bed"

The magic for that happens in Node Red or Home Assistant. The Ir signal is picked up by the receiver connected to the hdmi over Cat extender, and sent to the matrix switcher. There, an Ir emitter sends the signal to his Ir puck where the signal is fed into his home automation system.

Are these connections direct cat6 or can they send the signal over a switch? I’m looking for something were I can send video over a network.

@mitchelle245 these do require direct connections, they are not ip devices. To send over a network you need a format called AVoIP (rather than HDbaseT) which will allow distribution through a network switch, they do compress the stream more than these, but are very flexible for installs with more than 4 or 8 zones

I made a dedicated video about them here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bDWiQ2xNsTg.html. For bedroom use, the displays only remain on when the lights in the room are turned on. They also have a proximity sensor so they turn on automatically whenever you walk past and if the lights in the room are off, they will turn off again after a time period has elapsed.

I definitely could although if I had presence detection I'd likely only really use it to turn off TVs in unoccupied rooms. I generally limit my use of completely interaction free automations and prefer to manually control things through remote controls, wall switches and touchscreen panels. Automations look cool, but they can end up being a pain if they end up being triggered when you don't want them. As an example, if I set something up to automatically turn on and off displays based on room occupancy I could forsee an issue where, for example, my partner could be sleeping in the bedroom while I'm up late watching something in the living room but realise I've left my phone in the bedroom and go in to get it, the last thing I want is the TV turning itself on! Sure you could then amend the automation where the bedroom TV only turns on during the day, but then you'll hit that one day where someone is ill and goes to bed during the day only to find the TV keeps turning itself on. With my setup, if I were to walk into the bedroom and want to switch on Sky, it's just a couple of button presses on the touch screen located next to the door.

@@camerongray1515 Yes, some automations can be a pain I agree but you could have a shortcut to activate the automation and only use it when you want until all tvs are turned off. Well I like this kind of crazy automations just for fun (about creating them) 🤣🤣

So how do you control the various equipment from the remote locations? You only showed how the matrix was controlled? Thanks

He showed. All are controlled through infrared. @@richardmanford4730

It definitely would work for video from a PC, but for a PC you'd probably be better looking at an HDBaseT kit that can also carry USB. Probably wouldn't get the matrix switching functionality of this system, but you'd be able to send HDMI and USB (albeit USB 2.0) over a single CAT6 cable.

Thanks! For slim cables in particular I use these: patchsavesolutions.com/773-slim-small-diameter-pvc-snagless-patch-cables which are pretty good value. Fs.com also do them but their stock/shipping times aren't ideal if I need them quickly.

One problem with that approach is HDCP

@@pineappleroad Most cheap hdmi splitters will strip that out. It’s naughty but surprising how many do it anyway!

It's from a brand called Connectix Cabling Systems, although now that you mention it, their logo is extremely similar to Proxmox's, never noticed that before!

You'd definitely be able to do that, not with this system but you can get HDBaseT transceiver sets that can handle USB alongside HDMI although you'd also need to figure out a way to switch the USB connection between your devices (that said, you can get USB switch boxes with IR remotes so that could be an option). There are also USB over IP systems that I want to take a look at at some point. With this current setup, I'm fortunate enough that the PS5 controller has such a good range that it seems to work pretty reliably from a couple of rooms away as does the Sky remote, although the Apple TV remote's range is absolutely dreadful!

Last time I looked into this was many years ago and it sounds like the technology has caught up now. I previously tried with KVM type solutions but found that they were usually specifically for keyboard / mouse and not generic USB. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll do some digging about HDBaseT. My wife will be happy that all the "ugly consoles" will be put away out of sight!

HDMI over Coax systems exist but they'd still expect a point to point link which isn't how coax is usually wired. Another option is to use DVB-T modulators which will encode an HDMI input into a DVB-T TV channel you could then tune in on each TV. You could even chain multiple to send different sources over the same cables and select the input by picking a channel on the TV. I saw an interesting system like this in a bar a while back - All sources into DVB-T modulators connected to all the TVs around the place. They could turn easily switch what each TV was showing (Live TV, Advertisement slideshow.etc) by just changing the channel on each TV. The downside is that quality is a bit limited and you can be looking at a second or two of latency which makes it unsuitable for gaming or even could make controlling a set top box feel sluggish.

Not recommended. My ancient HDTV modulation hardware has always been sluggish; boot up sequence is tricky or audio gets lost requiring a restart. Resolution is only 1080 DVD quality and the A/V timing delay is annoying if you're learning to lip read or hearing the live unprocessed sound for the source that's located in another room. It's time to retire (my) 35 year old NTSC RG6 75 Ohm cables and CAT3/CAT5/CAT6 hay-wiring schemes and just move on to optical or WiFi that also offers much better *household lightning protection.* _I've been smacked TWICE._ Pre-"wiring" with empty plastic sprinkler pipe raceways makes any future conversion still possible for this old fart, but I've become way too lazy to even make use of it now. Still might need it though for near-future "in-wall" O2 Concentrator tubing to reduce trip hazard assuming I'm still ambulatory. LOL

Is it common in the UK for most houses to have aerial antenna's for TV?

In the UK, free-to-air TV over an antenna is the "normal" way of receiving broadcast TV with cable and satellite generally used for people who want "premium" channels such as movies and live sports. Over the air you can usually get 80+ digital channels including several in HD. Houses will usually have some form of coax aerial wiring installed and flats (apartments) usually have a communal aerial on the roof that is also distributed throughout the building, sometimes there will also be a communal satellite dish to avoid people needing to install their own and making the building look unsightly.

Still wouldn't work - this can work if you're using HDMI over IP systems that send broadcast packets to all other devices on the network (using a VLAN is a good way to keep traffic down on these systems) but it will not work with a regular HDMI over CAT or HDBaseT system - a switch is expecting ethernet frames and links at standard data rates (10/100/1000.etc) not whatever these devices will be using to communicate. While a dedicated VLAN can act like a cable from a network perspective, it still means that the packets are passing through a switch with the switch performing various switching functions, it doesn't just electrically connect ports together.

Bluetooth?

@@jaydevchhagan I'm well aware that the controller and console communicate via Bluetooth (it has a max communication distance of 33 feet and walls in between can prevent communication all together depending on what walls he has in the house drywall, brick ect ...but in his video his ps4 is a significant distance away from his controller when he's in all the different rooms of the house. So how does he remedy that problem.

@@kevinsono Honestly the entire setup seems overly complicated and does not give much in terms of functionality.

The PS5 controller does actually reach fine wirelessly so just using that for now. If range was an issue then the plan would have been to look into either a video distribution system that can also carry USB, or use a separate USB over IP system to allow the controller to be connected with a USB cable in the bedroom and then carry the USB signal through to the living room and into the PS5 so the controller would work wired.

Yeah optical is the way to go since you can also run multiple things over the same wire (more HDMI cables, USB, etc) through multimode, though it gets expensive quickly. Beware theres a lot of people selling really overpriced "fiber HDMI" cables, its much more economical to make your own if you can find the right optical converter for your needs.

@@hugevibez yes I got one of those pre-made ones. From Aliexpress they aren't that overpriced. And I doubt I could find a HDMI to optical and optical to HDMI converter set that would end up cheaper for a 15m distance.

While fibre iself is cheaper than an active optical HDMI cable, the converters definitely aren't - not sure how active optical HDMI cables are overpriced. The reason active optical cables are cheaper is that they tend to use multiple fibres in parallel for data transmission so that each fibre is carrying a lower data rate and then also use copper wires for things like CEC and ARC. On the other hand, converters to send HDMI over a single fibre have to send the full bandwidth signal down a single fibre along with CEC/ARC in the opposite direction. I've also seen the "LightOptics" HDMI to MPO fibre products which look interesting - they use a special multicore fibre cable with an MPO connector and are much lower cost than a generic HDMI over fibre converter but still have the advantage of being potentially upgradable unlike a complete active optical cable.

Difficulty with that is it would also reduce the fan power and as it is these fans are extremely weak - suspect that if I dropped the voltage enough to be quiet enough they wouldn't move enough air to cool the device. My solution was to fix an external plastic enclosure to the side of the matrix with holes cut where the original fans were, then install a larger 60mm fan in this enclosure to draw air through the matrix.

Latency is basically imperceivable to me although I'm not a gamer so I'm probably not as noticeable to me. These devices don't really perform any significant processing to the video and at a hardware level, doesn't contain any visible memory ICs which would be required if the device was "holding onto" frames to process them in some way.

@@camerongray1515 That's nice to know. 😁 Perhaps testing with a timesleuth lagtester won't be neccessary, have been considering this matrix.🙃

Multichannel audio is something I need to test out more - I've found a couple of sources where outputting Dolby audio won't give sound on my old office TV but the bedroom TV will happily receive Dolby without issue and likewise the office TV has worked fine with other Dolby sources. Generally though the stuff I'm watching in other rooms, especially my office is just Stereo so it's fine. As a solution I could probably set up something to alter the EDID presented to the device based on which TVs are outputting. Or, in the case of my office TV, I could get an HDMI audio extractor that's capable of extracting an analogue stereo signal from a Dolby HDMI feed and then feed that analogue signal into the TV's 3.5mm input (that it has for connecting PCs since it's from an era where DVI was commonplace). Bit of a hack but it would work! I suppose the most universal solution could end up being to use Dolby compatible soundbars for TVs that can't handle the Dolby signals natively since they're getting pretty inexpensive nowadays. As for using the Zone 2 output - on my receiver the Zone 2 output is audio only, the second HDMI output just replicates the main zone so I'd have needed a more expensive receiver to do this. This would also mean that I'd be able to watch one source in the living room, and one source "everywhere else" btu wouldn't allow me to say watch one thing in the office, and another thing in the bedrooms since they would both be being fed from the same Zone 2 output. Not too worried about the reliability - it does introduce another point of failure, but at least for my living room TV, it's not re-encoding the signal or anything so won't alter the quality in any way. As for the remotes, I'll be using the Sofabaton U1 and U2 remotes - not remotely comparable to the Harmony (RIP) - they're more just universal remotes with a nice screen for selecting a device using a friendly name and with decent button remapping capability and basic macro type functionality. They absolutely aren't perfect, but, for the price, they'll do for now while I continue to keep my eye out for a true Harmony replacement!

@@camerongray1515 Thanks for the response! I was wondering with the audio, does it pass through all formats to the receiver? I would be worried about losing multichannel and Atmos content with it. Take it there's been no issues with HDCP? I looked at the Sofabaton but they seem kinda limited, no dock which is a mad omission, ugly UI, and I don't know how much a company like that will be around in the future to offer servers (if it is needed). What I would ideally want is a remote control that I can just connect with Zigbee and use home assistant, but sadly it looks like no one makes anything like that. I will be sticking with my Harmony as long as I can.

Good question - I do sometimes miss the ease of making changes (now needing to go into a switch CLI to reconfigure a port which I used to be able to do from an app on my phone) however on the flip side, it's allowed me to have a lot more flexibility vs the relatively locked down features of a UDM. Of course, this isn't my first time using non-UniFi equipment so I absolutely knew what to expect.

I think OP's in for a nasty surprise when he tries to play something...LOL

@RobCowie The PS5 controller works fine over the distance, it's not that huge. The PS4 struggles which isn't a huge deal although I plan on looking into USB over IP systems to handle that in the future.

Currently I'm not doing anything special - just using the original remotes either over Bluetooth (where the range reaches) or the matrix switch's IR blaster. I do however plan on setting up a relatively interesting solution using universal remotes to control everything (along with things like my smart lighting) so will be making a dedicated video on that.

I made a video about it a couple of years ago: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hosAYoNYu6U.html