TV in kitchen - regs?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Think that's the same with most. Maybe even less.

Yes.

Beauty of FreeView tuners is they all have an aerial in and out. Unlike most FM or DAB receivers. And most will already have a decent TV aerial - and usually fed to more than one room.

I've distributed all 5 circuits round the house using cheap telephone cable. Then pick up the wanted one - via a switch - to a local amp and speakers. Lets you adjust volume and say tone controls for those speakers easily. Unlike a 100v line system.

It's not going to cost pennies, but once done and done right lasts pretty well for ever. Same as installing adequate sockets at re-wire time rather than plodding along with extension leads.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Would you guarantee sync over this? Ie two speakers with the same signal not giving an annoying echo if heard at the same time? That's the beauty of analogue - very difficult to introduce such a delay. Even two FreeView TVs - or two DAB radios, all tuned to the same station will produce this annoying echo.

[Bert Coules]

Ah, so they could be daisy-chained and only the first one in the chain would need to be connected to an aerial? That would be good.

I was hoping to avoid the need for local amps, but (as I've just said in a different post) the drawback with just one central amp is that each room would have the selected sound playing at the same time. That's not really ideal.

Bert

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I have an amp in each place needed. 'Separates' aren't much in fashion these days and can be picked up cheaply - even free.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - most of these seem to have some gain, so daisy chain fine.

It does all sound a fiddle, but once done works brilliantly. I first went for it due to poor FM reception in this part of London. Portable radios faded and farted. The basis of it is getting on for 40 years old. Only major change is FreeView rather than FM tuners.

[Bert Coules]

It's not the cost so much as the space needed and the extra clutter of cabling and the like which I was hoping to avoid.

Actually, I've just discovered the perfect piece of kit which will do exactly what I want, but it's very pricey and seem only to be available from the USA:

And I would need extra remotes...

Bert

[Bert Coules]

I've now found this kit by the US company Monoprice:

or in full:

?v=0AKmFXPnGRw

That's a YouTube link. Ideally for my purposes this is an audio amp as well as a six-zone speaker distributor, and it comes with very neat wall-mounted remotes which allow switching of input source, output zone and volume - everything I'm after.

It's a pity that it's only available from the US since that pushes the price up, but the kit gets some very enthusiastic user reviews and the company, which was new to me, seems to be a respected one.

So problem solved, I think. Many thanks to everyone for the thoughts and suggestions.

Bert

[spuorgelgoog]

You can use speaker volume controls. It's better and easier if you used 100 V speakers - multi channels of 100V speaker level audio were carried on a m ulticore cable to passive bedhead units with a vol control (multi tap atten uator) and channel selector in hotels and hospitals - but you could do it w ith low impedance (8 ohm) audio. The drawback with low imp is that adjustin g one speaker can affect the others.

If you want to distribute at line level and have local amps then you could also distribute say a 24 volt power feed along with the signal wires.

100V attenuators

low imedance vol control

Owain

[Bert Coules]

Owain, thanks for that. As you might now have seen from my previous post I've found a US kit which answers all my needs.

Bert

[James Wilkinson]

Nevermind safety, a TV won't last so long if it's damp all the time. Put it somewhere dry or get a damp proof one if it's not much more expensive.

[charles]

we've had a tv in our kitchen for years -but it isn't over the sink.

[KYW]

Or get real radical and use the remote to turn it off and on, you dinosaur.

[Bert Coules]

I don't believe that anything in my kitchen is damp all the time, and a substantial number of items in the room never get damp at all. I don't see that a TV would be exceptional in that regard,

[Dave Plowman (News)]

100v line may be convenient for some things, but is never better. Decent transformers ain't cheap. Maybe OK is just using very efficient speakers - but most would be considering ordinary domestic speakers of one sort or another. Other thing is with less than perfect speakers, an individual amp can apply bass boost etc to help them along, as well as setting the volume. With one amp and 100v line, you could only do this if all the speakers are the same.

Beauty of my system is being able to use cheap and small cable. Running enough low volt DC for a power amp would require heavier cable. And is getting complicated.

[James Wilkinson]

Well not all the time, but very damp for some of the time. 100% humidity. If you read the instructions on most electronic appliances, they say not to go over about 90%. Condensation on the circuit boards they don't like much.

[James Wilkinson]

Do you ever have four pans boiling and the room full of steam? I guess if you have a decent extractor hood over the cooker and always use it you'd be fine.

[KYW]

In that case all you have to do is duplicate the hard drive so if one dies, you just replace it and copy from the surviving one.

IMO it makes more sense to go the other route, a set of remotes that all control the one device that selects what you want to listen to not hard to do with a decent modern tuner type device.

[RJH]

You might want to take a quick look at:

I bought a Musiccast amplifier as a neat way to serve music, but the network audio options look pretty comprehensive. Dependent on a smart device to control it all though.

[Bert Coules]

That rather depends, surely, on how you use your kitchen. There's rarely any humidity at all in mine.

Bert

[Bod]

Same here.