Help! Lost a thread!

[obrian93]

As is often the case, a while back I was searching for something and ran across something much more interesting in my travels. And it's in these forums somewhere!

I AM LOOKING FOR A THING:
Plugs into your home CATV cable and barfs signal back from your own source to other devices in the house on a high-ish, predetermined channel (around 80). Like at-home Spectravision (the murky dawn of VOD). I think there's a block at the cable drop and another at your source. Other monitors just go through their own tuners to get at it.


That's all I can remember. I do recall searching for ways to repack and serve on the fly (ala Orb or Sling and the like). I've been picking around all night and can no longer find it.

Does that ring any bells? After months of resistance my (lovely and brilliant) wife has finally fallen in love with the Sage. That means I've got a nice little nerd-spending window for the HTPC!

Thanks all.

[src666]

You are looking for a video modulator and a distribution block/amplifier. Start looking here for more information: http://www.channelplus.com/

[obrian93]

Thanks, src666, that's almost exactly what I'm looking for (I've since also started trolling the hauppauge uk and orb boards). Way too nice, though.

This thing was a turnkey system, base setup was two boxes (I think). Block/filter/attenuator/modulator were in a single box, and a fancy repeater-via-utp with vid-inputs was in the other. The website had that classic look of a site that was designed by an engineer. I'd also SWEAR that this thing started in the neighborhood of $150.

I'm starting to fear that I dreamt it all.

If I find it again I'll post it here. If I don't then I'll go the vcr-rabbit route (or whatever they're called these days).

[src666]

They have everything from mid-high end, to single box ($150) solutions. You can find their products all over the place, but many people like www.smarthome.com. Other brands are available, of course, but Channel Plus has one of the most extensive lines, and pretty good info on their site. I actually have one of these: (http://www.smarthome.com/7717.html), although I don't really use it anymore. Worked great when I did use it, though.

I've not looked at any UTP solutions in quite a while, so I'm not sure how good the options are on that side of the fence.

[obrian93]

FANTASTIC! They've got a CE Labs box that I think will be perfect for less than $100! I'm happy since I get to buy some doodads (and won't have to run more cable to feed a MVP/ME), wife's happy since she'll be able to watch Sage while working out, and src666 oughtta be happy for hooking me up with a solution even better than what I was looking for.

Of course, all this happiness will fade once I dump about half of our checking account for motorized drapes and heated bidets and other things I'm convinced I need. Smarthome is quite the double-edged sword.

Thanks, src.