I have so many questions about AV .. but I think rather than making one big, huge post, I will tackle them one at a time!
Background: I'm quite familiar with phone/data networking - we did that with our current house. We have RJ45 ports/Cat5e everywhere. It's very versatile, being able to reconfigure ports from network to phone and so on.
Now - I'd like to do the same with AV with our current house. That is, behind each TV location (or potential future TV location) have a set of connectors that will allow us to pipe in an audio/video signal from elsewhere in the house.
The problem is, there are so many standards!
The descriptions next to them are for my benefit, in case my definitions are wrong!
Composite (red/white RCA audio, yellow RCA video)
Component (red/green/blue RCA video)
Digital audio (orange RCA audio, or optical)
DVI (white rectangular - video)
HDMI (small plug - video & audio)
Plus various coax connections - RG6, which I believe is different than standard antenna cable..
So which should I use?
RCA connections would be the most versatile - assuming theres no physical difference between composite, component and digital audio.
HDMI would be the best quality, but some older equipment doesn't support it.. and in 5 years, who knows if it will still be supported? Plus the connectors and cables are a lot more expensive.
Coax would be physically efficient in that it is a single, small connector that carries everything.
Of course there are three RJ45 related options:
- Install RJ45 ports and use adaptors/baluns
- Install RJ45 ports and use some IP media player in each location
- Install RJ45 ports and home that HDBaseT takes off
The answer might be "depends what you want to do"! But is there a generally agreed upon standard?
I'll go into more detail as to what rooms, equipment I'll have, etc. in a later post!