Needing some wireless stuff, suggestions?

[Kev Williams]

About 3 years ago the wife got me a projection TV unit and a 75" movie screen for it. It's a 720p HD unit, which is fine, I'm surprised at how nice the picture is. We've used it a few of times in the back yard, birthday parties & such. Pretty cool and works great, but the outdoor limitations are a pain, which are: what to watch (input), and how to hear it (audio out). So far we've just watched DVD's. That's okay, but I want to set it up so we can just watch satellite TV under the stars. Awhile back I bought 125' worth of HDMI cable off Ebay, which turns out is basically useless without an amplifier. As for sound, we don't own a basic boom box, and I really don't want to buy one just for this. The projector has built in speakers, but they're about 1 step up from cell phone speakers. And most boom boxes aren't all that audiophile-ic either, and I like decent sound. And most boom boxes have speakers only a few inches apart. I like my left and right sound to be noticeably LEFT and RIGHT!

I think it was father's day last year, the wife got me an Ecoxgear outdoor speaker. This thing is pretty cool, 10 hour battery powered, 100 watts, bluetooth, and a plus for the boater in me, completely waterproof! You can actually use it IN the lake! And it actually sounds pretty good! But- it's ONE speaker. We connected it to the TV unit once, worked pretty good, much better sound than the tinny TV speakers, but- it's ONE speaker...

So I finally broke down and ordered up a second one, and yesterday it arrived! So now I gots TWO! The bluetooth in these works pretty cool, if you HAVE two of them, they will each take on a separate channel to output true stereo. I'm sure there's a name for that procedure, but at 64 years old I'm not fully in the tech definitions loop anymore For boating and just listening to music from the phone, this will be great! Got a spare I-phone I can put music on, and I'm on Amazon about to order a bluetooth adapter so I can run the speakers in the basement or garage shop via computer. As for connecting the speakers to the projection TV outdoors, I don't necessarily need wireless, and the speakers have aux inputs so I can just wire them to the TV unit, I just need RCA to 3.5 plug wires. But I should be able to use the same bluetooth adapter I'm about to buy, all I should need is an RCA to 3.5 female adapter for it to plug into. Anyway, the speaker issue should be about fixed!

But to watch plain old TV, I'm going to need an HDMI wireless extender. And I'm also looking at those on Amazon. And now I'm just plain confused!
-some versions come with a transmitter & receiver, some with two transmitters and one receiver with extra transmitters available, some versions have one transmitter with 2 receivers and more receivers available. All have a few horror stories in the 'reviews' section, but most have overall good reviews. Then there's the the lag-times, some have signals ok for traveling thru walls, some not so much...

My needs are simple: I have an HD DirecTV receiver that currently outputs from my Yamaha theater sound to the TV via HDMI cable. I just need to get the same HDMI signal outside, up to 80' away (most units have a 160' ish range), and the living room window and a little vegetation (vine) will be the only signal blockers. I'd like to also run the signal to our bedroom, because as it is I'm hardwired to a non-HD sat box which I'm renting, so with the extender I can give them back their box AND have full HD.

That all said, just wondering if anyone has any pointers, or is using such a device and if so how well does it work?

TIA!

[Paul Brinkmeyer]

Kev
here is what we do sometimes to extend our tv when not at home.
(friends house)
We stream it to wife Ipad over WIFI, and then using an DMI adapter we DMI it to 2 nd tv.
Now this is not direct TV anymore, but most services let you watch on computers.
I currently do that with my laptop on WIFI and another service in my detached shop.
If I remember right, direct TV lets you do the same thing.

[Kev Williams]

Thanks for the reply, might have to give that a try!

After further research, as for extending HDMI wirelessly, that seems to be 'iffy' at best, even with $300+ equipment. And I also learned about cat6-over-HDMI extenders. Now, I'm not against wires so much, so it was nice to learn this! Especially considering one of my customers left me a 250' box of cat5-e cable (which is compatible) and my one computer geek kid has a kit for attaching the plugs to it! ... and cat5 cable is small enough to be no big deal to run thru and out of the house...

Finally, I found a 1-transmitter to 2-receivers setup on Amazon for $88... it'll be here Sunday!

Now I need to learn about wifi hot spots & such. (I don't even own a smart phone )

[Derek Meyer]

I've used the HDMI over Cat 6 extenders, and they work well enough. I've never tried the wireless HDMI extender.

If you wanted to get really creative, you could get an HDMI over Cat 6 extension kit, and then put a wireless bridge in between, such as the Ubiquity Nanobeam units. I've used them for Ethernet and they are rock solid at full gigabit speed. Though, in my opinion, I would always go with the hard wired solution if possible. Wires are just more reliable than wireless connections.