I've got a ReplayTV in my living room, but occasionally would like to watch shows from the bedroom. Getting another Replay is an option, but it's costly, I don't need the extra storage, and don't run into direct conflicts often enough to find recording 2 shows at once useful. So I thought about getting a video sender device. However, I've also got a 2.4 GHz phone, and an 802.11g network... So I think the 2.4 GHz spectrum in my place is crowded enough to cause interference, based on what I've read about these senders.

So, does anyone have any experience with these devices? I'd be willing to ditch my 2.4 GHz phone, but not my Wifi network. Any stories of good cooperation between wireless networks and video senders? Are there any such video senders that operate using a different spectrum, or maybe some other option of getting my video from point A to point B that I haven't thought of? Dropping a PC in the bedroom isn't an attractive option, so it'll have to be something that uses the TV as-is (with video input, of course.)

900 MHz ?

http://www.oshealtd.com/sender.htm

I used a video sender on my main TV for about a year (I didn't want the living room cluttered, so put the Tivo in a corner of the office). I found it to be fairly tempremental and I'd often get days where it just didn't want to provide a clear signal.

The wireless network played well with the video sender. I had an Apple Airport just a foot away from the transmitter which caused no problems, even when it was in heavy use. But if the laptop was used in the living room, it interfered. So it seems that the receiver is the most prone to interference.

An active bluetooth connection anywhere in the vicinity causes lots of interference (bluetooth devices in sleep are fine though). UK DECT phones are 1900Mhz, so they don't cause a problem. Microwaves completely destroy the signal, as do people walking between the transmitter and receiver.

My sender had 4 channels and it made little difference which one I picked. I think my airport was set to channel 10 or 13 at the time.

I'd second David's point, I've been using a video sender for about a year - it has good days and bad days for no apparent reason, but is generally watchable/listenable: However, some of my cottage walls are 3 ft. thick, which doesn't help.

The one I have is, One-For-All: I previously tried one that appears in the UK under a number of brands with a saucer like aerial - that didn't work at all well (But was half the price).

The phones don't cause a problem, but certain functions on my Linksys wireless network interfere with it: It's hard to define what, but it seems to be for fairly short periods, so I put up with it.

I also have wireless doorbells, and the curiosity is that one of them rings when I reboot one of my P.C.s! - A problem at 4.00 a.m.

If you "occasionally would like to watch shows from the bedroom," then I think a video sender is fine. I used one in my place all through college to send video from my computer in the bedroom to the TV in the living room. I will also describe this as "watchable." But it's not great.

For starters, the colors were pretty bad on mine all of the time, and the clarity wasn't great. Also, whenever someone used the microwave, which was bout 30 feet from either the sender or receiver, I'd get a lot of static.

In the future, I'll likely only use mine for audio sending, which it does pretty well.

Oh, and I have the X10 video sender.

If you "occasionally would like to watch shows from the bedroom,"

Yeah, that's about it. The distance isn't going to be that much, maybe 35-40 feet or so, but the signal may have to travel through four or five walls (albeit thin ones.) My wireless router is in a third room, and the room that will contain the video receiver (and thus the TV) won't have any 2.4 GHz sending/receiving devices in it.

My Googling for a One-For-All sender tells me it's not available in the U.S. That 900 MHz model doesn't look very current, and the fact that they say "we recommend both be in the same room" tells me it won't do very well in my situation, two rooms and four walls away. I've seen mixed reviews on the X10 model so far. This RCA model has an okay review but the reviewer didn't make it clear what distance is involved. Terk seems to have a few solutions in this arena, including this one but I haven't been able to find reviews. They also have a neat but expensive solution that uses telephone wiring, but I can't remember if I have a phone jack in the room with the TV. Seems phone line might be a nicer option, to avoid interference, at least. One of the Terk models seems to be available at my local Circuit City, so maybe I'll give that a shot, since Circuit City is good with returns.

I have the Terk LF-30S and have had similar experiences as most have already posted. Some days, the picture and sound are perfect, but on other random days I get interference. I'm in a condo and I think there's lots of 2.4 Ghz wireless in it. On the whole, it's tolerable and saved me a lot of money in trying to run wiring from my living room to my bedroom. However, if there was a higher quality and less interference prone wireless solution, I'd buy it.

- Jon

wow, 35-40 feet through 4 or 5 walls! That's different. I'd be extremely suprised if you got anything good through that many walls. I'd definitely eliminate the X10. I fogot to mention my setup was about 8 feet through one wall and set up as high in the air as possible. If anyone walks in between the devices, it crackles like crazy.

But sometimes I have no idea how these things will be affected. I tried setting it up in my parents house. I wanted to send signal from a small TV room to my room. The area in between had two closets. Eventually, even with the devices placed on opposite sides of the wall from each other, no more than a foot away, it still had terrible reception.

I'd try that phone line option. That sounds interesting. But like you say, it could just be that the X10 ones are crappy. It's all I could really find 4 years ago.

On the whole, it's tolerable

Yeah, I picked up an LF-30S from the local Circuit City, and "tolerable" is the perfect word for the reception I was getting. The picture was reasonably clear, but I'd get occasional clicks and pops in the sound, and random blips in the picture on occasion as well. The color was also extremely washed out (compared to the regular cable signal on the same TV), something I didn't really expect to be a problem. Granted, the aforementioned walls and distance probably contribute to this.

I don't have a phone line in the bedroom where the TV is, so at this point, I think I might look into getting a 2nd ReplayTV for the bedroom, or possibly even scrap together a PC that I can use in an HTPC type setup (and use DVArchive to view stuff from my Replay.)

So, the verdict on the video sender is "eh."

I have 6 of the X10 cameras around my house that use the 2.4Ghz transmitter. Distances are weird. I have one that wouks fine through 2 brick walls and 2 sheetrock walls. Another one barely works even though it's in plain sight of the receiver. It's not the device, I've switched them around. It's the location. I have NO idea why it doesn't like that particular location.

In my house I run things a little different than most. Since it's just me and my wife, I disconnected the house cable system from the cable box and had the cable guys run a line directly to the digital reciever in the den. The reciever feeds the Tivo which feeds the VCR which I plugged the output of into the old cable from the house cable system. All the TV's in the house stay tuned to channel 3. This way we can watch Tivo, VCR, DVD, or regular cable anywhere in the house. The drawback is that we have to watch the same thing EVERYwhere in the house unless I set the VCR to pass the cable signal through. Radio Shack remote extenders make you forget the Tivo isn't in the same room with you no matter where you are. Works quite well for us. The nice thing is that I can get up, walk to thje bedroom or office and whatever I was watching is still playing wherever I go, and I never notice that the TV in the bedroom is on and have to go turn it off since the audio is exactly in sync.

Yeah, I'm also doing the remote extender thing, and I have a direct RCA connection between my ReplayTV in the living room and a TV in the adjacent bedroom (drilled right through the wall for that one.) But to get the signal to my *other* bedroom would require way too much drilling/wire fishing. I think the $100 price tag is a factor here, too. If it were only $30 or $40, I might feel okay about average picture quality and the occasional snap/crackle/pop.