# Simultaneous Viewing in Multiple Rooms?



## andrews777 (Aug 23, 2007)

I recently made the plunge and installed SONOS speakers throughout my house. They have some areas for improvement, but being able to listen to the exact same stream while walking from room to room is very nice.

Is this at all possible with a Tivo? All I can find indicates all streams must always be independent, which is really annoying, especially as I am getting used to synchronized audio. The current solution is really not "whole house audio" but a limited subset of that.

I read a couple of threads from 2013 that touched on this, but many who replied seemed to not grasp the big picture and realize that truly "whole house" is a very nice option and would not be a niche if more realized it was available.

I would really like this for both live and recorded shows. Ideally it would be controllable from any unit, but even allowing Minis to slave off the main Roamio might be acceptable, such as when I want to work at my computer, but watch an older game we are speeding through.

I used a multiplexer to put the output of my Dish DVRs in the past to accomplish this, adding the channel to an unused range, but that went away as a serious option with the switch to HD broadcasting. I am surprised this has not been considered a bit more widely.

Any indication anyone at Tivo is even considering this?


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

nope. The low volume of threads on this may be an indicator why.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

When I wanted synchronized playback in two rooms, I ran component video and digital audio over Cat5 baluns. Control via RF. It worked, but we ended up using Minis when we moved.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

If you have a second set of RG-6 cables, you could use the Ch 3/4 output for SD output. Or for a live game, run the audio through Sonos from the main/big TV, and just have smaller TVs on mute, with some lipsync issues on the smaller TVs...


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

What Ch 3/4 output? TiVo hasn't included that since the Series 2.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Arcady said:


> What Ch 3/4 output? TiVo hasn't included that since the Series 2.


Good call. Totally didn't realize that!


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## andy_hd (Mar 14, 2008)

I have two TiVo's co-located that feed multiple TV sets via an HDMI matrix (some of the sets get driven over cat5 HDMI baluns). This allows:

1) Simultaneous viewing of the same content from the same TiVo on Different Sets.

2) Different Sets watching Different content from Different Tivo's.

3) Different Sets watching the Same content thru Different TiVo's using MRV.

I, too, think that 'Simultaneous Viewing' is underappreciated. I find that we use (1) about half the time and (2) half the time. (3) is almost never used. The lack of audio sync would be quite annoying as the sets are not quite out of audible range of each other.

I may wind up replacing one of the TiVos with a Mini -- but it would still be co-located and (1) would still be a possibility.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

andy_hd said:


> I have two TiVo's co-located that feed multiple TV sets via an HDMI matrix (some of the sets get driven over cat5 HDMI baluns).


What is the use case for simultaneous viewing? The only thing I can think of is a party for a sports game, but that's not exactly enough to justify a bunch of additional equipment and all the headaches that come with it. And if one TV is secondary to the other (i.e. kitchen TV), you could just mute the secondary and use some sort of WHA setup to beam out the correctly synced audio from the main display.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I can't say it would justify additional hardware for me, but it is convenient. If I'm working in the house, having the same content displayed in multiple rooms at the same time allows me to do what I need to do - walking through the house, and continuing the "viewing" experience. I do this frequently with live, though it takes a little effort to start with since the minis are delayed from the Roamios. So I play with pause/play on the Roamios to get them "synced" with the minis, and then leave them be. 

Not a big deal at all, and not something that I'd spend any extra money or time on, but I can see it being a nice thing were it possible with recorded content.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

I have a Fire TV stick and an extra Slingbox. I was thinking I could use the combo to route a mirror of our living room TiVo to another set in the kitchen. I have no way to run a cable directly from the living room to the kitchen.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I'd guess if you're trying to have them totally in sync you'll have some difficulty there, as the slingbox mirror will be a little delayed from the source. If they aren't that close together so you can't hear them both at the same time, it may well work.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

I just tried out the slingbox method. It does work, but only with the newer slingbox. Sling made the Fire TV app so it only works with the M1, 350 and 500. There is a delay too.

The funny part is that my old Slingbox Pro streaming to a laptop has nearly zero lag, because I can point the old application directly to the local IP instead of everything routing through slingbox.com. But the old app doesn't work with the new slingboxes.

Arrgh.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

It sounds sort of interesting, and I can think of an occasional use case for it, but not enough to justify the investment and the effort to configure such a system. Matrices are notoriously finicky, and you may end up with the least common denominator in terms of sound configuration.


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## andrews777 (Aug 23, 2007)

Bigg said:


> What is the use case for simultaneous viewing? The only thing I can think of is a party for a sports game, but that's not exactly enough to justify a bunch of additional equipment and all the headaches that come with it. And if one TV is secondary to the other (i.e. kitchen TV), you could just mute the secondary and use some sort of WHA setup to beam out the correctly synced audio from the main display.


Once you get whole house audio, it becomes a really nice thing. Sometimes I might like to watch the same game, at the same pace, as my wife in another room. Or I might like to keep listening to the audio on something while I run to the kitchen for a bit, perhaps mirroring it on a TV there. Many things do not require complete concentration on what is displayed and can live with spots of audio. I know it can be done, as SONOS does it, but it seems that it isn't done.

It is another feature I would expect given the price of the Tivo stuff and the fact I had it before the switch to broadcast HD signals. I no longer want to run cables everywhere for it, though I probably have coax and network cables going most places as it is.


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## andy_hd (Mar 14, 2008)

Bigg said:


> What is the use case for simultaneous viewing? The only thing I can think of is a party for a sports game, but that's not exactly enough to justify a bunch of additional equipment and all the headaches that come with it. And if one TV is secondary to the other (i.e. kitchen TV), you could just mute the secondary and use some sort of WHA setup to beam out the correctly synced audio from the main display.


Family watching during a meal in the kitchen. Then some family members go to the den to finish watching while some stay in the kitchen. Later someone leaves the den but goes up to the study -- to do e-mail while continuing to watch in the background. This is certainly not limited to sports -- and is probably our most common viewing pattern.

We got used to doing this in the SD days via a 'modulator' as someone mentioned above. Used the 'BOCs' system which was a 3 way modulator w/RF remotes. HD stumped me for a while -- but it turned out using a matrix plus running cables was not as bad (or as expensive) as feared. We still use the BOCs remotes for control -- from the family's point of view nothing has changed except the screen resolution.


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## DigitalDawn (Apr 26, 2009)

There are times (as listed above) where I wish we could have simultaneous viewing as well. From the software side I don't think it would be all that difficult, but from a UI standpoint I could see where it might be confusing for some folks. And knowing TiVo, that's where the bottleneck would be. Same reason we don't have user Profiles and user folders.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

andrews777 said:


> Once you get whole house audio, it becomes a really nice thing. Sometimes I might like to watch the same game, at the same pace, as my wife in another room. Or I might like to keep listening to the audio on something while I run to the kitchen for a bit, perhaps mirroring it on a TV there. Many things do not require complete concentration on what is displayed and can live with spots of audio. I know it can be done, as SONOS does it, but it seems that it isn't done.
> 
> It is another feature I would expect given the price of the Tivo stuff and the fact I had it before the switch to broadcast HD signals. I no longer want to run cables everywhere for it, though I probably have coax and network cables going most places as it is.


Yeah, WHA is nice, and if you have WHA, you can use that for the TiVo audio, and then Minis that are slightly out of sync muted for the secondary TVs, and the ensuing lipsync issue probably wouldn't be that big of a deal.



andy_hd said:


> Family watching during a meal in the kitchen. Then some family members go to the den to finish watching while some stay in the kitchen. Later someone leaves the den but goes up to the study -- to do e-mail while continuing to watch in the background. This is certainly not limited to sports -- and is probably our most common viewing pattern.


Ooookay. And you're watching TV while trying to have a family dinner why? And then all moving around, while watching the same thing but not actually sitting next to each other? This makes no sense.



> We got used to doing this in the SD days via a 'modulator' as someone mentioned above. Used the 'BOCs' system which was a 3 way modulator w/RF remotes. HD stumped me for a while -- but it turned out using a matrix plus running cables was not as bad (or as expensive) as feared. We still use the BOCs remotes for control -- from the family's point of view nothing has changed except the screen resolution.


Very clever technical solution to a problem that makes no sense in the first place. BOCS was a cool idea, too bad they couldn't transition to HD. These days, with smart everything and TiVo, whole home video distribution just doesn't make sense in the way that it used to...


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## CinciDVR (May 24, 2014)

Bigg said:


> Ooookay. And you're watching TV while trying to have a family dinner why? And then all moving around, while watching the same thing but not actually sitting next to each other? This makes no sense.


Not really sure you're the final arbiter for what makes sense for other people. And he didn't mention a family dinner. He said a meal in the kitchen which implies a very informal meal. And even if it was the family dinner, so what?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

CinciDVR said:


> Not really sure you're the final arbiter for what makes sense for other people. And he didn't mention a family dinner. He said a meal in the kitchen which implies a very informal meal. And even if it was the family dinner, so what?


People come up with the whackiest sh*t on forums, this probably isn't the wackiest I've ever heard of, but it's certainly pretty darn whacky. It just makes no sense up, down, and around.


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