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One Apple TV to Multiple TV's??

N

netmata

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 12, 2009
36
0
New York
Hi,

Is it possible to set up an Apple TV to go to many TVs? For example can i buy an HDMI switch to distribute the Apple TV output to 4 TVs? I want to do this for a business, i don't want to order 4 different cable boxes for each TV or buy smart TVs just to play Netflix or online channels. Instead i want to save some money by buying low end TVs and 1 apple TV and then share the image among all 4 TVs? Or maybe buy a mac mini and buy a VGA Video switch and mirror all TVs. Any ideas? Please help as much as you can thanks!!!
 
N

netmata

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 12, 2009
36
0
New York
Yes more or less. I want to hear some feedback regarding a set up like this. For example if there would be some lags on the video by splitting the image into 4 screens?
 
Avatar74

Avatar74

macrumors 68000
Feb 5, 2007
1,608
402
netmata said:
Yes more or less. I want to hear some feedback regarding a set up like this. For example if there would be some lags on the video by splitting the image into 4 screens?
Click to expand...

The problem isn't lag. All the electrical signal will travel at the same speed. The problem is signal attenuation. If you're using cables longer than 10 meters you'll start to see signal attenuation and in the digital realm that translates to data dropouts/stalls.

It's not the optimal setup but there's not much harm/expense in testing it out before you hardwire the house. But if the cabling gets expensive, it's almost more worthwhile to just buy four AppleTV's. Consider that a 50 foot HDMI cable costs almost half the price of an AppleTV.... and that's not including all the labor to wire the house for it, unless you want cables snaking through every room.

If you do the labor yourself, it's hours of your time. If you hire someone to do it, it's about $90 per hour (to get a wire tech who isn't an idiot).

I'd say at the end of the day, buying four AppleTV's is actually a more cost-effective solution, and it affords you more versatility because you can have different people watching different programs OR (here's the neat part) you can start a program in the living room, pause your program, and then resume it from where you left off in the bedroom... but if someone else wants to then use the living room at that point, they can watch whatever they want.

I have an AppleTV for the living room, and another for our master bedroom and I love the flexibility and wirelessness of that setup.
 
W

warvanov

macrumors 6502a
Oct 13, 2011
504
12
Yes, it's possible, but for reasons others have already stated it may not be a "money saving" solution. You'll have to price it out based on your location, the size of the room, etc. to see how cost effective it would be.

The advantage of a single ATV connected to four TVs is that you can watch one thing and have it in sync across all four TVs. The advantage of four ATVs is obvious, but the disadvantage is that it may be difficult or impossible to get all for TVs to display the same thing in sync.
 
marzer

marzer

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2009
1,398
123
Colorado
Avatar74 said:
The problem isn't lag. All the electrical signal will travel at the same speed. The problem is signal attenuation. If you're using cables longer than 10 meters you'll start to see signal attenuation and in the digital realm that translates to data dropouts/stalls.

It's not the optimal setup but there's not much harm/expense in testing it out before you hardwire the house. But if the cabling gets expensive, it's almost more worthwhile to just buy four AppleTV's. Consider that a 50 foot HDMI cable costs almost half the price of an AppleTV.... and that's not including all the labor to wire the house for it, unless you want cables snaking through every room.

If you do the labor yourself, it's hours of your time. If you hire someone to do it, it's about $90 per hour (to get a wire tech who isn't an idiot).

I'd say at the end of the day, buying four AppleTV's is actually a more cost-effective solution, and it affords you more versatility because you can have different people watching different programs OR (here's the neat part) you can start a program in the living room, pause your program, and then resume it from where you left off in the bedroom... but if someone else wants to then use the living room at that point, they can watch whatever they want.

I have an AppleTV for the living room, and another for our master bedroom and I love the flexibility and wirelessness of that setup.
Click to expand...

And multiple ATVs throughout the house is an easy, inexpensive but very flexible way to implement multi-zone without costly infrastructure.
 
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