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Hey all,
Firstly apologies if this is in the wrong place, and if any have been answered before. I've tried searching with no success!
My setup currently consists of a Beosound 3200, Beovision 7-32, 2 BeoLab 3500 and a BeoLink passive, all connected to a junction box in the basement.
I'm considering purchasing a Beovision 7-40 for the living room, and move the 7-32 into my bedroom which currently has a BeoLab 3500. I'd run another Masterlink lead for the TV so everything is still connected.
First question is how would the system cope with 2 TVs? If I'm in a room with a BeoLab 3500 and press DTV on the Beo4, how would it know which TV to use as the source?
My second question is could I use the BeoLab in the bedroom as a speaker for the TV? I'm asumming that if the answer to question 1 is you can choose the TV (and I'd choose bedroom), I'd be able to.
Last question! Is there a way to network connect the lot? I've seen apps for iOS, but this must be require another device.
I do have some more questions, but I'll ask these later rather than writing an essay!
Thanks in advance :)
jleckenby: I'm considering purchasing a Beovision 7-40 for the living room, and move the 7-32 into my bedroom which currently has a BeoLab 3500. I'd run another Masterlink lead for the TV so everything is still connected.
If you want to share the view the video sources from your new 7-40 'main room' TV on the 7-32 'link room' TV you would also need to run a coax cable between the two and any boxes connected to the 7-40 would need to be connected via analogue connections (ie SCART) as well as HDMI in order to be distributed to the link room. Any main room source that you then viewed on the link room TV would be in standard definition, not HD.
jleckenby: First question is how would the system cope with 2 TVs? If I'm in a room with a BeoLab 3500 and press DTV on the Beo4, how would it know which TV to use as the source?
It would play the audio from the main room TV as link room devices cannot be used as a masterlink source.
jleckenby: My second question is could I use the BeoLab in the bedroom as a speaker for the TV? I'm asumming that if the answer to question 1 is you can choose the TV (and I'd choose bedroom), I'd be able to.
Partially - if you were viewing a source from your main room TV on your link room TV, you could also listen to the audio from this source on the BL3500, but if you are viewing a local source - ie internal to, or directly connected to the link room TV itself, then audio for this would only be available from the speakers directly connected to that TV because (as mentioned above) link room TVs do not distribute their audio via masterlink.
jleckenby: Last question! Is there a way to network connect the lot? I've seen apps for iOS, but this must be require another device.
You'd need a masterlink gateway but given the cost of this unit (around 1600GBP) that would really only be worth installing if you were also looking to integrate with some home automation / lighting control as aside from that it would really only provide a similar level of control from an iphone as you already have from the beo4 remote.
Hope this helps,
Martin.
Thanks Martin, that's all very helpful! From your answer, I'm assuming if I set the bedroom as the main, living room as linked, I could get sound from the BeoLab at all times? I'm thinking I could keep everything connected to the living room TV even when its link to, as I have a BeoLab 7.2 connected and the bedroom (master) can distribute audio via MasterLink.
Regarding the sources, I suppose I could just split the output and run to both TVs for HD, so that shouldn't be a problem. What would happen if I connected via component with Y-pb-pr cable? Would I get HD on the tv its connected to but it would still work through just component?
I don't see any issues with setting the bedroom TV as main room and the lounge as link room if you are not concerned about distributing video/audio sources connected to the lounge TV.
You'd need to set the Beolab 3500 to option 4, and press LINK then TV for example to get the audio from the TV to output from the BL3500 rather than the (non-existent) TV speakers. This setup (albeit with speakers also connected to the TV) is what is recommended when you have a TV with speakers, and a BL3500 in the same room, for example in an L-shaped room where you have two possible listening positions.
An HDMI splitter for each source you want to share is certainly an option providing the cable lengths are not too excessive.
I'm not sure about the component video option as I'm not sure what type of inputs the modulator is capable of handling. I was going to use the modulator output of my BV7-40 to share video sources with the Avant that it replaced, but my Avant was too old a model to support being used in a link room so I didn't investigate this any further.
Martin
Excellent! I shall hopefully set it up that way then :) I guess if I'm not sharing sources I can just connect master link only? If so think I'm all sorted!