connect room tv to speakers in ceiling

[michbarr]

I have 3 rooms. each room has a smart TV and speakers in the ceiling. The speakers wire back to a central location. The central location has cat5, coax (cable tv), and the speaker wires. I want to be able to keep one remote in each of the 3 rooms to control the audio and video for that room. Would like to select a video source for the TV and the audio play through the ceiling speakers. Also would like to use same remote and select a different audio source like a streaming channel to play audio in that room. I've heard about Control4 boxes being able to do some of this but figure I need some kind of amplifier centrally located to drive the audio back to each ceiling speaker. Looking for some answers for wiring and hardware to accomplish this home AV automation

 

[americanaudiophile]

You don't need a complex home automation set up for such a simple system.
If each cable box has a variable analog audio output then you connect each one to 2 amp channels that drive the correct speakers for that room. The amps should have audio sensing so they come on when an audio signal is present. You can use 3 stereo amps or a single 6 channel amp.
You don't mention HDMI in the central location going to each TV? Was the plan to use HDMI over Cat5?. Usually you need 5e or better 6 for that. Get adapters that also send IR over the cable and you have way to control the system with a standard cable box remote.
If the cable box only has HDMI output then it becomes a bit more involved. You would need to use an HDMI audio extractor and amps with their own volume controls.

 

[michbarr]

You don't need a complex home automation set up for such a simple system.
If each cable box has a variable analog audio output then you connect each one to 2 amp channels that drive the correct speakers for that room. The amps should have audio sensing so they come on when an audio signal is present. You can use 3 stereo amps or a single 6 channel amp.
You don't mention HDMI in the central location going to each TV? Was the plan to use HDMI over Cat5?. Usually you need 5e or better 6 for that. Get adapters that also send IR over the cable and you have way to control the system with a standard cable box remote.
If the cable box only has HDMI output then it becomes a bit more involved. You would need to use an HDMI audio extractor and amps with their own volume controls.

 

[michbarr]

thank you very much for you insight. I had thought about pulling HDMI but will pull cat5e instead. we use cox mini boxes and will have to look to see what is there for outputs. I wanted the cat5 so I could stream at high speed. wifi has always been a problem streaming for me so figure ethernet will fix that. I saw a demo of a control4 solution which had a nice remote we could use at each room to control audio and video sources to that room. was thinking maybe I could do a Harmony Elite but those are not low cost either. Do you have any suggestions on the audio amplifier and a remote we could use to accomplish what control4 does?? Thanks