Tech Forum

I have been searchig the internet for the piece of equipment that I need to buy to be able to convert the webcast of Stake Conference from my laptop to the receiving buildings video system. I want to be able to send the audio and video through the closed coaxial cable system. We have multiple languages that need to be translated and I am giving each language a room. I have a laptop that I am receiving the webcast on but need to convert the HDMI to what ever signal runs over the regular cables throughout the church.

There are now inputs on the front of the satellite/video system stack so I opened it up and will go directly into the coax going through out the building. Unless there is a better way.

The other option I thought of was using multiple laptops; one in each room and connecting to the TV that way, but then I will have to run Cat5 cable all over the place.

What is the best way to get a webcast to all the rooms in the church? What equipment do I need?

First, contact the stake to find out what they're doing about the languages. Because the church system can't handle more than two (using stereo). And I seriously doubt you're going to get a single laptop to do any better (multiple audio streams at the same time).

If the webcast is from SLC, then you'll need a laptop in each room - each laptop set to the appropriate stream for the language. I hope your internet connection can handle that.

This will be a stake conference, each room will have a live interpreter. We won't be broadcasting anything other than english.

OK, that simplifies things. You'll want something to convert your laptop to "composite" video. I'd suggest using the modulators in the rack. Consumer modulators don't have enough power to run the building.

dsseely wrote:I want to be able to send the audio and video through the closed coaxial cable system. ... What is the best way to get a webcast to all the rooms in the church? What equipment do I need?

My stake center's video distribution system uses "old school" F-connectors in each major room that a TV can hook to. There are 2 channels available: 3 and 6. Channel 3 is used to pickup the satellite feed and channel 6 is used for internal sources, such as a webcast. Different buildings may have different configurations, depending on when they were overhauled last, so YMMV.

If you are receiving a webcast at the stake center, and the PC has HDMI output, you'll need an HDMI to composite (sometimes called "baseband" or "3-RCA") video converter, such as THIS ONE on Amazon. (Ignore that it says "for Apple TV"; it will work fine for this.)

Feed the HDMI into the above box and you'll have the composite video on the yellow RCA jack and right/left audio on the red/white jacks. Plug those into the inputs you found on the satellite cabinet and it will modulate it up to channel 6 and send it out over the distribution system to the various rooms. (It's possible your distribution system uses a different channel. If so, use that.)

Tune the TV's in each room to channel 6. The signal may appear "squished". If you have a flat panel TV, you can adjust it to stretch the video out again making it look normal.

In my stake, we installed this https://www.lds.org/help/support/av-dis ... b?lang=eng It doesn't do HDMI, but it does RCA and VGA. We are currently using VGA to take the signal off the clerk's computer and pumping it through the rest of the system. It has worked very well.