This is almost like a “Ripley’s Believe it or not” story until you try it for yourself:
For a long time I had been using the wireless 2.4Ghz A/V transmitters and became very unhappy when I discovered that every time the microwave was turned on, the screen would fuzz out and the audio would make loud popping noises.
To add to the fire, I added an 11MBps wireless ethernet (also 2.4 Ghz) at home that also caused a constant popping and white line through the screen of the remote TV’s connected to the wireless A/V equipment. With those two odds against the wireless transmitters and receivers, I looked for other alternatives. The wireless ethernet (broadband-to-laptop) was much more a keeper than the wireless TV!
In my house I have a 35-inch television in each of the two bedrooms, a small one in the kitchen, then a 54 inch in the living room. All of the major components such as the DVD, VCR, CD and other playback equipment are connected to the main system in the living room, but if I’m watching a DVD or listening to a CD, I want the ability to hear and see it in any room.
I knew that long runs of L/R and video can seriously degrade the signal, so I looked for other alternatives. I stumbled onto a great product that really took me by surprise. It’s called the “Terk leapfrog home network”. What I read seemed to be too good to be true; you take the audio L/R and video out from the main system then plug them in to the Terk transmitter. Next you plug it into the phone line! In the receiving room you plug the receiver outputs on it to the inputs on the remote TV or amp/receiver system, then also plug it into the phone jack. In addition it lets you use the phone at the same time. I thought this just sounded too good to be true so I gave it a try. I was totally amazed by the picture quality and sound. This system takes the L/R/Video signals, compresses them to a 30Mhz signal then pipes them through the phone in an inaudible signal. On top of that it lets you send a reverse IR signal back to the main room and it CAN keep up with the Pronto and long chained IR macros. (The powermid system could only keep up with the first one or two.) I ended up adding extra Leapfrog receivers on all of the remote TV’s, then added surround sound & 5 cube speakers to each bedroom. The audio and video quality was excellent but something caught my eye.
In order to understand the next part, you'll need to know that the audio and video output in the living room is split three ways but for this story we’ll only talk about two of them. One of the outputs goes to the Terk Leapfrog transmitter, the other is a direct connection to the big screen. (The big screen was one generation shy of S-Video in so I have to use RCA video in).
Here is the part that makes no logical sense. What caught me by surprise was that the picture in the remote room is clearer, brighter, and free from any RF interference than the same signal split to the living room that was directly connected to the source. This prompted me to order another receiver so I could perform a test that defied my logic.
When it arrived, I put a 2-way phone jack splitter from radio shack on the output of the Leapfrog transmitter before it went into the phone jack. I used a short phone cable to connect the transmitter to the receiver then plugged it into the video on the receiver.
The result still boggles my mind. The picture in the living room that had been connected directly to the source is many times better than it ever was before I added the Terk to it. The only thing I can figure out is that they have some great comb filters in the conversion process or something. A friend of mine came over the other day and we watched a DVD and he noticed the picture difference and asked what it was. After I explained it to him he bought a Leapfrog transmitter and receiver to be used strictly as a filter, but used in conjunction in the same room. To hook it up we took the video out from his VCR that went to the TV, then ran in into the transmitter. From the transmitters “out” jack or phone jack, we ran a standard phone wire (RJ-11) cord to the receiver that sat right on top of it, then connected the RCA video into the receiver. I’m telling you this makes NO sense, but something about this product cleans up the video signal better than some of the expensive high-end video processors. Try it for yourself and you too will be saying WHOA!
They have this product for sale at many places- Best Buy online, Smarthome, but they have the transmitter and receiver combos for up to $180.00. The best price that I found online was from “Consumer Direct” and both parts came to about $90.00. Extra receivers were about $50.00
One tidbit of advice- It will not work if you have DSL or faulty phone wiring at home, so you may want to run standard phone wire to the remote rooms. The picture quality is many times better than coax cable runs, plus you get the two way IR when you use this system. There are a lot of different uses- I’d even recommend this many times over the powermid product. The only thing that is weird about this product is the casing. It seems like it was designed to be much larger than it really should be, but that seems to be it’s only flaw. Also, if you have the transmitter and receiver in the same room be sure to hide the receiver behind something because when it sees an IR signal, it send it back to the transmitter so you might end up with a constant loop of IR between the two.
Give it a try, I’m sure impressed!
The web address to consumer direct and the terk stuff is:
[Link: consumer-direct.com]The system I have is:
[Link: consumer-direct.com]This message was edited by Greg on 08/27/01 16:48.45.
