Im working on the final design details of a project and am not sure what DTV hardware to try to get. The client already has DTV at their other home and one of their two kids is special needs, so I assume they are going to want to stick what is familiar, so I cant steer them to another service.

Ive not used the 4K genie system so Im not familiar with what the hardware is or how many clients you can put on the server.

More details are its a family of 4, the house has two guest rooms, and two surround zones getting 85" panels (one for the kids). The plan is to use JAP for the video distribution, but should I use dedicated sources for the surround zones with fiber HDMI baluns?

Whats your thoughts?

How many channels are the same zones? I 5.1, 7.1, Atmos etc

Are you doing audio distribution for the video sources (ie speakers in the ceiling with analog matrix and amps)

One surround zone was wired for 5.4.1 Atmos. The other is only 5.1 (can that be in atmos mode?). As for all the other zones, yes they are distributed audio and video. I think its 20 audio zones with 9 or 10 of them also having video.

Be ready for complaints about the STOOOPID menu system of the new Genies. (But hey! At least it's slow!)

It combines major categories at the left with individual topics on the right in a way that still takes me about ten button pushes to figure out again. Also, there seems to be no buffer on commands in the menu. You can't hit the button twice and let it do two actions when it gets to it. You push one button and have to watch the screen to see that it has responded to that before you can push the next button.

Ernie, I’ve done enough DTV to know the negatives. Probably more than you since GUI is your only complaint. I explained why they want to continue using DTV to avoid replies like yours. Which should have also told you they already are familiar with the new GUI

The reason I asked about audio was to make sure you got the right parts.

The 3G AVP transmitters will convert DD and DTS 5.1 to 5.1 PCM. They do this because they have a Dolby chip in them to decode the audio for analog distribution. So you are fine with the 5.1 Zone. Where you run into trouble is with the ATMOS zone.

You can use this product [Link: blackwiredesigns.com] it will give you the ability to send ATMOS to the specific AVR and then 2 channel to the rest of the house. How ever it is most likely more affordable to add a source directly for the ATMOS theater zone into the AVR than it would be to use a bunch of extra parts.

I highly recommend using the AVPro baluns from the AVRs HDMI out to the display anyways to keep OSD features so it would be pretty easy to give the ATMOS theater its own source.

4k output is only on the clients, server is 1080p max

You didn't mention your control layer but if your doing anything other than IR to the boxes here's a couple of pitfalls...

Power on/off on IP and 232 don't work on the clients. I ran into this on a Savant site and had to add IR for power on at room startup to keep the boxes in check. The server is fine

The boxes stop responding to arrow commands while in the menu system. I haven't chased this one down as the arrows work in the guide and top level menus just not deep in the menus.

My understanding is because the Guide etc is handled at the server level which responds to IP command set, when you get into the device menu's those are in the client level, which is only IR, no IP commands get sent to that level.

So the client can get 'stuck' in the menu level because the server will tell it to go to device menu level, but then the server has no ability to control that level, only IR commands coming in from the client can navigate client level menus.

Nothing you said indicated that they have the latest genie models. The entire topic looks very much like the question of a person not familiar with the hardware, or perhaps just not the latest stupid GUI changes.

Ernie, I said I haven’t used the 4K system. Nothing suggested I am not familiar with DTV. You know I’ve been doing this for over a decade. Now think about that, what are the odds that over more than a decade I haven’t dealt with multiple DTV systems?

DirecTV is getting a little funky because of the way they are rolling out 4K. In our part of the country if you are asking for the latest you will probably get the following:
HR54 as the server
C61 for wired clients
C61W for wireless clients
C61K for 4K
There is still a limitation that you can only have 1 C61K per system. And I believe there is a total max of 4 clients in a system.

We recently had an install with the new genie server that I was told we didn't have in our area yet. That piece is the HS17 which is a true server but not a TV output. Supposedly it can allow 6 C61Ks at a time. The system we saw had C61Ws as the client didn't have any 4K TVs.

Of course depending on the crap-shoot of what the installer has on the truck you may get a 10 year old HR24 as well.

Thanks, this is the problem I was worried about. A client builds a new home and installs 12 new top of the line TVs and DTV limits them to only 1 4k receiver. This is another reason to suggest they go with Dish.

My understanding of the new server is it allows 8 active streams at once. But you cannot add any other devices. With the older Genie you can add additional non Genie boxes to the system. It's still a kludge and with AT&T's lack of support I struggle to suggest their product any more. At one point DTV was the leader by far.

With the AT&T acquisition it's just a matter of time before the service shifts fully to streaming. The final DirecTV satellite was launched in November and they don't plan to replace the others. That means they'll probably be leaning on 5G as the delivery platform of the future. So I think they're at the point of making it work just good enough right now until they transition.