Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey people, i have a bit of an odd question. I have my eyefinity rig working nicely in my office. The problem is that my 3d tv is in the next room.... My lounge. Since the steam big picture came out i keep thinking that there must be a way for me to get my pc to pump its games to my 3d tv in the other room. Giving me eyefinity if i want in my office or 3d if i want in my lounge.

The only way i can think to do this is to drill holes and pass cables for audio, video and controller. But before i destroy my house i thought id ask here. Is there a better solution?

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

IMO (note: not from experience however) but from a technical perspective, it's either going to be quite expensive for a high quality HDMI wireless transceiver (when you consider the bandwidth required for lossless propagation, or a cheaper one if you don't care about quality) or it's going to be time to drill some holes.

I do believe you can get HDMI -> Ethernet converters/extenders (you can then use CAT5/6, but note it's not typical network type signaling), that's a possible option, specially if the house is already wired, or even if you have to run cable, CAT5 is alot easier to run then some rigid thick HDMI cable - that'd probably be my 2 cents.

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Edit:- piped by hayden.. but here is my 2cents also...


Without using addtional cabling, you essenitally have 2 options.

Wireless:-
If your TV is within range of the pc's wireless mouse/heyboard/controllor then you may be able to use somehting like this http://www.marmitek.com/en/product-deta ... ew-821.php

It is a wireless 1080p 3D hdmi signal sender reciever kit, range will reduce as resolution/refresh goes up.

Note devices operating on 2.4ghz and 5ghz frequencys can often effect wireless network signals


Mains/Powerline:-
http://www.digisender.net/documents/man ... UK_Web.pdf
Similar to the wireless device only this uses the existing mains/powerline cabling in your house, it uses the 50/60hz mains frequency as a carrier by modulating the video signal with it.

This should prove to be more reliable than wireless however note that different electrical rings in the house can cause issues impacting on performance, same electrical rings are recommend, I use a set of the powerline networking adaptors that work across different electrical rings, but they do not operate as fast as they could, ie about 60%.


Note that both of these will apply a small amount of latency which may make the experience feel laggy in terms of responsiveness.
They are genrally aimed at stremaing video, rather than aimed at remote pc gaming where latency is a killer.


With using addtional cabling you have a few other options.

Use a Cat5 HDMI transmitter, these devices allow you to transmit HDMI 1080p up to very long distences with minimal latency of 1 video frame.
Some of these units support reverse direction IR so that you could potentialy use a IR wireless mouse and keyboard.
such as this one http://www.lindy.co.uk/hdmi-ir-cat6-ext ... 38002.html

Note this cannot plug into the home network, it is an end to end connection with a dedicated cable, it will not work alongside convential pc data traffic.

Cat5/6 cabling is also a lot easier and cheaper to run than thicker more expensive hdmi cable.

Alternatively if you are laying cables you can use conventional extention cables.

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Ok guys I've bitten the bullet while the wife is out. The hole is drilled. It had to be quite big to fit a HDMI though and my wall was quite thick. My drill didn't reach all the way so I had to drill from both sides. Trying to get the holes to line up didn't go smoothly so just as well the wife was out.

I've ordered a 10m HDMI
a 5m USB extension
4 port USB hub.

Hopefully this should be all I need.

The only foreseeable problem I have is that I have 4 monitors plugged into my 7970 and I'll have to unplug something to get the 3d TV to connect to it.

To top it off I read a little about a STEAMBOX possibly being announced at CES. Typical timing! Still my cables cost £16 dont think it'll be cheaper than that!

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Ok cables arrived today and everything works pretty well. I'm happy with it all but I admist I have a few issues.

1.) Audio via HDMI isn't great. I dont know if this is because I haven't got it setup correctly or if it's the cable itself. I haven't set anything up regarding this apart from setting the default output to be via the HDMI. The sound seems to be cut short or not happen at all. To get around this I've ordered an optical cable that will arrive tomorrow. Rather than sending the audio via the graphics card I'm thinking it will be more reliable sending it direct from the Xonar sound card. Hopefully this will mean the end of this problem.

2.) The ATI drivers have never been great at switching to different presets. I've saved a preset specically for my 3dtv in the other room so that all other monitors are turned off automatically when I apply the preset. Sadly, clicking this doesn't always work so I have to manually disable the others. Note, I only do this to ensure that I get all GPU resource available to the game that I'm playing in 3D.

3.) I did try cloning the main desktop from my office onto my 3Dtv thinking that I could get around having to switch profiles all the time. I could then sit at my office desk, work... and then come into the lounge without changing anything. The problem I had here was that any games were subject to screen tearing. This also happend in windows too but wasn't as obvious. This could be that the driver had difficulty with scaling or something. My 3dtv is at 1080p and the monitor at 1152. In short cloning the desktop didn't work too well.

4.) I have four monitors plugged into the 7970 in my office, so now I have to unplug one if I want to plug in my 3dtv.... perhaps a HDMI switch could be an idea here but even then I'd probably have to get behind my PC to flick the switch. I know some 7970 can power 6 monitors but selling my one and investing in another seems a bit too expensive for the sake of a switch.

6.) Using Tridef 3D works well in many games however the steam game overlay seemed to have issues. Normally shift tab would show or hide this but it didn't seem to work like that in this set up. I simply disabled the steam overlay in the settings and it's not a problem any more.

5.) the overall task of switching from my office setup to 3dtv setup isn't straight forward. I need to
a.) unplug one monitor and plug in 3dtv
b.) adjust desktop settings to that the 3dtv is the preffered desktop or the only desktop
c.) adjust the sound so that the default sound output is now the hdmi (or optical when the cable arrives)
d.) change the input on my tv and surround sound in the lounge.

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Correction regarding above post... I must have been a monkey yesterday or something. HDMI audio works fine now. Have no idea what changed.

My optical cable arrived I tried setting this up and failed as the surround sound knew that audio was also coming via HDMI so preffered that. All of a sudden HDMI audio is crystal clear and perfect.

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Typical eh.
Glad you got it working

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |