Quick background:
Construction has begun on our new church building -- foundation is poured, first walls and steelwork are going up, estimated completion around April 2015. Meanwhile, we've been working with an AVL design/install firm on all the technology, and we're getting to the point of finalizing the specs and signing the build contract. They spec'd an SDI-based video distribution system which was great, but now (last minute, of course) folks are asking about the possibility of being able to get cable/satellite TV onto some/all of the screens in the building. Blu-Ray content (e.g. movie night for youth group) is also a possibility (licensing implications are a different discussion). We're realizing that SDI won't support HDCP-encrypted content (see my other post about this: http://www.churchmedia.net/forums/vi...-building.html), so I'm looking into alternative distribution methods that do support HDCP.
Two main possibilities I've come up with are HDBaseT and HDMI-over-IP (e.g. Just Add Power, Octava, etc.). Anybody have experience, opinions, thoughts on either of those two, one vs. the other, or other suggestions they'd be willing to share? I've mentioned both of these to our AVL firm, too, but haven't heard back from them yet so I don't know if they have any experience with either. Figured it can't hurt to seek out some more info/opinions/advice on my own.
The big plus for HDBaseT is that all of the displays in our proposal, save two, already support HDBaseT inputs natively (most are Panasonic devices that support Panasonic's "Digital Link", which from what I understand is based on HDBaseT and is compatible with it). That means we wouldn't need HDBaseT receiver units at each display to convert back to HDMI, just plug the HDBaseT feed right into the display. The downside is that HDBaseT routing/matrix units are expensive. We'll have 5 projectors and 8 HDTVs to feed at launch, and also need to leave room to expand. The current SDI-based proposal uses an Aja Kumo 16x16 SDI router at a cost of about $2,000; a 16x16 HDMI/HDBaseT matrix looks to be $10-15k, yikes. Granted, 16 inputs is way overkill for us (4 would probably suffice to start, maybe 8 to accommodate future sources), but I haven't seen any matrix units with 16 outputs but only 4 or 8 inputs.
As for HDMI-over-IP, it seems to be fairly popular here on CMN in the past several years, and I know that Ed from Just Add Power is a member here (Ed, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!) and that Mike from Esoteric Visions likes it as well. I like the idea of being able to build an any-sized matrix/router with just a managed Ethernet switch. One downside is that it requires transmitter and receiver units at each end, which for JAP look to be about $400/ea for the 1G gear and $650-700/ea for the 2G gear (any discounts available for churches?). Although the current SDI proposal has SDI-to-HDMI converters at every display and HDMI-to-SDI converters at many of the sources as well, so maybe there wouldn't be a huge difference in cost to go with HDMI-over-IP instead. My other big question with an IP-based solution is that of latency, both delay of the video from source to display as well as speed of switching. Granted, I don't believe we'd be doing live switching using the distribution system -- rather, one of our sources will be the program output of a Panasonic AW-HS50N switcher which would have our cameras and presentation computer as inputs -- so switching speed might not be so important. But, live video/IMAG would certainly depend on minimal source-to-display latency. We don't plan to do live video/IMAG right now, but there are additional building phases which include expanding the size of the sanctuary and might warrant doing some IMAG in the future (we're talking 5+ years here).
Anyway, I'd love to hear what folks think, especially if you're using either HDBaseT or some version of HDMI-over-IP. Thanks!