This article sets out to show which exact combination of components and settings I used to successfully allow my wife and I to watch the same thing on TV simultaneously, even when we're not in the same room. My home already had a 100' HDMI cable and a 75' CAT5e cable strung to two upstairs rooms, but our recent upgrade our Family Room TV to our first 4K TV meant I had to re-do EVERYthing about the way I was getting video upstairs. My old 1080P splitter certainly wasn't going to do.
This is not a sponsored post, all items were purchased by TinkerTry, LLC.
If our situation is similar to your situation, this article could be VERY helpful to you. I went down many online rabbit holes reading all sorts of schemes to handle today's reality of High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection. Folks have written a lot about defeating HDCP / stripping HDCP, / bypassing HDCP, but I wanted to see if I could get what I needed for my home without resorting to anything like that. I had SO many issues with the variety of 4K splitters I tried that didn't work, so you better believe it was quite a relief to find a solution that was both affordable and relatively simply. I'm always a fan of having as few points of failure as possible, and I was strongly motivated by my wife to avoid having to re-do any 75 or 100' lengths of wiring that involved creepign around our attic, especially since we recent re-did a section of popcorn ceiling where my leg went through from the attic from a mishap some years ago. Oops.
Here's all the stuff doing the magic of preserving full 4K with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision support for the primary 4K display, while simultaneously offering a 1080P version of that experience to remote TVs too. I know it's not pretty, the focus was on serviceability and reliability, and this is all hidden away behind my TV. I used 3M Command strips to attach the devices in a non-permanent manner. You can pretty easily trace the path of the signals by following the numbers. I found the distant HD TVs sometimes had blank video and no audio after I simulated an rare-but-battery-depleting power outage by turning off the UPS, then turning it back on again. To work around this power sequencing issue, I attached the non-surge-protected power strip seen at right to my uninterrupted power supply. This way, the easy-to-see-and-reach illuminated power switch can be used to resolve this blank video issue easily. The TiVo Edge 4K source is off camera at bottom-right, and you can see the 4K HDMI and optical cables labeled 1 coming out of it. The very thick active HDMI cable near the middle is a 100' run going to the 2nd floor that I ran years ago, before CAT5e extenders were commonplace and affordable.
What works for us are fairly simple, affordable, and legal devices that are readily available on Amazon and other sources. It took months and a LOT of trial and error and frustration, as it was fairly easy to get video working in the remote rooms, but what was missing was audio when watching paid TV like Netflix or Amazon Prime on the TiVo. Argh. After many weeks of struggle, my sudden ah ha moment was to replace the remote room's HDMI audio with the digital audio coming from my TiVo EDGE's Opitcal TOSLINK connector. A quick search revealed exactly such a device exists. Tada! That was the final, crucial piece in this grueling-to-assemble puzzle, felt so good to see it all work out in the end.
My methods don't seem to be a strategy for remote video/audio distribution that I could find anywhere online, so I'm hopeful others will find that this article spares them of considerable frustration. Listed below, you'll see the exact pieces that worked for me. Your results may vary, especially if your situation isn't identical. HDMI TVs handshakes can be finicky, and new hardware versions and software/firmware versions come out products like these splitters and extenders. Also keep this in mind, while 4K 1x2 HDMI splitter might work fine, the 4K 1x4 HDMI splitter from the same company might not, something I learned the hard way!
After wrapping this project up, I actually bought a spare 4K splitter to have this extra on-hand, should one of my two splitters fail down the road some day. This is intended to greatly reducing the chances that I'll ever have to venture down this massive time-sink of trail-and-error misery again, and/or annoy my family again with sometimes multi-week delays in ordering that are rather understandable, given the pandemic era we're still very much in, spending extra time at home.
One 65" 4K OLED TV OLED65CXPUA LG CX 65 inch Class 4K Smart OLED TV w/ AI ThinQ® bought at $650 off on Cyber Monday at BestBuy
Features HDMI 2.1, and is said to be 120 Hz FreeSync and G-Sync capable, which is not something I've tested since I don't own any such GPUs.
One TiVo EDGE
FYI, what TiVo designed for multi-room viewing is the TiVo MINI VOX, each room with independent video and its own remote. But what if you just want to share what you're watching, like my wife and I sometimes enjoy doing? It's quite possible. Did you know you can pair multiple RF remotes to one TiVo EDGE? Their range is quite good, and they seem to easily work across multiple floors in my home. We don't want to pay for a subscription for an additional TiVo, so I'm pretty happy with this new configuration. So we now have the following home theater in our home. While a 4K and Dolby Atmos receiver with HDMI eARC would be preferred, using just the optical connector to our 11 year old Sony STR-DA5600ES Amplifier continues to do Dolby 7.1 quite nicely for us, after tweaking some lip sync timing, a common issue with HDMI audio. TiVo Edge for Cable | Cable TV, DVR and Streaming 4K UHD Media Player with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos
Two 4K HDMI Splitters
ROFAVEZCO 4K HDMI Splitter 1x2 HDR Vision Atmos 18Gbps- HDMI Scaler 4K 1080P Sync,4K HDMI Splitter 1 in 2 out 60Hz 4:4:4 HDCP2.2, EDID Scaler Panel Switch,Firmware Upgrade,USB Power,Windows IOS,Mini Case SP12H2
Mine are in a cascaded configuration, with the first one (attached to the TiVo) is set to EDID 4K which supports HDR Dolby Vision & Dolby Atmos too! The 2nd splitter is set to 2K, avoiding the COPY1 function in attempts to avoid possible learning issues after power outages. This first splitter also has the SCALER DIP switch set to OFF for HDMI OUT1 that goes to my 4K TV, and ON for the HDMI OUT2 that continues to the Injector. Why didn't I just go with the 1x4 version of this EZCO switch? Because then I wouldn't be able to inject Toslink digital audio into HDMI signal sent off to the remote TVs. Why inject digitial audio to replace the HDMI audio stream to the remote TVs? Because I had no sound over HDMI on those remote TVs when the TiVo edge was outputting Netflix or Amazon Prime content, perhaps an DRM/HDCP issue, not 100% sure. All I know is that this injection configuration actually works.
Two 5V Power Adapters CanaKit 5V 2.5A Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Power Supply/Adapter (UL Listed)
That's right, the EZCO splitters don't come with adapters, so I went with some quality power supplies with integrated noise filters, as I bumped into some strange issues when using some power bricks I happened to have laying around. While I'm not a fan of the Micro USB form factor as they don't lock in place particularly well and are vulnerable to damage due to lateral foroces. To mitigate the risk, I used a little bit of cable management and straight relieve to be sure things stay put, even when moving nearby things around.
One Orei HDMI Extender HDMI Extender Balun by Orei Upto 330 Feet 1080p Signal Over Single CAT5e/CAT6 Ethernet Cable, Deep Color, One to Many, IR Control (EX-330(Upgraded))
comes with power supplies and a Transceiver and Receiver pair, plug them in, and it just works, even with my 75' or so of older CAT5e cabling. Suprisingly, there is actually a pricier 4K-capable version of this OREI extender that can supposedly still use just a CAT5e cable, not something I've tested. The other advantage of that step-up model is no latency, lossless uncompressed video, and improved audio support, "Works with all HDMI 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0: Supports 3D andLPCM,Dolby-AC3, DTS7.1, DSD/Dolby /DTS-HD master audio." Mine doesn't support those standards, but I don't have an amplifier attached to my distant TV that would support those standards anyway. I'll still be testing it at 1080P soon though, and will update this article accordingly if I'm impressed by it.
One 75' CAT5e Ethernet Cable Cables Direct Online Snagless Cat5e Ethernet Network Patch Cable Black 75 Feet
The exact cable I ran about a decade ago is a mystery, but this cable is equivalent. If you think you might use 4K video in the remote rooms someday, you really should use a CAT6, CAT7, nor even CAT8 cable for much more bandwidth and more brand choices of extender.
One 2010 vintage 55" Sony Bravia KDL-55HX800 1080P TV from 2011 getting demoted from the family room to an upstairs room.
22" Samsung UN22D5000NF
One 2011 vintage 22" Samsung UN22D5000NF 1080P TV staying put in another upstairs room, with PIP for simultaneous use as a secondary computer monitor.
Two TiVo LUX Remotes TiVo LUX Remote| Tivo Edge and TiVo Bolt, Video Streaming, Voice Command, See in The Dark Display, C00305
That makes 3 RF remotes paired with our TiVo EDGE that seem to work flawlessly, even with voice commands, even through the floor and walls. Left in each of the upstairs rooms, with the volume and power set to control the local 1080P TV. A common experience, despite different brands of TV, very family friendly.
The products listed in this section below didn't work for my use case, they probably work just fine for other more common, exactly-as-intended use cases. They are likely perfectly fine products. While I’m a bit embarrassed to share this list, the hope is that I can spare others from some trial-and-error hassle:
Which HDMI splitters did I try that didn't work (blank or flickering or corrupt video) for my particular, somewhat unusual remote TV application?
Orei EX-330(Upgraded) HDMI Extender Signal Over Single CAT5e/CAT6 Ethernet Cable up to 330', Deep Color
Note, this EXACT description above doesn't include have the wording "EX-330(Upgraded)" at the end, and didn't work for me. Note that despite the apparent functionality change, the Amazon listing still says "Date First Available December 1, 2016". The newer version that says "EX-330(Upgraded)" in the description does work for my needs, and is listed and pictured in the article above.
These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.
After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop SuperServer bundles in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. Bare bones system sales continued for years longer.
What's next in 2025? I don't yet have my answer for my home lab, especially now that VCF certification is required to keep non-production home lab licenses going, even as a vExpert and VMUG Advantage EVALExperience customer.
As for a SuperServer follow-on, the Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! Feb. 27 2025 update update looks promising, but pricey. Infortunately, it's become clear to me that Supermicro is less focuses on the mini-tower form factor these days.
As for the CPU industry, it's unfortunate that Pat Gelsinger was apparently ousted from Intel's helm in these challenging times, but I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.
These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.