Moving into a new house and want to bring it into the 21st century. It's empty now and needs a bit of work, so this is a perfect time to be drilling holes, openings and getting cables in place.

This is basically what we want:

- Sky in every bedroom (4) and kitchen, as well as the two lounges.
- Wired ethernet in every bedroom, kitchen and two lounges.
- a multi room audio system.

My ideas:

We don't want to go the SkyQ route. We currently have two SkyHD boxes which would be based in each lounge. What is the best way to disseminate these to the bedroom. Watching the same channel is expected, but using a control to change the SkyHD channels would be necessary if possible. Was thinking something like a HDMI over ethernet matrix type thing? But don't know what is best. The distances involved might be limiting to a straight up HDMI device. And what about the control?

Ethernet is the easiest thing - simply a cable from the router to a large managed switch, and then cables to each area? Wi-Fi just isn't an option here, we all use our smart TVs a lot and before I wired my current house, it wasn't working well at all.

The Multi Room audio is open at the moment, I have no equipment for this. I was thinking the best thing would be Chromecast Audio with active/powered areas. We are all Android users so this would make sense. Can anyone recommend ceiling speakers or speakers that can be placed say in the corner or a room/hall that will work well with Chromecast audio? Was looking at some passive options, but the need to connect a small amp or similar make me think it would get a bit messy.

Thanks!

Use Edison HDMI modulators. They are compatible with magic eyes so allow you to change channels in the bedrooms.

Sky HD distribution
The Edison HDMI modulators Winston_1 recommends are a good shout. They take HDMI and turn it in to the equivalent of a Freeview HD TV channel that the various TVs in the house can then tune in to.

If you're not already aware of how TV tuners, a HD TVs pick up Freeview by tuning in to muxes. A single mux is a package of digital channels transmitted at one specific frequency. There are 7 main muxes covering all the national and regional TV stations plus radio stations and then some regional low power muxes for special local-only TV channels. Each Edison (one per Sky box) would appear as an extra mux, but its output would unpack as one single channel. The TV would be tuned to accept the new mux and then you'd allocate an unused TV channel number for it. e.g. channel 151 for Sky box 1 and channel 152 for Sky box 2. The signal from both boxes is carried by the same coax that delivers Freeview to the TVs.

What makes the modulators a neat solution is the simplicity of wiring and the fact that there's no need for a complex HDMI matrix switch (and something to control said switch) to then feed multiple HDMI cables or HDMI Cat baluns. As Winston_1 said, they're also compatible with Sky magic eyes so that solves the control issue too. Other options are available for control such as the Sky app, but if wireless is patchy in the house then the magic eyes should provide a fairly bulletproof solution.

The next part of the Sky solution is how to control the Sky boxes so they don't interfere with each other. For that you need a Global SPC4.

This little device is a bit like a managed switch on RF coax for Sky magic eye signals. Sky HD box remotes can be programmed with up to four different ID codes. This allows the independent control of 4 Sky HD boxes. However, once the remote code is changed then a Sky box won't respond to it any more. The SPC4 takes the changed code and applies it to one of its RF ports only. It also reconverts the IR code back to something that the box understands. In this way any spare Sky HD box remotes only talk to the box to which they're allocated.

Depending on the age of your Sky HD boxes they might not have a set of RF IN/OUT sockets. If that's the case you'll need a couple of I/O Link boxes.

HDMI over IP is do-able but not without its own pitfalls. Every solution I have used or looked at all recommended running a completely separate network switch and CAT infrastructure so that AV over IP is kept away from the data network. Latency and support for various HDMI standards as well as resolutions and 3D formats also need to be looked at carefully.


Multiroom audio
Chromecast (CC) is certainly a cheap option. By default it is wireless (2.4 & 5GHz) only, but there is an Ethernet adapter available too for around £15 per CC. Multi-room is supported, however, adding or dropping rooms on-the-fly as is possible with Sonos or Jongo and other higher-priced solutions isn't an option with CC. You need to set up the room groups beforehand, and then select one of those presets from a dropdown menu.

Chromecast does support HD audio (24bit/96KHz) but the CC built-in DAC isn't great which is no surprise given the sub-£30 price. If you're playing via the analogue output through speakers that are the equivalent of a cheap iPod dock then this won't matter. Via a decent amp and good in-ceiling speakers though you will hear the limits. That's a bit of a shame if you're in to lossless audio for its quality. The other limitation is iTunes support, or more accurately the lack of it.

If you decide to go with in-ceiling speakers then it's definitely the case that you get what you pay for. Monitor Audio CT165 at around £210-£220/pr are okay. Blucube CXCL-650 at £250/pr are much better. Pyle, Bosch, BIC American etc at £25-£75/pr are generally pretty poor by comparison. What most people forget too with in-ceiling speakers is they need firehoods if the space in the room above is a living area or means of escape. Firehoods are not cheap. Prices range from £55-£65 each to cover the typical 5"-6.5" driver-size speaker.

Small discrete amplification can be a bit of a challenge too. There's no shortage of small T-amps starting at under £50 on Ebay. The problem they all share though is that usable power output is limited to about 1/3rd of the claimed wattage figures. That's because the power supplies generally suck and the the amps themselves start to distort fairly early as the volume increases. In-ceiling speakers need some driving if they're to be used for multi-room. Six or seven watts from a T-amp isn't enough power to pull the skin off a rice pudding; 20-30 watts is closer to the mark, but you won't find that in a small cheap digital amp.

If the budget is limited then you could do a lot worse than choose a good 2.1 speaker kit. The AE Aego M would definitely be worth a look; and particularly because the satellite speakers are (a) small and (b) available in black or white. Forther more, for under £150 you get speakers and amplification; all you need do is add a Chromecast.

Wow, thanks so much. That is a great help! Much appreciated.