Ideas needed to run multiple video feeds on existing wireing

[tota 0]

In advance thank you for your help!

 

I work in a museum. We have 24 plasma screens on two floors showing 24 DVDs (running from 24 DVD players). All the DVD players are in a room in the basement. From the DVD machines to the plasma screens wires were run through the cement at the time of construction. (It is not possible to pull through new or additional wires.)

 

I would like to have three different videos sent to each screen from 72 separate DVD players in the basement. And be able to choose between the three DVDs at any time by pressing an A/B/C switch near the screen.

 

The wiring is not coax, but rather a single pair of copper video cables with a yellow RCA plug at the end. There are also two lines of speaker wire running from the DVD players in the basement to each plasma screen.

 

Is there a devise that would alow me to run 3 DVDs on one pair of wires. What I am imagining is some how shifting the frequency of two of the DVD signals and then sending the two shifted signals plus one unshifted signal up one wire. Then before going through the A/B/C switch I would have a device that would shift the signals back and send one signal through each line of the switch and then to the plasma screen.

 

Is their any economical way to do this?

 

Or do you have a better idea?

 

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

Andy

[bpzle 0]

Do the "plasmas" have TV tuners built in or are they just monitors? Meaning, could you plug into the wall for CATV if it was availible? If so, I would say to modulate the signal.

 

Channel Plus makes some. Just Google "channel plus modulator".

 

These would allow you to make your own CATV channels. Say dvd player 1 on channel 5. DVD player 2 on channel 10. DVD player 3 on channel 23 and so on...

[Soundy 1]

^That was my first thought as well.

 

Another (more expensive) option might be to look into an IP streaming system, where the video is digitized and broadcast via IP, with each TV having a decoder that would let you select which stream to view.

 

Either of these setups would let you do away with most of the DVD players, too - if you only ever need three feeds to chose from on any TV at any time, you'd only need three players.

 

Or let's take it one step further: set up a PC in the basement with a streaming server, rip all your DVDs onto the machine's hard drive, then give each TV its own streaming receiver in the form of a media-player box, a micro-PC, or even a small netbook (a $120 Linux netbook would suffice) to play the streams from the server. No more need to swap DVDs, either.

 

Let's go beyond a switchbox, too: a computer-based player - whether Windows or Linux - would allow you to run a remote-access app like VNC, which would let you then directly access any player and change what it's playing at any time. A friend of mine does this with digital transit signage using his iPhone - he can walk onto any train platform, pull out his iPhone, and adjust all the signage in that station without anyone even knowing it. He can also sit at his desk in his office and reprogram his signage on any or all sites.