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Help Android TV Box Over Coaxial Possible?

supradude

Newbie
May 19, 2013
12
1
This might be a loaded question so before I buy anything I want to be sure this is going to work. I should note that I am only semi knowledgeable to this so my questions or line of thinking is probably going to come across as stupid so be forewarned.

What I am wanting to do is use my existing coaxial cable that is wired throughout the entire house and connect it to an Android box so I can use the one box to watch the same thing on every TV in the house using channel 3 along with an IR remote to control the box.

I cut the cable cord about 6 years ago and then installed an antenna on the roof for OTA. That means I have two coaxial cables coming into the house -- one for the internet and one for OTA. The internet coax is set up normally; cable to the modem and then to my router (RT-N66U).

I still have two ethernet ports and one USB port available on the router so my thought was to plug the Android box into the router USB port, then use the ethernet port on the Android box (is there even a box out there with two ethernet ports?) and run it into an Ethernet to Coax Adapter (MoCA). From there the OTA coax would go into the adapter's In port and run the Out port coax to the PCT-MA2-8P Drop Amplifier which routs the OTA signal to every TV in the house -- and hopefully -- the Android TV box. See diagram below.

20170123_213437-jpg.115289


I don't know if any of these would help my cause, but I have laying around collecting dust an Extreme Infinity Premise Amplifier IPA1007D-RSVF, a Power Inserter Module IPPIM and an AC/DC Adapter IPA1000PSB.

Do I need to add something else like a diplexer? Is the USB port going to ruin the whole idea? Am I even remotely on track thinking this would work?
 

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If I understand you correctly, what you're trying to do isn't really feasible-- at least not economically or with good quality video.
  • Most (if not all) Android TV boxes need Ethernet or WiFi for their Internet connection, not USB as you have diagrammed. No problem. Use Ethernet or WiFi.
  • Most (if not all) Android TV boxes output video over HDMI, not Ethernet (contrary to your diagram).
  • Most (if not all) Android TV boxes output video signals over HDMI, so you would need to convert HDMI to an ATSC (OTA-like) RF signal that could be put onto a coaxial cable and merged with your antenna. To do that you would need an ATSC modulator box, but those are ~$1300. (So it would be far cheaper to put a ~$30 WiFi Android box at every TV.)
  • Otherwise, if you could find an Android box with composite-video, you could get a cheap composite-to-coaxial modulator. (Or you could convert from HDMI to composite and then composite to coaxial. It's a 2-converter solution but such converters are pretty cheap, like under $30 each.) Then you would merge the RF-modulated (coax) video signal with your antenna signal using a dirt-cheap 2-to-1 cable splitter, before amplifying it and distributing it to your TVs (so that they could tune it in on analog channel 3 or 4). But in both cases the video would be analog and crappy standard definition quality. Again, probably better to just put an Android box at each TV.
 
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