I originally had two standalone TiVos and digital cable, with one TiVo on my Samsung HDTV and the other on my TV in the master bedroom. I had the two TiVos networked together in a combined wired/wireless network so I could transfer recorded programs from one TiVo to another (TiVo's "Home Media Option" or HMO). When I decided to switch to DIRECTV and swap my TiVos with two dual tuner DIRECTV TiVo DVRs, the option of networking the TiVos together was not possible since HMO is not supported on these units. This lead me to look for alternate solutions on how to share programming on the TiVos with other TVs in the house.

After good deal of research I chose the Avcast system since it allowed me to use existing coax cable network that was installed for watching cable TV. It was quickly apparent that not only would I be able to share programming on the TiVos with the family room and master bedroom, the Avcast system would also let me pipe programming to all other TVs in the house, including the TV tuner in my PC. If things worked as advertised the end result would actually be better than what I previously had with my networked SA TiVos.

Fortunately, things worked exactly as advertised--I now have both of my DIRECTV TiVos receivers hooked to my main HDTV in the family room and these TiVos can be viewed from any other TV in the house. With optional IR extenders that are part of the Avcast system, I can also control the TiVos remotely. I can now start watching a program on one of the TiVos in the family room, pause the program and go upstairs to the master bedroom and continue watching it from where I had paused it. I do not have to wait for the program to transfer from one TiVo to another like I had to do with my SA TiVo HMO network. Each TiVo is rebroadcast over the coax network on dedicated channels. The biggest drawback of this approach is a loss of quality in the video signal received on the remote TVs. The DTiVos are hooked to my HTDV using S-video. The remote TVs receive their video over coax at a quality level comparable composite video--definitely not as crisp as what I get my my big screen HDTV but quite acceptable on the smaller TVs in the bedrooms. When I was first setting the system up there were some serious quality issues, but after I replaced several of the coax strands in my network and tightened some connecters, I was satisfied with the picture quality. Quite frankly, I can't imagine living without it now--it's a very slick system, ideal for anyone wanting to share DVD, VCR, TiVo or satellite video signals across multiple TVs in a home.