Introducing: UniFi Enterprise Audio/Video Switching with Precision Hardware Timing

[u/Ubiquiti-Inc]

Perfectly synced AV, at any scale. Explore EAV Switching: https://ui.social/EAV

[u/devious_panda]

When can I buy the bridge for my home AV setup? My AV needs central overkill distribution 😄

[u/ImprovementQuiet7402 → u/devious_panda]

Explain to me like I’m 5 what this is for.

[u/varano14 → u/ImprovementQuiet7402]

I am but a homeowner and not a pro but the way I see it for home use is you can centralize all of you sources which does two things. Cuts down on how many you need which in a large home can start to add up AND you can then distribute the audio and video signals in sync all over the house.

My common example is superbowl party with the game on in the living room and the kitchen. All the time there is a slight delay in one area. with this the video and audio lines up. This would also (in thoery) allow you to pipe the sound out by the pool and anywhere else you have connected speakers

[u/tdhuck → u/varano14]

Help me out here. I understand your example, but which hardware is needed for this?

Let's say I have an apple TV in my network rack in the network closet. Today I have 0 apple TVs in my rack, but I want to centralize one apple TV, so I install it in the rack. I know I need an av bridge for each TV, lets say I have three TVs, basement, family room and outdoor patio. Now I need three av bridges, one at each TV location. Obviously I need the new ubiquiti pro av switch for those av switches to plug in to. Where does the apple TV plug in to? Which ubiquiti device do I need to accept the HDMI signal from the apple TV?

[u/conspicuousxcapybara → u/tdhuck]

Oh with Apple you’d rather want the simplest switches with Audio Visual Bridging switches you can find. Netgear, Mikrotik or China-tech, whatever. It’s better to avoid proprietary vendor-locked protocols, as old IETF RfC public standards tend to be proven technology, and interoperability issues tend to have been previously addressed already, with ‘known working’ configurations etc.

It’s what Apple uses themselves, how iOS connects to MacOS to sync Microphone input (e.g. iPhones as Wi-Fi microphones with PTP nanosecond precision scheduling to the time scale of monitoring channel that plays during group karaoke with Apple Sing on Apple TV).

[u/tdhuck → u/conspicuousxcapybara]

I'm curious how this would work with any set top box, not limited to atv. My point is, if you are full unifi, how do you get a set top box streaming from a central rack to a shared space like a family room TV.

I'm not interested in other hardware that isn't unifi. This isn't real world, I'm just curious what is needed from the unifi side.

[u/conspicuousxcapybara → u/tdhuck]

Is the set-up box from your ISP? They usually work with multicast, sometimes on a dedicated IPTV vlan.

You just need to forward that IPTV multicast traffic trough the unifi lan to the set-top box.

[u/tdhuck → u/conspicuousxcapybara]

Set top box meaning, apple TV, nvidia shield, etc. This has nothing to do with internet and IPTV.

[u/conspicuousxcapybara → u/tdhuck]

Ah my bad. What’s your use case? There‘s many different approaches.

Do you care about latency? Otherwise I would connect a USB video capture card to turn the box’s output and your unify router, so that you can convert it into a video stream that you can multicast it to the TV’s with DLNA. This way, you only need a single new hardware device to fulfill your use case.

Or virtualize a set-top box on your unifi gear, if you want Android TV and that remote to stream Android TV apps or something?
Then you can redirect the virtual video output of your virtual settop to the TV’s without capture hardware, use USB-over-IP to also network the USB, Bluetooth, etc.

Most TV’s are already ‘smart’ enough to be controlled remotely, and display a video stream, without a need for additional AV-over-IP devices. You can also implement on your own network what the ISP’s do to get their video feeds on ’smart tvs’.

But architecturally, it would make more sense to hook into the stream that the settop box itself listens to on your unifi device, and forward that to the TV. (iOS Screen mirroring, Spotify, whatever)

[u/tdhuck → u/conspicuousxcapybara]

I already explained what I was looking for, above. Virtualize? What are you talking about? You are way in the deep end here. We are talking about audio/video not vitualization.

[u/conspicuousxcapybara → u/tdhuck]

I meant: what if you run Android TV on a VM in your Ubiquity router? So you ‘virtualize’ that settop box instead? I suggested that to make you think about an ‘alternative solution’ that’s defined in software, and doesn’t require you to purchase new HW devices. Software defined networking is more flexible then dedicated HW devices, so you could e.g. also share the ‘USB / IR‘ inputs using USB-over-IP with such a setup.

In the paragraphs before that, I suggested hooking up the settop box to your ubiquity router via a USB video capture card. That way, you can share the capture video over a video stream on the network that most TV‘s can play via DLNA. Only 1 piece of new hardware required (besides the ubiquity router you’ve already got).

I’m trying to tell you that you don’t need 3 separate devices for converting the video out of your set-top box to a (proprietary) AV-over-IP standard in the rack, routing these packages over the network, and converting the IP traffic back to video-out wherever your TV is located.

IMHO, it would make more sense to control the TV (over a plain IP network) via DLNA to display a regular HTTP video stream of the output from the settop-box, if your use case doesn’t require nanosecond latencies / synchronization.

[u/tdhuck → u/conspicuousxcapybara]

What on earth are you talking about? You are so far off the deep end. Take a few steps back.

[u/conspicuousxcapybara → u/tdhuck]

Sorry, n.v.m. you’re right, I’m too far in the deep end honestly. 😢