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Integrating music in upgraded Premiere system

S

sshearer

Well-known member
⭐️⭐️PATRON⭐️⭐️
This is a movement of a discussion originally started in thread concerning K's upgrade plan for Premiere owners who want to upgrade to 4K capability.

I may have a little bit of an unusual setup with my current Premiere system that is raising issues assuming I want to upgrade my Premiere system to Encore system so I can add 4K capability. With the assistance of Mike Kobb from K, the upgrade will work fine as far as movies are concerned. My problem is how to continue accessing the music side of K as I currently am.

To briefly summarize my situation I have a distributed audio and video system that feeds everything in my house other than the theatre and one other TV. I have 2 M500 players that provide the movies to all of the rest of the TVs in the house and also provide the music that can be watched on all those TVs. In addition the music is distributed to ceiling speakers in most all of the rooms of the house. This is accomplished by hooking up 2 M500 players to a Crestron hardware and software system that distributes the movies and music throughout the house. The reason for 2 M500 players is to permit the playing of 2 different movies or 2 different music sources at the same time as not everyone may always want to watch the same movie or listen to the same music at the same time. Remote controls control the movies and music on the TVs and Crestron wall-mounted control pads control the music going to the ceiling speakers. This system also distributes 2 DirecTV receiver signals along with a Roku and AppleTV signal throughout the house. The Crestron hardware (which is component video based) is maxed out as far as audio and video source devices are concerned.

I would still like the ability to be able to watch 2 separate movies throughout the house at one time or listen to 2 separate music selections from the K system at the same time. My initial thinking was that I was going to have to add 2 new M500 players to the system (the 2 current ones would play the movies through the Encore system and the 2 new ones would play the music through the Premiere system). The problem with this is not only the expense of 2 new M500 players and lack of available rack space, but that would also necessitate a replacement of the current Crestron video and audio distribution hardware to add the new sources. Jerry and HiFiGuy1 offered 2 suggestions, one of which was to use remote controllable switchers between the source devices and the Crestron hardware to avoid the necessity of upgrading that hardware. The other suggestion was to locate a used K music player with 4 audio outputs or use less expensive M300 players for the music. Jerry noted that he was not sure if the K music player could provide an on screen interface when I want to play the music from a TV in the house.

While I would certainly be much happier if the Encore system provided music capability like the Premiere system does, it does not so I have to figure out another alternative that is going to be materially more expensive and complex to accomplish what I am currently able to do.

I did not see any video outputs on the KMUSIC-4000 unit so it does not appear that would really work. That leaves the option of inserting remote controllable switches before the Crestron audio and video distribution system to switch between the M500s connected to the Encore system and 2 "new" M300s connected to the Premiere system. I would still have to purchase and install 2 remote controllable switchers, purchase 2 M300s, find a place to install the new M300s (my current rack is full), and pay to have my dealer do all the necessary reprogramming of the Crestron system and the associated remotes and Crestron control pads throughout the house.

If anyone has any thoughts or other suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated. I hope I am missing a much easier and less expensive solution or that Kaleidescape might decide to add music capability to the Encore system.

Thanks again for any thoughts that others may have.

Scott
 
Hi Scott,

Let me get lob a few more questions at you for background:
  1. How often in your experience do you have people watching two different movies in the house?
  2. Same question for music.
  3. Today, if two people were watching movies in different parts of the house, and somebody wanted to listen to music in a third zone that doesn't have a TV, do you have anything in place to ensure that using the Crestron touch panels would not interrupt somebody's movie?
  4. Do you have rooms where listening to music must be done through the TV, or does the TV just provide a convenient interface for choosing the music?
  5. Do you use iPads with our iPad app at all?
  6. To clarify for me -- are all of the ceiling speakers operated through the same maxed-out Crestron switch, or is there a multichannel distribution amplifier involved?
 
MikeKobb said:
Hi Scott,

Let me get lob a few more questions at you for background:
  1. How often in your experience do you have people watching two different movies in the house?

    Not real often, would mostly happen when we have guests in the home.
  2. Same question for music.

    Not real often but does happen sometimes
  3. Today, if two people were watching movies in different parts of the house, and somebody wanted to listen to music in a third zone that doesn't have a TV, do you have anything in place to ensure that using the Crestron touch panels would not interrupt somebody's movie?

    I don't think we have anything in place to prevent that from happenning, although I can't remember it ever happenning. We have the remotes and control panels set up with a Scott choice and a Ginger choice. The remotes can pick a Scott movie, a Ginger movie, a Scott music and a Ginger music while the Crestron touchpanels can pick Scott music or Ginger music.
  4. Do you have rooms where listening to music must be done through the TV, or does the TV just provide a convenient interface for choosing the music?

    This would be true in our living room and 2 of the guest bedrooms.
  5. Do you use iPads with our iPad app at all?

    Once in a while, but not generally.
  6. To clarify for me -- are all of the ceiling speakers operated through the same maxed-out Crestron switch, or is there a multichannel distribution amplifier involved?

    Yes, all the ceiling speakers pick the K music through the maxed-out Crestron switch. However, they can also play music from a home Sirius receiver that also connects through the Crestron hardware
Click to expand...

I went back down to take another look at the Crestron hardware and I may have been wrong about it being maxed out. The video distribution amplifier is a CNX-PVID8X4. I have six video sources hooked up to it at the moment - 2 M500 players, 2 DirecTV receivers, AppleTV and a Roku. I have 2 Crestron audio distribution amplifier units that feed the above video sources along with the 2 Sirius receivers. I am not real familiar with the Crestron hardware and I will check with my dealer to see if I could hook up two more sources to the video distribution amplifier. If so, then I could add 2 more K300 or K500 units hooked up to the Premiere system to continue playing K music. I checked that rack again and while it is full, I do have an older 5U K server in that rack that only has a total of 2 TB storage which is now full. If I removed the 5U server I would have room for 2 more K players. I do have more drive space available on the 3U server (5 TB free) and I know you would have to remove the downloaded movies from the 3U server to the Strato player or Terra server, so I don't know what the end result would be as I will be wanting to import move DVDs and Blu-rays in the future.

Thank you for asking the questions which caused me to take another closer look at my current hookup. As mentioned I will check with my dealer who installed all this to verify if I could hook up 2 more K players without having to change the Crestron hardware.

Any other questions or thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.

Scott
 
If you're thinking of removing the 5U server, you should be able to replicate its content to your 3U server, and then retire it. This assumes of course that you would have enough storage space on the 3U to do the replication. If there's enough space now, the simplest thing would be do do that replication first, then do the migration. If you need to move the downloaded movies first, I think it should still be doable, but it might be a bit more complicated.

I any event, if it turns out that you really do have two more inputs on the PVID, that would work out well.

One potential issue to watch out for if you do end up buying any additional equipment: due to requirements in the Blu-ray specification, players manufactured after a particular "sunset" date are not able to output Blu-ray in HD over analog outputs. If you're seeing HD on your distributed players today, that suggests that they were made before the sunset, which is great. If you end up buying M300 or M500 players for music, the sunset wouldn't matter for music, but you might want to consider trying to find pre-sunset players anyway, just in case you ever need to use one of them for movie playback for some reason.

Let us know what you find out about the PVID!
 
Mike,

Thank you so much for your reply and comments. I am seeing HD from my current M500 players over component. I purchased them sometime ago so apparently they are pre-sunset players. Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention if I need to purchase additional players.

Does Kaleidescape still sell the M300 players?

I am checking with my dealer on the PVID issue. I did receive a reply from the owner of the dealership (World Premiere in Harrisburg, PA) who is double-checking with his technical person. I absolutely love my local dealer who I have had for around 15 years. He/they are a real asset to Kaleidescape.

Thanks again.

Scott
 
We do still sell the M300, but at this point they are subject to the sunset. Not a problem for HDMI, but an issue with a component video distribution system like you (and I!) use.
 
If you use the pre-sunset players for legacy playback, and the new players (Strato, M300, M500) for video going forward, this might help solve the HD over component problem.

Also, my suggestion for using the K Music player with the four outputs was predicated on using touchpanel interfaces, either Crestron touchscreens or iPad/iPhone/Android devices, because those allow for a pretty full UI for the K system with excellent two-way feedback, without the need for a TV. If you are leaning on TVs for your control UI in some rooms, that would obviously not work. However, if you can get your programmer to add those interface types, I think you will find that it gives you tremendous flexibility going forward. I do that kind of thing for the vast majority of my clients these days.
 
HiFiGuy1 said:
If you use the pre-sunset players for legacy playback, and the new players (Strato, M300, M500) for video going forward, this might help solve the HD over component problem.
Click to expand...
Actually, I think you'd want to use the pre-sunset players for video playback in this system, given that it distributes via component video, and you'd want to be able to do HD video over component, which post-sunset players can't do. Maybe I misunderstood what you were suggesting?

Also, my suggestion for using the K Music player with the four outputs was predicated on using touchpanel interfaces, either Crestron touchscreens or iPad/iPhone/Android devices, because those allow for a pretty full UI for the K system with excellent two-way feedback, without the need for a TV.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's why I was asking about the iPads and the distribution amplifier setup. In a situation where there are no more video inputs available, but there might be audio-only inputs, a Music Player plus an iPad to control the music works out really well. I use the iPad for my music at home quite a bit, although I also use the onscreen display depending upon the situation.
 
MikeKobb said:
...

Let us know what you find out about the PVID!
Click to expand...

I was able to verify with my dealer that I do have 2 more component video inputs available on my PVID, which is great news. My dealer also said he had some older M Class players with component videos out that would be available. After the first of the year I will be figuring out exactly how I am going to do the upgrade and how much storage space I will need on the Encore side of the system.

Thank you and everyone else again for all the great assistance and wonderful advice.

Scott
 
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