Monitor system for Community Theater

Soundgal

New Member
Greetings:
I am looking for information/advice/suggestions for a monitor system for a Community Theater building. Currently we have an old VHS recorder hooked though a Tube-TV/VCR television set that is then output to three other similar sets. One is 2 floors down from the tech booth. The other two are across the building in two separate dressing rooms. There are cable wires running to each other the TV sets and they are pulled through the ceiling/floors/walls to each area. Our problems now are that 1) the sound has gone out on the system-possibly due to the age of the VHS recorder (mic going out), 2) Some of the cables to one area have been cut and will need to be spliced to be connected to the downstairs area again, and 3) the picture is not always reliable (sometimes red, sometimes clear, sometimes scrolling). The last can be adjusted but we have donor who wants to help upgrade the system. We do not have a large budget as a non-profit organization and a big chunk of the funding we do receive will be going towards new dimmers as we had some water damage this last fall. We rent the building from a historical board so we cannot make permanent changes or will need board approval for major undertakings.
I believe that is all the information I can provide.
Thank you in advance-
Sound Gal
 
Can you explain more what you mean by "Monitor System"?

Do you mean a security system, or something else?

For security there are d-Link webcams that have micro-SD cards for recording when there's movement, and D-Link also have a webcam recorder that can record up to 4 webcams onto hard drives (2x USB2.0) constantly.

But of course someone could always jam that since it's wifi.
 
It sort of depends on the type of wire you have connecting all these monitors. If it's coax and it's still in good condition then you may want to have a look at a ZeeVee encoder/modulator and an HDMI or VGA/Composite security camera. Assuming all your endpoints are TV sets it's a reasonably affordable way to take a video and audio input and send it down the existing cable as an in-house TV channel, which is probably what your VCR solution is doing.
 

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