Hack34.Boost Your Video Signal for Multiple Screens

Hack 34. Boost Your Video Signal for Multiple Screens

You don't have to put up with poor-quality video when displaying your car computer's output on multiple screens.

If passenger video entertainment in your vehicle is handled by one large fold-down screen, you don't need this hack. If you have multiple screens, though, this hack can help you improve the quality of the picture they display.

If you're simply driving a pair of rear-headrest screens, using a simple RCA splitter is one approach. This will work, but because the voltage coming out of the video card has to supply two screens, each screen will get a correspondingly washed out and weaker signal. Start splitting the voltage to three or four screens, and you will get an unacceptable picture on all the screens. Retail stores, which have dozens of TV sets all showing the same signal, solve this problem by using a video booster to amplify the signal.

Video boosters are inexpensivea 1 x 4 (1 input, 4 outputs) booster can be purchased for around $2530. Figure 3-18 shows a unit by Fahrenheit Technologies (http://www.farenheitusa.com), a popular manufacturer of in-car boosters.

Figure 3-18. Fahrenheit's video booster

To install it, simply connect the composite output (or S-Video output with an S-Video-to-composite adapter) of your computer to the amplifier input, and then run the wires from each video screen to one of the outputs. Many units have adjustable gain (amplification) for each output, so you can tune it for each monitor until the picture looks rightthe color should not be either washed out or bleeding and oversaturated, and the picture should be crisp and solid.

Video boosters are designed to send the same video to all your monitors. If you would like to have different video at each screen according to the preference of that passenger, "Customize Each Passenger's Video" [Hack #35] is a must-read.