I know this is not the purpose of the Halfbakery, so I will delete this idea shortly.

While watching the game (American football) at KPFM (Killer Pizza From Mars) last week, my brother and I were watching the owner manipulate sound and channel on his new half-dozen televisions to try and satisfy the different team supporters.

While the owner was opening ceiling panels and disconnecting speakers so as to save the Raiders fans from having to listen to the Charger game, my brother suggested that he wire each table in the manner of the old drive-in theatre speaker boxes, and let each table pick a channel to listen to.

The owner's eyes lit up, and he made positive noises. My brother promptly dropped the project and can't be arsed to follow up on it.

If I could pull it off successfully, it could mean endless beer for me.

But this is not my specialty. I can think of lots of ways to kludge it together, but somebody who thinks in this manner would be better suited to engineer this. Hard wired or wireless, etc.

If bakers have any suggestions, please contact me at the email on my username page.

I'll delete this in a couple of days - Thank you.
-- normzone, Oct 02 2009

MythTV http://www.mythtv.org/
[Jinbish, Oct 02 2009]

Most modern TVs have a headphone jack in the front. There's your start point.
-- 21 Quest, Oct 02 2009


Damon's Grill sports bar franchise does this. They have a multiscreen display wall, and each table has a speaker box with a volume control and a selector switch, to choose the audio signal that corresponds to the screen you're watching.
-- tatterdemalion, Oct 02 2009


From a PC/software perspective, you could go down the route of a bespoke digital TV system based on MythTV server that broadcasts streams to clients. The clients would be set up with VLC that could "tune-in" to the streams. That is probably a lot of work and money...

The tricky bit is that you'll need a tuner per different channel/TV.
-- Jinbish, Oct 02 2009


The audio distribution system of a commercial passenger aircraft is probably ideal for this sort of thing.
-- Ian Tindale, Oct 02 2009


cheap CB radios. One for each TV broadcasting on discrete channels with the power knocked waaay down; one for each table, giving x-amount of channels to dial in.

virtual beer please.
-- FlyingToaster, Oct 02 2009


[Canuck] might be able to help you set up and price out a decent system, you should drop him an email.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 02 2009


Also, [gnomethang] or [wagster] might be good gentlemen to ask.
-- Jinbish, Oct 02 2009


Here's my rough-and-ready version: take a headset, plug it into the jack. Splice the headset wire into a splitter that feeds into a cord for each table assigned to that TV. Run each cord to a speaker at it's table, with a volume control switch at each speaker. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. Just have to experiment, I guess. IT's thought about using the same system as passenger planes sounds pretty good. I have heard of some bars that do this, though, so it's not an original idea. What that means for your bar's owner is that he can probably find instructions online.
-- 21 Quest, Oct 02 2009


I'd go with [Ian]'s suggestion. A quick google shows CA blessed with at least 8 aircraft salvage yards, and there's more in AZ. At the very least, go look and steal ideas.
-- lurch, Oct 02 2009



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