I am planning on building a beefy unRAID setup centrally located in my home with 2-3x Nvidia GTX 1070/1090 cards, each dedicated to its own VM. Then each VM would be available to any of the stations (monitor+mouse+keyboard) or TV setups around the home. However there seems to be no really affordable way of doing HDMI routing from the unRaid server to the stations (~8 of them). any ideas?

 

Ideas so far

1. HDMI Matrix (3-4 inputs to 8 outputs) ~ $900+ and does not include HdBaseT or USB extensions to rooms. I could control these units remotely using the RS-232

http://www.hdtvsupply.com/8x8-hdmi-matrix-switchers.html

 

2. Each video card tied to a VM will be have HDMI outputs onboard (~ 4). Is there anyway to tell the VM which one to enable programmatically? Imagine if each video card associated with 1 VM has 4 HDMI and those are routed to 4 rooms. Then I could tell the VM use HDMI 2. Anybody try this?

 

3. HDBaseT 2.0 has a routing feature, which is exactly what I want but I have not seen a single vendor pick this up yet. It seems like with this specification you would plug your HDMI output from your video card into HDBaseT 2.0 transmitter that then plug into your network. They also have built in USB.. awesomeness. Then you can programmatically route the packets over to any specific HDBaseT receiver box

 

I am assuming that USB would be carried over Cat6 converters and I would be able to pass the USB controller or each device into the VMs with UnRaid as I have done with EXSI previously. USB routing would be another topic for conversation but it should be easier than HDMI

This sounds like a freakin' awesome endeavor!!

 

I'd love to do similar, except with my single GTX 1070 unRAID setup that resides in a closet.

 

Any ideas on resolution limitations? Everything I see is 1080p maximum. I prefer to game over 1440p.

What sort of home automation, if any, do you currently have? I ask because you said you can control it remotely via 232 which implies some form of automation (Crestron/AMX/Control4/URC).

 

Regarding #2. The GPU as a whole is assigned to the VM, not a single HDMI port.

 

If you go HDBaseT make sure all the equipment you get supports USB however, the USB will likely be limited to 100M. The alternative are Gigabit USB extenders that use Gigabit IP networking/direct link

 

The cheapest bet is likely to have the following:

 

HDMI only Matrix switcher

USB matrix switcher (good luck)

HDBaseT extenders with HDMI+USB

USB cards for each VM to ensure hot plug works

 

If you had $$$ to throw at it, I'd say get an AMX DGX or Crestron DM system as those will support HDMI/USB routing with the correct connections. Those solutions run into the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.

I received response from an Atlona vendor about their AT-UHD-EX-70-2PS in response to my question: "Does this support 2560x1440 resolution? I know it goes UP to 4K, but will it display a resolution between 1080p and 4k?"

 

I contacted Atlona technical support and they confirmed that it will support the resolution listed below as well as several other resolutions between 1080P and 4K, if you need anything else please let me know.

 

Downside is the damn thing costs $309. That's almost as much as my video card itself!

 

After measurements, all I'm needing is between 15-20ft. I don't think any HDMI, DVI, or DisplayPort cable alone supports that distance to maintain a 1440p resolution.

What sort of home automation, if any, do you currently have? I ask because you said you can control it remotely via 232 which implies some form of automation (Crestron/AMX/Control4/URC).

 

I am using OpenHAB and actually building my own frontend with ReactJS for it so I will be able to plug it into anything.

 

I really want HDBase 2.0 routing..

Ideally I would want a reasonable HDBaseT 2.0 Box that supports 4K, USB 2.0 and also has some way to tell it which HDBaseT 2.0 receiver it should send to. Even though the spec is 3 years old this stuff isn't on the market yet and when it hits it will be way too pricey.

 

What I'm thinking now is perhaps getting HDBaseT 1.0 4k boxes (sender + receiver pairs) + equivalent USB over CAT6 boxes and then come up with some kind of physical routing switch. Like 4 HDBaseT transmitters -> "magic switcher" -> each routes to one of the 11 HDBaseT receivers.

Ideally I would want a reasonable HDBaseT 2.0 Box that supports 4K, USB 2.0 and also has some way to tell it which HDBaseT 2.0 receiver it should send to. Even though the spec is 3 years old this stuff isn't on the market yet and when it hits it will be way too pricey.

 

What I'm thinking now is perhaps getting HDBaseT 1.0 4k boxes (sender + receiver pairs) + equivalent USB over CAT6 boxes and then come up with some kind of physical routing switch. Like 4 HDBaseT transmitters -> "magic switcher" -> each routes to one of the 11 HDBaseT receivers.

 

HDBaseT isn't a networking standard, so you need a dedicated matrix switching box. AVB on the other hand, IS a network standard... it just requires a very specific set of switch protocols that are hard to find.