No help from me, just an adition to your request.  We are looking to rig a closed feed to the lobby to be used as a cry room.  Will the same set up that you all will eventually give work for a higher quality signal?

Hey, I work in Patricks theater. We started with a basic black and white security camera.  About ten years back, we replaced it with, as he says, a basic vhs camcorder.  It had an auto focus, auto low light, as well as, and maybe most importantly, sound!... We piped it around the theater on standard tv type cable.  The only addition to the system is an inexpensive "Signal Booster" available at Radio Shack for a few bucks.  This set up is an excelent choice for the Cry Room/Lobby sitiuation you mentioned. As well as orchestra, wings, stage manager, and green room setups. patrick mentioned.

Well.. Yes, it was ten years ago that we put it in.  It has a "power supply " option that allows us to plug it in and turn on the "view finder" It is not in a "record" mode, just viewing.  It also has audio/vid jacks for playing it off of your tv. Thats what we have fed into the the signal booster.  Maybe you could find an older one that still works that someone wants to get rid of. or do a little searching and see if someone still makes one that will allow this.  Good luck

I used to work as an Assistant network administrator in a school district.  My boss, the Systems Administrator, got really frustrated with some minor vandalism that kept occurring in a computer lab located in the very open library/media center.    We'd always talked / kidded about putting in a security camera, but he actually went out to Best Buy or somewhere (I don't remember exactly) and found a 2-camera wireless webcam security system for about $99.  It came with two small mountable wireless webcams and then the receiver which plugged into the TV (perhaps via a VCR?  Can't remember).

It wasn't great picture quality, but it was still there, the sound was decent and it got the job done. 

It might be something to look into --- dependent upon range from where the camera is to where the receiver is and how many walls it has to go through to get there.


Other than that, as a musician, I've been in several churches where an old old school VHS camera was setup and ran cables from the ground floor up into the balcony where the organ was so that the organist could see the conductor and keep up with the performance happening on the floor