Alright, so a little history. We built a new house last year with vague plans to put a pool in. I knew early that I wanted the option for an outdoor TV, so I had the builder put a conduit run from the front wall of the living room to the patio wall, and also a coax run to feed the satellite signal. I also had him run a two pair of speaker cables to a spot near the back door where I planned on a volume control. Then the speaker wires ran up to the two points on the back patio above the windows.
When it came time to build the pool, I got the good advice from my wife's uncle to plan for speakers near the hot tub. I bought some underground conduit and had the pool builder put it in the deck so I could run the speaker wire later. I had initially planned to have the full conduit run straight to the hot tub, but the deck guy suggested running straight out to the end of the deck and then another short run from the end of the deck to the hot tub pop out. That proved good advice. I made the one cable pull from the edge of the existing patio where the conduit started over to the edge of the deck. Then the wire ran about 10 feet in the ground outside of the deck before hitting the other conduit and a short pull to the hot tub.
I built a box out of plywood to hold my speaker selector and the two volume controls. This gave me the ability to put it all in a single enclosure and also cover up the junction box in the outside brick wall from the original build. I put the volume control for the hot tub speakers on the back side of the hot tub as the pictures show. This has proven quite nice to be able to just reach back over the wall and adjust the volume while sitting in the hot tub itself. I painted these with the brown trim color of the house using paint left over by the builder so it gives a more natural look.
I'm a bit limited by my older Denon receiver since it only had two HDMI inputs, but I've made the most flexible use of it for now. On the TV outside, I can watch from the outside H25 tuner through the TV speakers while the inside TV watches another source. I can also listen to the three sets of outside speakers as I ran the audio from the H25 back to the AVR through the conduit. I used this feature just last night to watch the Texans game while we kicked back in the hot tub. With the HDMI splitter that I have inside, I can also have both TV's watching the same program from the inside HR24 DVR and have the sound piped to both the living room speakers and the outside speakers thanks to the optical audio (and RCA L/R audio, which I just realized I left off the schematic) to the AVR. I set Zone 1 to the full Dolby Digital 5.1, while the outside gets stereo from the RCA cables.
The other option that I use most often is piping music out to the back via my Apple TV. One feature that I have on the AVR-988 that is no longer available is the ability to play digital PCM audio to zone 2. I have my music library on my computer upstairs and I run it through the Apple TV via my CAT 6 network that I had the home builder put in. I use either an iPad or my iPod touch to remote control my computer's Itunes library. When I'm in the hot tub, I typically use the iPod touch in a ziploc bag to control the music.
As for the speakers out back - I initially had just the pair of white speakers for the patio after we moved in. Intially after the pool was built, I continued to use just these speakers. However, I came to realize that, especially with the waterfall running, in order to hear these speakers while in the pool, the sound level was too loud for people sitting in the patio area itself. So, when it came time to add more speakers, I included the pair of black speakers outside the patio and down near the deck level to give better sound at ear level for people in the pool. Separate volume controls allow me to properly balance the sound levels for the patio and pool.
The one thing I can't do with the current setup is watch and listen to Blu-Ray/DVD's outside. If my AVR had more HDMI inputs, I could have run all my sources through it and then put the HDMI splitter on the HDMI output from the AVR. But, typically, when I'm watching TV outside, it's likely to be a football game or some other sport, so it's a limitation I've been able to live with so far.
Hardware:
TV Outside Sony 52" XBR6 LCD Flatscreen - this was our living room TV for the last several years until the 80" took it's place.
AVR - Denon 988
Inside Satellite - DirecTV HR24 HD-DVR
Outside Satellite - DirecTV H25 low profile HD Tuner with RF antenna and remote - allow me to change channels and fast forward from anywhere in the yard. I keep it in a large ziploc bag when I have it by the hot tub.
Speaker selector - OSD four channel selector -
http://amzn.com/B001DW6MWE I removed the rubber feet so that I could mount it flush in my box
Volume controls -
http://amzn.com/B0058SRNZY - went with this one with the weatherproof enclosure by the SPA and used the basic versions to mount in my box for the other two zones.
Speakers
For the black ones at the deck level, I went with these, which served me well at a previous house:
http://amzn.com/B00009WC22
For the patio, these white ones -
http://amzn.com/B000FLNU4C
For the hot tub, I went with a set of "rock" speakers to blend a little better with the flagstone -
http://amzn.com/B000H3GGJE
Mount for the TV outside - Cheetah full motion for up to 65" -
http://amzn.com/B000WL6YY8 - lots of good reviews for this one and it is a stout piece of metal. Used six concrete anchors to mount it to the brick.
Used 2 and 4 conductor runs of 14AWG speaker wire with burial grade sheathing from Monoprice.
I think that's everything.
