I have a client who is building an addition to his house. He's putting in two home theater areas (one kind of high end, one low end). The AV/network/telco utility closet is right by the main home theater area. The TV is going on one wall about 20' away from the AV/network/telco utility closet. My thought was to purchase one 25' HDMI cable and put in an HDMI Coupler keystone, to hook up his new flat panel TV that is going on the wall back to the AV closet where the receivers/BD players and all that stuff is.
He has a second home theatre on the first floor about 50' cable length away from the AV closet. I've read conflicting stories when doing a Google search about HDMI max cable length, most of them saying technically the HDMI spec doesn't have a maximum cable length, but a spec for loss in order to stay compliant with the HDMI standard.
Are 50' unamped HDMI cables okay for that length? Is it necessary to get HDMI baluns & CAT5e to hook up that TV?
I'd go with the baluns, not because of the distance (although that's a good enough reason on its own), but for ease of installation. Fishing 1 or 2 UTP cables is going to be significantly easier than fishing a connectorized HDMI cable.
I forgot to mention that the drywall is not up yet. So running cables is a sinch. I believe the EC will run the cable himself. The baluns I looked at seemed to be priced from $100 to the sky is the limit. Wasn't sure if there was a big difference between them or not.
I've used some of the CAT5 Extenders from CE Labs with very good success.
https://www.celabs.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=62 (second item down on the page)
Bill
Instead of having him run the cable, ask if he can run central vacuum tubing between the locations, with a pull string installed. It's rated for in-wall use, and its big enough to pull connectorized cables through after the fact, in case you want to add or change technologies.
If you want to have wall plates on either end, make sure that he doesn't install actual vacuum mounting plates, because then you won't be able to fit a cover plate that protrudes back into the wall. Have him leave the conduit stub almost flush with the stud, and hang a 2-gang mud ring next to it. Easy and future-proof.
Interesting. One CAT5e run is kind of nice. All of the other units I saw required 2 CAT6. These are only HDMI 1.3. Does that matter? I know 1.4 spec is out now.
The walls of the addition are poured concrete inside of styrofoam concrete forms. I didn't see any central vac lines installed, though that may have been later. My client did mention about having a central vac installed. My guess is that all of the ports for the central vac will be installed into interior walls, which the TV and AV equipment is not mounted on.
I've runned 50ft HDMI without any problem with out picture degradation.
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www.cablewholesale.com for decent price on HDMI and other cables.
Nope, I run them all the time. Just ran 15 50ft HDMI to adapted DVI cables this week for a dental office. They work just fine.
Cables were installed a couple weeks ago before insulation and drywall went up. Turns out I didn't even need 50ft HDMI cables. Darn client hadn't made up their mind where stuff was going until I went onsite to install the cables. All I really needed was two 35ft cables and a 15ft cable. I ended up using one 50ft cable and the 25ft cable I ordered. Stuck with a 50ft cable now (20% restocking fee to send it back + shipping).
I also needed a stereo 1/8" audio cable to hook up a standalone "jukebox" (really it's just a glorified PC) to the main home theater AV receiver. That cable needed about 65ft.
I'm waiting for the client to call me back to finish the installation, install wallplates, hook up to AV receiver, and test everything.
HDMI is an all or nothing cable....So their should never be any degradation. The key to long HDMI cables is their gauge. Since most short length HDMI cables are 28AWG, I always make sure the 50 footers I use are 24AWG. I get 1080p no problem.
for 50' it shoudl not be an issue. Take a look at snapav, its dealer only products, but they have one that will send 1080p over a single coax. hdmi in and out, coax in the middle