Cat6 as HDMI?

[TheMoose]

I'm in the very early planning stages of adding a dedicated home theater to my house.
I was reading Widescreen Review series on HDMI 1.3 cables & they mentioned something about using cat 6 wiring as a HD cable.

Can someone explain how this works & if it has the bandwidth for 1080p over a long (say 20 meter) distance?

Depending on how I set up my room I may have 2-15 meter HDMI runs or a 5 meter & a 20 meter run (1 to a projector & 1 to a TV) & want to do it right the first time.

I don't mind spending $300 for a HDMI cable from a company like Kimber or Monster that will be foolproof since it will be in the walls but if the Cat 6 works just as good for less that why waste $$?

[JerryDelColliano]

I know the Accell and Ultralink cables run easily that long.

For VERY long runs look to a fiber optic cable like Dtrovision. That is what I use and it can do 1080p over long runs with ease. Its a lot more money than $300 for a long cable however. The Ultralink and Accell are closer to $300

[rex]

For several years Geffen has had a HDMI cat5 extender: http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3872

More recently Honeywell came out with their improved HDMI cat5 "converter": http://www.cepro.com/article/honeywe...When:16:31:00Z

[seanthebrit]

Caution.

If you want to pass a 1080P signal [twice the bandwidth of 1080i] over CAT5, the losses in bandwidth may make this unworkable, especially over 50foot; thus CAT6 is reliable for HDMI runs around 100 feet. However, if this in done in a commercial environment, or the cables pass by high power A/C units, the twisted-pair shielding is not enough; there is CAT6 shielded cable made for this. The baluns are not cheap at $1000/pair [Muxlabs] but they are bullet proof. This is from hands-on experience I have encountered, working with Custom Install for a large AV retailer.

For the home, a pre-made Audioquest/Monster/etc cable of 40' plus will be ultra-reliable.

As is always true in A/V, you get what you pay for.

[jptronics2]

You can run dual runs of CAT5 or CAT6, but will need to use CAT transmitters and receivers.
Extron and Geffen both have units that work perfectly.

[wes]

Check this out, optical wave division multiplexing (WDM) scheme to transmit uncompressed video/audio and other data over a single transparent fiber.

http://www.owlink.com/dll.htm this is using optic fiber and has no length limits