4k HDMI long cable run

[brightspark]

That's some food for thought thanks, I think I will put a conduit in so I can pull whatever cable I get in after proving it works!

providing the plugs go through it as well if there already fitted

 

[Barlidge]

providing the plugs go through it as well if there already fitted

Will need 32mm me thinks

Edit: Thats the other benefit put Cat6 in, terminated onto modules so damaged patch leads can just be replaced and no trying to hide 2m of excess hdmi cable.

 

[Rig Pig]

I'll have to put a fairly big duct in, I plan on running the aerial, front and center speaker cables through it too and possibly a network lead too.

 

[Nell#2]

Word of warning if your going to sky q 4K anything longer than 5mts and your in a bit of trouble. 2.1 spec still struggles it's not the cables per say but the box getting its knickers in a twist, and cheaper cables don't help
Matrix over cat6 works well but not cheap, I was on a AV install and last week Q into 4K amp - to tv 5mt lead and no picture all puka stuf too. The guys where pulling there hair out

 

[Nell#2]

I'll have to put a fairly big duct in, I plan on running the aerial, front and center speaker cables through it too and possibly a network lead too.

40mm x20mm rectangular plastic boxing works a treat easier to chop into the walls too

 

[jchand]

If it was me I would try it first with a good quality HDMI lead, if it didnt work I would invest in a HDMI over Cat5e/6 extender.

Edit: There is loads of variants and the price varies too, sometimes cheaper gear can work as well as the expensive stuff.

Not a recommendation but just an example:

https://www.tvcables.co.uk/4k-hdmi-...MIxMfwgf6W2AIVzr3tCh1QrQCOEAQYASABEgI51PD_BwE

Last year sometime i needed to run hdmi sound and vidoe 140 meters for an event. It was a one off so i used a cheap ebay hdmi over cat6 adaptor (less than £20) worked absolutly fine despite being over the recomended length for cat6 and i didnt use any amps or boosters. He signal at the ither end was tested by qualified sound and vidoe techs and they were more than happy with it. Hope this helps.

 

[Rig Pig]

Word of warning if your going to sky q 4K anything longer than 5mts and your in a bit of trouble. 2.1 spec still struggles it's not the cables per say but the box getting its knickers in a twist, and cheaper cables don't help
Matrix over cat6 works well but not cheap, I was on a AV install and last week Q into 4K amp - to tv 5mt lead and no picture all puka stuf too. The guys where pulling there hair out

That's a pain I suspected I would have issues with the cable length, I don't suppose you know if they tried an amp to boost the HDMI signal?
Cat 6 May be the answer.

 

[wookie]

With HDMI being digital there should be no degradation theoretically, I believe it should work or not.

That is the nail hit on the head, expensive cables are just that expensive, there is no benefit other than a lighter wallet. If the cable meets the required spec then it's good, if it doesn't then it's not a HDMI cable. It literally is as simple as that when it comes to digital data cables, the "0's" and "1's" go in one end and the "0's" and "1's" come out of the other end, anything more is just snake oil and independent tests in labs have repeatably proved so.

That's some food for thought thanks, I think I will put a conduit in so I can pull whatever cable I get in after proving it works!

I've got long runs of HDMI cables, socket to socket joiners to link cables, right angle adaptors, a passive booster and a powered splitter. Make sure you have access to anything more complicated than the cables after you have finished so as things fail you can replace them. So far I've had boosters and splitters fail a couple of times but the cables are good, once was due to lighting strike nearby that killed my splitter, passive booster, projector and adsl modem all at the same time. I've just swopped a splitter as it was getting glitchy, every few hours it would dropout for a second and then re-sync, it's only a couple of years old.

Sadly kit isn't made to last these days unless it's expensive and then it's superseded in a couple of years anyway, so either buy cheaper and upgrade when it starts to fail or buy expensive and have a working setup that's out of date in a few years time, who knows you might be swopping for 8k by then anyway.

 

[Nell#2]

That's a pain I suspected I would have issues with the cable length, I don't suppose you know if they tried an amp to boost the HDMI signal?
Cat 6 May be the answer.

lucky for me my bit was done and working so I ran off lol. I suspect it was a handshake issue. I tend to think most of it is voltage drop related. as others have typed it *should be just 1011000 being sent and received but.

cat 6 is more than enough for most set ups

 

[ajlelectronics]

All good advice up to a point. It is true that there is little difference in cables, apart from the quality of construction. The parallel digital data is going to be the same data regardless, EXCEPT when it comes to longer runs which can have an issue known as data skew. Imagine a starting grid of cars, all sat exactly on the starting line. Each one starts at the same exact moment and runs at the same speed. They will over a short distance all arrive at the same time. Now, make the distance 20 miles and the arrival will end up staggered. That is data skew and a decently made cable will suffer less than a Pound shop offering.

 

[wookie]

That is data skew and a decently made cable will suffer less than a Pound shop offering.

At which point it doesn't meet the HDMI spec's and stops being a HDMI cable and just becomes a piece of electrical string. If the cable meets the HDMI spec for the resolution/frame rate that you wish to use then there is no advantage to spending more money, Monster Cables don't carry nicer more rounded "0's" than the pound shop cable no matter how much they try to give that impression. Sorry to be grumpy about it but this has been debunked in many lab tests and if you believe otherwise you've been listening to the PC-World sales pitch too much.

I know all about data skew, it's why a lot of computer tend to use serial rather than parallel these days, i.e. SATA hard drives rather than PATA, USB rather than centronics printer cable etc etc.

 

[ajlelectronics]

I am agreeing with you and not suggesting that the likes of Monster cables are worth having, just explaining about data skew, which you acknowledge is genuine. Cheap and nasty cables are not built physically well and as you say, may not be compliant with the laid down spec, as well as the plug breaking away when nudged.

I do see a few TVs that customers bring in where that has happened, leaving the remains in the socket.

 

[Kayos]

I thought hdmi rearranges the data so it transmitted better, then sorted it out at the other end?

 

[ajlelectronics]

I thought hdmi rearranges the data so it transmitted better, then sorted it out at the other end?

No, HDMI cables are passive not active. What you put in one end should arrive at the other unmolested.

 

[GW8IZR]

For normal applications such as typical 'telly on the living room wall' the requirements placed on the cable isn't particularly demanding, by the time the later higher definition and fuller colour devices become mainstream hopefully the cable specification / manufacture and line transceivers will have caught up. Cable design and termination will be a serious issue for those that want to say they can see the difference. I've no doubt transceivers will down negotiate to the wire in use but the cable demands for full performance will be several orders of magnitude greater than common HDMI today.

 

[Kayos]

No, HDMI cables are passive not active. What you put in one end should arrive at the other unmolested.

I didnt mean the cable, i meant the hdmi standard. i read an article debunking super expensive cables and it had a lot of info on how it worked

 

[Rig Pig]

I'm a few months away from having an inhabital extension but this exactly what I was concerned about, 1080 doesn't seem to be much of an issue but 4k cable length seem to be limited, I'm guessing more data/higher transfer speed makes it more susceptible to interference.

 

[JoelC]

Technically HDMI standard does not dictate a cable length - however 50 feet / 15 meters are generally the longest recommended - however I have seen longer.

As with most electrical systems, the longer the run, the greater the degradation in voltage/ signal - with digital signals, you can offset a little by using better quality cable - but in reality a lot of the cable quality claims for HDMI are marketing guff.

As long as they meet HDMI 2.0 / 2.1 (4K with HDR - basically 4k@ 60 frames per second) you should be Ok. HDMI 1.4 will do it, but without HDR that a lot of 4K TV’s have now.

Don’t get caught up in the marketing rubbish that say you need gold plated connectors and oxygen free nitro infused cable. For HDMI, between £1.50 - £2 per meter is probably about right

 

[Farside]

As has been said, there's nothing much in it between a cheapy and an expensive one, apart from the inner quality of wiring. A bit is a bit, regardless... until.
Until you get degradation of the bits due to cheap connections, crappy internals and worthless copper-plated steel or aluminium cables you don't see. There are compensations built into the processing that can tolerate a helluva lot of signal degradation, but it's not an infinite amount.
That's when you with you'd bought something decent. Not expensive necessarily, just decent.
I've had plenty of cheap-ish HDMI cables and they're all still working fine, but the ones that are just a bit more pricey are lasting better. Not, so far, that there's any electrical difference in them, but the cheap ones are showing signs of physical degradation. I think the most expensive ones were a fiver, the cheapest were a quid or something.
The makers of the cheap ones know exactly what they can get away with and exploit that to the full, as it's extra money in their pocket the more they sell, because many people now know that expensive cables don't really do a better job in 99% of cases, in living rooms, etc.

I'd play it safe(r) and install a decently made cable (avoiding the rip-offs) and a couple of runs of Cat 6, as a just in case scenario. I'm fairly sure that whatever resolution is unleashed on the public in the next decade or so, the data rates won't exceed the capability of being split over 16 cores.

 

[EddyP]

The main issue is when you're trying to send true 4K it requires a lot of bandwidth, which a lot of the cables can't cope with. The HDMI standard I believe is only actually designed for 7m, all of the long cables are just pushing the standard.
At this length I think you need an active HDMI cable, we're using a 25m one at a village hall cinema but haven't tried it on 4K signals yet.