Getting an HD signal through a 10mm hole?

[youngsyr]

Hi all, my house has a basement, with the lounge and sky HD box on the ground floor. I have just installed a flatscreen TV in the basement, directly underneath (literally about 3ft distance between them) where the skybox is and would like to get an HD signal from the Sky box to the flatscreen in the basement.

The previous owner of the house kindly drilled a rather unsightly c. 10mm hole in the ceiling of the basement which pops up under the floor boards about 2ft from sky box in the lounge, so whilst not the most aesthetically pleasing solution, this suits my needs perfectly.

My issue is: how do I get an HDMI cable through the 10mm hole without making it any more ugly/larger than it already is? Is it easy/possible to remove the plugs on an HDMI cable and rejoin them?

Is there an adaptor that I could buy?

Would using RJ5 cable and a converter box be the easiest solution?

I'm not the most technically minded, but I should imagine I'm capable of joining two cables together, I would just like some advice on the best way to do it. So, over to you guys!

[Gingerbread Man]

Cat 5 and converters was my first thought. No expirence of it though.

[eliot]

Use good quality cat6 cables - you usually tell because they are thicker and stiffer than cheap cat5.
I made the mistake of putting cat5 in the wall for my projector, only works up to 720p. And is a tempramental thing.

[Handie Andy]

You would want to be running CAT6 with the hdmi baluns. I would suggest going over to AVForums its a good place to get info on all AV questions.

[eliot]

Just googling around and I'm still seeing lots of dire warnings about cable length, quality and to use direct cable.
So not much changed from when i did mine a few years ago. I ended up installing a 2nd dedicated hdmi cable for my projector in the end (cheap £50 cable,not hand rolled on the thigh of a virgin and not packaged in a fancy box - but works 10x better than a balun)

[dan5oclocksmith]

All you need is a bit of Cat5 and a pair of baluns - that's how my whole house is cabled.

Use Cat5 rather than Cat6 because it is far less tempremental. You can get 1080p over a single Cat5 run.

[youngsyr]

Ok, thanks for the advice.

What do people think about using an HDMI to HDMI Micro lead and then sticking an HDMI Micro to HDMI adaptor on the end of it once it's through the hole?

That seems like a very straight forward and cheap solution: the cable and adaptor can be had for less than £10 and it would take me 5 minutes to install.

Will I be losing signal quality by this method though (the cable will be 1.5m long)? The TV is 32" and will only display a max of 720p non-3D, so it's not like I need a top quality signal.

Edited by youngsyr on Monday 24th October 10:02

[dan5oclocksmith]

Sounds sensible - go for it.

[Meeja]

I don't have a huge amount of experience of domestic video signal cables... I normally work with broadcast.

With SDI cables, they either work or don't... Ok, you can have bad terminations, but that usually means a new BNC plug needs to be fitted.

But I thought that HDMI was a digital signal, therefore it either works or it doesn't (Binary 1 or 0)

How can you get a loss of quality in this instance

(Genuine question)

[youngsyr]

I don't know much about this subject either, but I do know that using a coiled 15m HDMI cable from my PS3 to my TV (they were only 1m apart, but I didn't have a shorter cable to hand) resulted in "sparklies" in the tv picture. When I swapped the cable for a 1m HDMI cable, there were no sparklies.

Therefore I know for a fact that signals over HDMI aren't "all or nothing".

[mrmr96]

Meeja said:

How can you get a loss of quality in this instance

(Genuine question)

An intermittent connecion would result in some of the '1's being dropped, which the TV will try to correct for. But with chunks of data missing the quality will decrease. (I guess an analogy could be a variable bit rate mp3, if you turn the bit rate down the quality decreases.)

[Meeja]

mrmr96 said:

Meeja said:

How can you get a loss of quality in this instance

(Genuine question)

An intermittent connecion would result in some of the '1's being dropped, which the TV will try to correct for. But with chunks of data missing the quality will decrease. (I guess an analogy could be a variable bit rate mp3, if you turn the bit rate down the quality decreases.)

Sensible.

And makes sense.

I suppose I have been fortunate in that I have only ever worked with quality cable (hence issues have been rare, and have only ever been with damahged end connectors (usually through rough-assed riggers!)

[garycat]

I'd just get a small keyhole saw and make the 10mm hole into a 10mm x 20mm hole, and then pass through a cable.

The simplest solutions are the best solutions

[youngsyr]

garycat said:

I'd just get a small keyhole saw and make the 10mm hole into a 10mm x 20mm hole, and then pass through a cable.

The simplest solutions are the best solutions

Plan A is to use the Micro HDMI cable and adaptors, but if that doesn't work, Plan B is enlarging the hole to get a full sized HDMI cable through.

[eliot]

youngsyr said:

Plan A is to use the Micro HDMI cable and adaptors, but if that doesn't work, Plan B is enlarging the hole to get a full sized HDMI cable through.

Indeed.
Cat5 baluns are a pain.

[hairyben]

youngsyr said:

Plan A is to use the Micro HDMI cable and adaptors, but if that doesn't work, Plan B is enlarging the hole to get a full sized HDMI cable through.

To be fair you could get a handyman in for the day to drill/fix the 25mm hole for the HDMI and then do all the other little jobs you may have around the house for less $$$ and hassle than you'll spend fannying around with baluns.

[dave_s13]

I agree with the making the hole bigger soloution. Stitch drill to make it bigger if you don't have and fancy cutting equipment.

Then just get one of those cable shroud/cover thingies if the hole bothers you.



Or just fill the hole with something that roughly matches the colour of the floor.

Or just leave it.

Can we see a pic of said hole????

Thought of another. Just get your full sized HDMI cable, cut the end off, feed it throught hole, splice end it back on again with insulation tape and a bit of patience. Sorted.

ps. Only attmept the above using a dirt cheap HDMI cable (which is all you'll need anyway).

Edited by dave_s13 on Monday 24th October 16:04

[VEX]

eliot said:

Indeed.
Anything HDMI Is a pain.

Corrected that for you.

V.

[spikeyhead]

Meeja said:

mrmr96 said:

Meeja said:

How can you get a loss of quality in this instance

(Genuine question)

An intermittent connecion would result in some of the '1's being dropped, which the TV will try to correct for. But with chunks of data missing the quality will decrease. (I guess an analogy could be a variable bit rate mp3, if you turn the bit rate down the quality decreases.)

Sensible.

And makes sense.

I suppose I have been fortunate in that I have only ever worked with quality cable (hence issues have been rare, and have only ever been with damahged end connectors (usually through rough-assed riggers!)

Remember parity bits? the eight bit that, when combined with teh others would either be set to make each set of eight either have an even number of 1's. (for even parity)

Now imagine doing that not only for a row of seven bits and adding an extra bit at the end, but also seven rows with an eigth along the bottom which give an extra set of parity bits. With a single error, say the fourth bit on row three, the third row bit would be showing the wrong parity and the fourth column would also be showing the wtong parity, hence the error can be corrected by the reciever.

More complex schemes can be used but these mean a lot of extra bits need to be transmited which for a given transmission system will increase the likelyhood of errors so there's a balance to be had. For a system than can tolerate some erros, such as a voice signal, it can be worthwhile throwing away some of the less singificant bits to allow extra error catching bits. Where errors can't be tolerated, but transmission speed isn't important then the receiver can also as the transmitter to transmit a block again if errors are detected.

Should you want a cure for insomnia, google hamming distance, hamming code, code puncturing and keep reading until you're asleep.

[RichB]

So while you are all here, how would you run an HD signal to a second screen from my Sky box in the lounge to my bedroom which is about 20m cable run away.