HDMI stacking using extenders

[Chuckleb]

I have a pair of Netgear GS724TS switches that can be stacked using HDMI cables. Now I'd like to put one in two parts of the house that are prewired with cat5e (~30m). I've used these HDMI-over-pair-cat5e/cat6 to shoot video from laptops to TVs over cat6 STP... works great. What do you all think? What are my odds this would work? What would happen if the connection were flaky? I guess I can drop to 2x trunked LACP links in worse case, but...

http://www.monoprice.com/Product/?c...011012&p_id=6532&seq=1&format=3#specification

Not the most expensive test in the world, just wondered if anyone had theories and what is the worse that could happen.

 

[seang86s]

You can blow up your switches. Those HDMI->CAT5e expect HDMI/DVI signaling coming at them whereas the Netgear more than likely has some proprietary signaling with unknown voltages, etc. Some of those pins on a true HDMI source are grounded and probably get tied together in those extenders. If one of those pins on the Netgear carries a signal level voltage and gets tied to ground, then you got a short and worse case no more switch.

Maybe you can try a standard, long, high quality HDMI cable to see if that will work and try to locate the two switches within the longest cable that works.

 

[Patrick]

Really is a bummer that the industry made HDMI versus just using CAT6 for everything.

 

[Chuckleb]

What we need is a set of buttons for "Good idea" and "Bad idea" so people can vote on crazy ideas