Usb, HDMI, Sound over ethernet

[DrStein99]

I have a dedicated data room with a rack for my servers. No carpet or dust to suck into the fans, it is clean. I was thinking about just storing my workstation in the clean room. I have plenty existing cat-5e cables run all over the house. All I need are like 4 usb-ports (keyboard, mouse, thumb-drive, joystick, maybe a usb bluetooth), HDMI video, and a sound-jack. I might need this setup for 2 machines, one is my main bench workstation and the other is an entertainment game PC.

Is this expensive or complicated ?

 

[BlueFox]

There are plenty of HDBase-T extenders that will do the job. You can get generic ones from Monoprice or name brand like Gefen or Crestron. Here's a less expensive one: SIIG 4K HDR HDMI 2.0 & USB 2.0 Extender Over HDBaseT with RS-232 & IR “New” | eBay

 

[bbqdt]

Beware of latency. These are usually used for watching tv, anything that requires feedback like a game or desktop PC like usage will have perceivable lag.

Remember when Apple was showing multi-monitor setups all running over AirPlay? Yeah, they never actually made that a thing due to the unavoidable lag of encode/decode cycles.

I can’t use wireless mice for my dev desktop because even that small extra lag annoys me.

 

[ske4za]

Along with HDBase-T or HDMI over Ethernet adapters, there are USB extenders over ethernet as well. I've used them on about 50ft looks of Cat6 and didn't have much problem with mice or keyboards, but using a USB drive over them will be slow, even more so for USB 2.0. I'd suggest a powered hub on the receiving side as well, so it's not trying to draw power over the entire distance.

I can’t use wireless mice for my dev desktop because even that small extra lag annoys me.

Wireless mouse have come a long way. My main desktop is a wired mouse, but my other computers at home and at work have wireless mice and I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

 

[LodeRunner]

The lowest latency option I can think of for this use case is PCoIP. But as far as I'm aware, those PCIe host cards all cap out at 60 FPS. I've bought some older generation EVGA HD02 cards off eBay, they work well enough for general use and monitoring real time video encode, but I'm not trying to do anything more than 60 FPS. Input latency isn't awful, but it's marketed more towards CAD and other business cases than real-time interactivity.

You mention joystick in your peripheral list, so if you're playing an dogfighting games, the input latency could be an issue. Most games will correct for general network lag, but they have zero awareness of your input lag or other local issues.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Surely the only solution for audio over ethernet is the Denon AK-DL1?

On a more serious note, what sort of distances are you talking about? I once had a KVM setup over a good five metres or so up to the loft which worked reasonably well, but this was back in the VGA days using a KVM rescued from a skip; from a quick look around, HDMI/DP KVMs aren't cheap (esp. if you have requirements for 4k or USB3) and there will be additional lag.

Running anything like video over cat5e will be very hard indeed - your average 1920x1080 60fps@32bpp video stream requires bandwidth of at least 3.7Gb/s so if such a thing existed you'd be looking at a minimum 10GbE for video throughput.

 

[BlueFox]

The high quality HDMI over CAT5/6 adapters don't rely on ethernet, so that's not really a consideration. I used a Gefen one in the past for my projector and there was no noticeable lag. CAT5E can easily handle the bandwidth requirements for uncompressed 1080p over modest distances.

 

[ske4za]

Running anything like video over cat5e will be very hard indeed - your average 1920x1080 60fps@32bpp video stream requires bandwidth of at least 3.7Gb/s so if such a thing existed you'd be looking at a minimum 10GbE for video throughput.

That's why compression exists I run 1080p60 over Cat6 to the TV in my bedroom from the server rack in the garage to watch movies and TV on Kodi (via an AMD GPU in GPU passthrough on Proxmox). Audio is sent over HDMI, and IR is sent over the same Cat6 so I can use my remote, as I pass though another USB device to the VM for the IR receiver. I think I use this one Amazon.com: 4K HDMI Extender Over Single CAT/6/6A/7/8 Cable Uncompressed Transmission up to 230ft/70m Support 3D,1080P, 4K with Bi-Directional IR Remote: Home Audio & Theater The receiving end is mounted on the back of my dresser. The lady wanted it quiet in the bedroom so I gave this a shot, and it works well.

 

[BlueFox]

Except that it's not compressed. Even says so in the link.

 

[ske4za]

Except that it's not compressed. Even says so in the link.

You're right, I didn't quite format that post correctly. I meant to say that compression does exist for situations where you need the video to be routable over a network and you're not using HDBase-T: See this whitepaper for example.

The first clear benefit of over IP products is flexibility. From simple extender and splitter setups to matrix switch and video walls, we can use similar transmitter and receiver setups in conjunction with different numbers of ports on a Gigabit switch to provide a solution for most applications. However, we need to consider the data rate. ATEN chose 1Gbps because this provides much better flexibility, better total cost, and has better anti-interference capabilities than 10Gbps. But even 1080p has a data rate of more than 1Gbps. So for over IP products, compression is a must.