Gefen CAT5 Extreme

[vwpower44]

We just got done installing the Gefen CAT5 Extreme. Some facts about the CAT5 Extreme. You do NOT have to use shielded cable. You use two CAT5's. The unit is powered on both ends. It has dip switches that allow you to compensate for quality of cable and length.

On our install we used Genesis Audacious CAT5e (the purple box). We used a 110 punch down block on the headend, and ICC RJ45 Keystones on the display, so termination would be easy. Then we used jumper cables from the punch downs to the Gefen Sender unit and receiver unit. The run of CAT5 from the sending unit and to the receiveing unit was 116 feet. We used the supplied HDMI cable from Gefen on the head end, and an IXOS hDMI on the display end from the Gefen boxes to the actualy HDMI's.

The source equipment has a Moto Cable Box w/HDMI and a Sony BD. THese were both routed through a Denon AVR2307CI.

Once we got the system installed and turn the system on the HDMI was dropping out the video and audio to the display. the display was getting intermittant snow. So we adjusted the dip switches to try to figure the best settings for the cable length and quality of cable. We adjusted them to the worst quality of cable and the longest run of cable. The dropouts occured about every 15-30 seconds instead of every few seconds. So then we decided to take out the RJ45 cover plates, and the punchdown block, and just put RJ45's ont he CAT5 going between the send and receive units. Once we did this, the picture stabilized, and there was no more snow.

We still had to keep the dip switch settings on the Gefen sedn and receive pieces at the low cable quality and longest run in order to make it work. But it did work, and it had a great picture. The BD sent the 1080p picutre to the display perfectly. When switching between the cable box and the BD it does take about 15 seconds for the HDMI handshaking to complete and get a picture. When switching from the BD to the Cable box it only takes bout 3 seconds.

When we switched to the cable box we had a great picture on HD material. Once we changed to Analog 480i the picture started to break up again. When we investigated this we found that the picture would break up on 480i, but would stay perfect on 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. We just set the cable box to ouput 1080i, which fixed this problem. If you had a VCR or any other composite or SVHS in the system, it probably would not work (becasue it is 480i).

We did determine that the Gefen Extreme CAT5 balun did work with Two UTP CAT5e's. We also determined that the with the dip switches in the gefen pieces were set to the max at 116 feet. This makes me leary of trying to use the piece at a longer distance (it is supposed to go up to 200 feet w/1080i and 150 feet w/1080p). We also learned that with the HDMI balun they have to be point to point with the CAT5. No Punchdown blocks, or RJ45 Coverplates.

Overall the Gefen piece di what we wanted it to do which was feed a 1080p signal to the display at 116 feet. The 1080p picture was flawless fromt he blu-ray.

I hope this helps other people out, and I would be curious to otheres peoples result with different CAT5 and the dip switch settings on the send and receive switches. I always thought the Genesis Audacious cable was good cable.

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3872

Mike

[benc]

Thanks for the review. I have some of these waiting for me to install in a job and will definately take your recommendations with me. I am using the 1 in 4 out hdmi amplifier to send the Sony BDPS1 to 2 TV's. Hopefully there will no sync issues.

[FRR]

I always thought the Genesis Audacious cable was good cable.
Mike

Was the 110 block a Cat5 rated punch down block?

[vwpower44]

Yep, OnQ

[2ndRick]

In general, baluns do not fare well over multiple terminations...

Try to run straight shots from the TX box to the RX box. If you HAVE TO use a splice. do your best to maintain the twists and get the better terminations.

I had some MuxLab component video baluns (500050) out in the field with varying results through terminations...
I have used Open House H628 110-to-RJ45 modules and experienced problems (dot crawl style artifacts, weird color dropout anomolies), but no problems with RJ-45s plugged into Leviton Gigamax quick port keystones.

Straight runs, no problems at all...

[vwpower44]

We run all of the muxlab stuff through rj45 cover plates and punchdowns. No problems yet.

[roddymcg]

I have used the Niles through the punch down block and keystone jacks as well. Kinda suprised it worked, but it did.

[metrognomicon]

Gefen recommends using a direct connection from source to receiver on their cat-5 boxes. We've used the KVM extenders with one junction with fine results at VGA resolution, but not the HDMI.