Hi all - I want my HD source (a Rogers/Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD-PVR) to output to two displays: a Toshiba 50" RPTV and a BenQ W500 projector. Right now only the Toshiba is able to display content at 1080i or 720p. The BenQ always says "HDMI no signal" at these resolutions but it has no problem displaying SD 480p content.

In terms of my cabling, I went cheap - which is probably part of the problem. Out of the Rogers box I have a 25' cable that goes through the wall. I then have a cheap (oops, again) powered HDMI splitter. Another 25' then goes to the Toshiba and a 15' goes to the BenQ... and yet its the Toshiba that works correctly.

My questions:

1) is the splitter the likely culprit? Would a better/more expensive one fix things?

2) is the cabling at the heart of the matter? If I buy ridiculously expensive cables will the problem go away?

3) if I use a 25' cable to my BenQ (as opposed the 15' I have now) will that help? Someone told me that the two cables attached to a powered splitter need to be of equal lengths... the fact that the Toshiba works seems to point in this direction.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Matt

1) is the splitter the likely culprit? Would a better/more expensive one fix things?

If you switch the splitter outputs does that change anything? If not it's probably not the splitter.

2) is the cabling at the heart of the matter? If I buy ridiculously expensive cables will the problem go away?

Can you connect the Toshiba cable to the BenQ to see if that makes any difference?

Cable cost is only marginally related to quality. Monoprice and Blue Jeans Cable both sell good quality cable at a low price. Don't buy Monster unless you like overspending on cable.

3) if I use a 25' cable to my BenQ (as opposed the 15' I have now) will that help? Someone told me that the two cables attached to a powered splitter need to be of equal lengths... the fact that the Toshiba works seems to point in this direction.
I don't believe equal cable lengths are required. The two splitter outputs each have their own drivers so one shouldn't see what the other is doing.

Sounds like you may have some sort of HDMI protocol problem. The BenQ may have trouble talking to the splitter. Those type of problems can be hard to resolve.

Thanks Crutschow... some great points here.

I have tried flipping the outputs on the splitter and it seems to make a difference for a little while... but within a few hours I'm back to the exact same situation.

As well, I can't easily try out the 25' cable on the projector... I'd need to fish it out of the wall. Although I may tackle that this weekend.

I was also a little ambiguous about the equal-cable-length idea... from what I was told, the input and output cables need to be the same length. So in this case all three (input and 2 outputs) would need to be 25'. So no one has ever heard of this requirement?

I'm concerned about your last point about a possible protocol problem... I hope that isn't the case!

If you can still get 480P content, the cable isn't the problem. But Matt is right about the cable not being capable of a higher bandwidth at that distance (and the length of the output cables). I've heard of older devices having a lower digital output strength so a cheap HDMI booster might fix the problem... as long as it can get a signal to the splitter and reconstituted into the two outs, it's going to look perfect.

Sorry, I meant to say Crutschow was right...

And just to clarify, I have heard of that requirement. However, I've never used a splitter that had that problem. I think the issue is the difference in return loss of the seperate cables. This is typically more of a problem when splitting analog signals, where a active device is not always needed.

Hope that helps.

Thanks both for the input. I think I'm going to have to try a new splitter... looks like the Octava 1x2 is getting good reviews all over the net.

Cheers,
Matt