Can anyone give me a recommendation on what guage HDMI cable to use on 30 foot run. I have a bluray and hd dvd player going into an Onkyo 805 receiver and out to a 1080p projector, which is 30' away. I was going to go with a 22AWG HDMI cable from monoprice, but I'm not sure if this is overkill and a 24AWG cable would work just as well. I am running the cable through a 1.5" dia. conduit and the 24AWG would be a little easier to pull. I want to make sure that I get the 1080p signal from the HD players to the projector, so I don't know if I will need the 22AWG to do this, or if the 24AWG will work just as well over that length. Thanks.

hmmm...

my "guess" is that 24awg should do it...

you could always try it before you actually pull the cable, just to make sure...

first you must know that a hdmi cable only sends 0's and 1's so on a long cable such as 30ft you may only get a 720p signal at best without one of 2 things one a hdmi booster or two and the route i would take and thats a hdmi to cat 5 converter its 2 boxes that converts your hdmi signal into 2 cat5 Ethernet cables and then back to hdmi on the other side this way you can use much cheaper hdmi cables and get the same quality in video. you can fined the converters on Ebey for under $70, cat5 line is much cheaper and 1ft hdmi cables are cheep as well you'll save alot of money also you can go as far as 200ft with this setup and still maintain a 1080p signal.

At 30 feet, 24 AWG should work just fine. By the way, though, watch out when pulling! HDMI cable is tender and can easily be damaged by excessive pulling force. Your pull rope should be attached upstream of the connector and strain relief boot to keep stress off of the connector body.

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable

Thanks for the replies. I remeasured the distance from the receiver to the projector and it looks like I should be able to get by with a 25' cable with a couple of feet left over at each end of the conduit. So, I think I will order a 24AWG HDMI and give it a try.

Kurt
I was looking at the BJC Series-1 Belden Bonded-Pair HDMI cable on the blujeans site and I was wondering how thick the cable is, and if you recommend using port savers on each end of the cable?

It's about 11mm (almost 1/2 inch) thick, and relatively stiff. Port savers can be helpful, but whether you need them or not depends largely on the particulars of your installation. If you need to take a sharp bend just after coming out of a jack, for example, then the port saver is a very, very useful thing as the cable won't accommodate a sharp bend; if you have a relatively "open" installation and can route the cable with plenty of room for flex, then it's usually not necessary.

One note, too, which I always like to mention: HDMI cable (not just ours--this applies to pretty much all of it) is very easy to damage in pulling, if strain is placed on the connector body or strain relief boot. If you're pulling this through conduit, you will want to be sure that you attach your pull rope upstream of the connector, so that the stress falls on the cable jacket rather than on the connector.

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable

If you need to take a sharp bend just after coming out of a jack, for example, then the port saver is a very, very useful thing as the cable won't accommodate a sharp bend; if you have a relatively "open" installation and can route the cable with plenty of room for flex, then it's usually not necessary.


I will have plenty of room on the projector end of the cable, but there is only about 5" between the back of my receiver and my equipment cabinet, which wil require a relatively sharp turn. I will probably have to use a port saver at that end.




One note, too, which I always like to mention: HDMI cable (not just ours--this applies to pretty much all of it) is very easy to damage in pulling, if strain is placed on the connector body or strain relief boot. If you're pulling this through conduit, you will want to be sure that you attach your pull rope upstream of the connector, so that the stress falls on the cable jacket rather than on the connector.


Thanks, I will keep this in mind.

It's about 11mm (almost 1/2 inch) thick, and relatively stiff. Port savers can be helpful, but whether you need them or not depends largely on the particulars of your installation. If you need to take a sharp bend just after coming out of a jack, for example, then the port saver is a very, very useful thing as the cable won't accommodate a sharp bend; if you have a relatively "open" installation and can route the cable with plenty of room for flex, then it's usually not necessary.

what are port-savers? sounds like something to make the sharp turns, but couldnt find on bjc site...

new to the area, learning so much from all the forums as i'm planning my ht...will have a similar setup as phisch


thanks

port saver (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10240&cs_id=1024010&p_id=2891&seq=1&format=2)

thanks for the link

does it defeat the purpose of getting the bjc series1 cable if i'm going to put 28awg port savers on either end? almost seems like i'm losing the whole reason to chose the series1, and wondering if i'm better off getting a single series2 cable thats flexible enough for my needs...

not trying to be sarcastic, just trying to get educated for the right purchase

thanks

Kurt,
What do you think about kidzey's post? I wondered about this as well - does it defeat the purpose of these heavy gauge cables (22, 24 AWG) if you slap on a 28 AWG port saver on each end? What is your experience with this? Thanks for being on the forum your comments are super helpful.

-DD

No, the port saver doesn't defeat the purpose; it's a very useful little tool and although we don't currently sell them, we do intend to start doing so soon.

To go into this a bit further: the mental model people often use for cabling is something like plumbing, and while that's a good analogy for some purposes, it's poor for others. This would be a good example of where the analogy breaks down. If you imagine feeding your kitchen sink with 1/2 inch iron pipe all the way from where the water enters the house, but running the last foot or two in a pipe the size of a drinking straw, what would you expect? You'd expect that this constriction of flow would greatly reduce the wide-open capacity of the system to carry water, and you'd be correct. People following this sort of analogy in thinking about the multiple-gages-in-a-system situation frequently assume that this is a sort of "system is only as strong as its weakest link" situation, and that sticking a 28 AWG cable on the end of a larger cable will effectively reduce the capacity to deliver signal to that of the 28 AWG cable.

But the way it actually works is quite different. All cables both attenuate and distort the signal which passes through them; attenuation makes the whole signal weaker, and the relevant distortion, in the case of a bitstream, is mostly the slowing-down of rise and fall times in voltage, which, at extremes, will cause the receiving device to be unable to correctly reconstitute the bitstream. But with cable, the attenuation and distortion imposed are very closely related to length. Attenuation at any frequency, in fact, is conventionally expressed in spec sheets and the like as a certain number of dB per hundred feet (or other standard length) and attenuation in a shorter length, expressed in dB, will be the appropriate fraction of that figure. When we insert a one-foot small-gage cable into a run of larger-gage cable, the attenuation in that foot of cable is much higher than the attenuation in any other foot of the cable; but it's very unlikely to be so much higher that, added to the cumulative attenuation of the rest of the cable, it causes failure. It might be disastrous to raise the per-foot attenuation for the entire run by that much; but one foot of cable, even very small cable, simply doesn't account for a lot of attenuation.

So, the objection to port savers that we sometimes hear--that the port saver will be a "bottleneck" for signal flow--although certainly an understandable way of thinking about the problem, is incorrect. It is possible for a port saver to contribute just enough loss to the system to cause failure, if one is already very close to the failure threshold, but in the vast majority of cases, port savers will work just fine.

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable (http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/hdmi-cables/index.htm)

Kurt,
That is great information. Thanks a bunch.

-Dana

thanks for the link

does it defeat the purpose of getting the bjc series1 cable if i'm going to put 28awg port savers on either end? almost seems like i'm losing the whole reason to chose the series1, and wondering if i'm better off getting a single series2 cable thats flexible enough for my needs...

not trying to be sarcastic, just trying to get educated for the right purchase

thanks

what kurt said... ;)

btw. kudos to kurt for helping out spreading the knowledge. he doesn't have to, and he doesn't promote his company, even when he could. :)

thanks to everyone for the answers... kurt, your answer was technical enough for me not to understand; but, as you said, i was thinking like the pipes... in any case, i'll go with your expertise (thats why you ask the experts right?)..... portsavers ordered... as soon as i figure out what length i need, my series1 will be ordered too

thanks
kidzey

what kurt said... ;)

btw. kudos to kurt for helping out spreading the knowledge. he doesn't have to, and he doesn't promote his company, even when he could. :)


i second that.

later.

As a follow-up to my original post, I now have the 25' HDMI cable installed and is working fine with both of my HD DD and Blu-Ray players. I am using a 28AWG port saver from Monoprice at the receiver end of the cable. I tried it without the port saver, but there was not enough room at the back of the shelf for the cable to make the turn without putting a lot of stress on the receivers HDMI port. The port saver is a much thinner cable and was easily pliable enough to make the 90 degree turn at the back of the shelf. I have played several movies with the new cable and have not had any video or audio dropouts or glitches. Thanks Kurt for the valuable advice and information.