I have a run of approximately 30ft from my Pre to my TV. Had an installer tell me that he knew of no HDMI cable that could run 1080P that distance. He went on to say that he could hook HDMI connectors to the ends of Cat5 which would reliably run 1080P over that distance. Guess I'm looking for some confirmation on this. Anyone?

I know you can run component over cat5, but I'm not sure about HDMI.

While I have not tried it myself, the reviews on Monoprice seem to indicate that there are no problems running 1080P over HDMI @ 30FT or even more. You just need to make sure the cable is of high enough quality (not necessarily expensive). Take a look at www.monoprice.com for more information.

A 30 ft run of HDMI cable should work fine at 1080p. As nightowl points out, monoprice has many available. A buddy of mine bought a 50 ft (24 or 26 gauge) one that didn't work, even with a signal booster. He returned it and got the next higher size (22 or 24 gauge) and it works flawlessly at 1080i.

As to the installer saying Cat5 would work, I'm not quite so sure. After my friend's problem I looked into it a bit and the main data lines of an HDMI cable are shielded twisted pairs and Cat5 is typically unshielded twisted pair. That and I believe one needs 6 pairs of wire for HDMI, 4 for video, 1 for audio, and 1 for carrier detect.
While ethernet is a serial method, HDMI is more of a parallel method and noise would appear to be more of an issue when 4 sets of data are being transmitted and being combined to form the audio / video.
Miner

I spoke to a rep at monoprice and he stated that they did not have a cable of the length of 25ft that was rated at 1.3a. Best they had over 25ft was 1.2. HOWEVER, he did say he thought that the cable could carry 1.3a just that it wasn't rated at 1.3a. SO....

Is the TV 1.3?

I have one of the monoprice 40' HDMI cables hooked up between a front projector and a receiver. I will confirm that the cable can run 1080P without any issues. As for 1.3 I can not tell since my receiver is only 1.2 and there is no media available utilizing deep color at this time.

I'm a little confused by his comment about adding HDMI connectors to a CAT5 cable. If he is directly adding HDMI connectors then this would be worse then a real cable from monoprice.

Maybe he is talking about a HDMI over CAT5 solution like this http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4996. They certainly work but are expensive and are usually only needed for very long runs >50'.

Is the TV 1.3?
I wouldn't be concerned about this if it wasn't.......:rolleyes:

I'm a little confused by his comment about adding HDMI connectors to a CAT5 cable. If he is directly adding HDMI connectors then this would be worse then a real cable from monoprice.

Maybe he is talking about a HDMI over CAT5 solution like this http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4996. They certainly work but are expensive and are usually only needed for very long runs >50'.

I honestly don't know. He said he could make it work by adding HDMI connectors to Cat5. I didn't ask specifics but from your question I will ask this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.