I flew up to an install that was having problems with Chinese made extenders using standard Silicon Image based HDMI technology. I brought a pair of SoloCAT HD HDMI over HDBaseT extenders to see if it could fix the problems. It did. The install was with Michael Hall at Whole House Digital (whdigital here on RC and IP) He and I filmed another segment of our new series for YouTube, "On-site with the Pros" episodes. I know, I know - the 'Pro' part is debatable with respect to yours truly... I spruced it up with a little music and such and it's loaded to Zektor's YouTube channel below:



From Michael: FYI - This is an install where I had put in a "competing" brand HDMI extender AND used EZ-45 for the CAT5e connectors (some of you will know where this is headed!). It worked for a the better part of a year, but then started dropping sync. Traditional termination (standard, non-passthrough connectors) on a spare CAT5e run got the picture back, but only if direct from 1 source - NOT through the AVR. I even thought maybe something was up with the HDMI switch of the amp.

Jeff wanted to see how their new SoloCAT HDBaseT extenders would deal with the "bad" cable and the results were most interesting.... AVR was fine after all and the SoloCATS didn't seem to care what kind of termination we used!

Disclaimers:
1) The name of the "other" brand is not revealed to protect the (not so) innocent.
2) Best method and practice for CAT5/6 terminations for extenders is still probably standard connectors - even though the Zektor piece worked around it OK.
3) Neither Zektor, nor Whole House Digital, advocate placing fake palm trees anywhere near the image line of a projected image. (watch the video and you'll know what I'm talking about)

The HDBaseT technology is pretty cool stuff.

Jeff