Mac, I think he means a screen that is solid pink.
On September 22, 2016 at 08:00, highfigh said...
What do you mean, "manufactured cables"? It's not as if we can make them in the field.
I wondered that, too. Good answer.
In my case, I have had 3' cables stop sending video, only showing a pink screen when NetFlix was selected on different Roku boxes and one was mine. I changed the cables after disconnecting and rebooting, but the only thing that fixed it was a new cable. Others were all in client systems and I have also seen a few ends break off from almost no stress. Some have been in racks with the cables laced to the rear edge of the shelves and nobody touches that equipment.
I've never seen a connector break off. "No stress"? That's hard to believe.
From a structural standpoint, the easiest way to cause a physical failure is by using a wide and thin end that inserts only a short distance, with no easy way to secure it and then, compound the problem by not making the cable so it's flexible. Pushing the equipment into a cabinet that isn't deep enough when there's no possibility of guiding the cables as it moves back guarantees a failure of some kind. How many times have we seen a stiff cable that causes a DVD/BD player that weighs a whopping 6 ounces (or an AppleTV, Roku, etc) slide forward when it's set in place?
This tells me that Mac doesn't allow this kind of situation. From what I've seen of photos he has provided, he's in control of the mounting situation. Few of us are.
They could have used a round connector- that's inherently stronger than a wide, flat one. It could have been narrower and it wouldn't require any more space, but they could be staggered if the rear panel becomes too crowded. A small locking tab could be used, like the one that was on some DIN plugs or an XLR.
Bingo.
I haven't used many extenders because I haven't needed them in most of the work I do. The first time, I bought one from Spectrum, which is Jeff Boccaccio's company (he's one of the people in the HDMI consortium and writes a column in a trade mag). The instructions for termination showed a diagram with uneven wire ends in the RJ45 with 'Bad JuJu' and another that showed even ends with 'Good JuJu'. The wires are paired by color, rather than using 568A or B, which makes it necessary to re-terminate in the event of an extender failure and no replacement of the same type is available.
This is really pretty stupid. First, there's a HUGE base of cables connected per 568; second, everyone who uses CAT cable is used to connecting that way; third, if wire length has anything to do with the connection layout choice, that choice won't give consistent results because nothing about the pair twist spec says which colors should get which amount of twist. It only says* that crosstalk should be minimized and the manufacturers do that by using different twist rates, choosing which colors get which amount of twist.
I understand that the traces need to be the same length for this to work, but they could have addressed that internally.
Traces? You mean PC board traces? How is this addressed OTHER than internally?
To make it worse, it didn't work, even though the cables were inserted so the ends were aligned evenly across the front edge. I re-terminated them and it did nothing to help.
And this shows part of the problem with HDMI: when it doesn't work, all the possible causes are present with every failure. Does it maybe have a bad crimp connection? Lop off the one you've got an make a new one, which is now a new place that might be bad in exactly the same way.
It has no way to adjust the level of the signal and all I could do to make the video show up consistently is reduce the resolution to 720p on a Panasonic V-series plasma TV. Set to 1080, it flashed a wide black border and rectangle of video "snow" and the sound would cut out in synch with a Denon AVR and Panasonic BD player ahead of the TV, which was 40' from the rest of the equipment (line of sight)- the path I had created with my conduit in the basement was around 65', which was too long for HDMI cables at the time without using a coupler and connecting two cables, which I was NOT going to do. Ironically, I received a "Get a free HDMI extender if you call us to talk about our products" card from SnapAV the same day I connected the extender and unfortunately, It was too late to return the Spectrum model. I called, they sent the extender, I re-terminated the cables (it uses 568B) and it worked the first time, without having to make any changes to the resolution or the control on the extender. I have done nothing to that system WRT video issues since I installed it over 5 years ago. I have changed the remote, added a DVD player for internationally-sourced videos for the local Film Festival (she's on the board) and that's all.
Experience says you were lucky.
*no, I have not read the spec. I'm sort of in the position of a 12th century Catholic trying to talk about Christianity: I've heard talk from those who can read the information, and all I can do is extrapolate from that.
