I just had a similar situation with the components 10 feet from the television, but no cables between the components and the television at all. There were cat5s to the TV location and equipment location, RG6 at the TV location and equipment location. All went 60 or 70 feet to the can in the master closet.

I terminated everything carefully and used a Zektor HD baseT converter, and could not get a picture. Note that at the equipment and TV location, there were jacks punched down, so I had a splice in the middle using an RJ-45 coupler, plus jacks at the TV and equipment locations. No go.

It was the end of the day, so I ran a cable across the floor to get them TV for the evening. I came back the next day with coaxial solutions, but seeing he had a handyman on site who was already adding electrical outlets and patching sheet rock, I left him a 5m Ethereal HDMI cable and some plaster rings and had him poke it through the wall. In this case it was a far less costly solution then extenders.

As others have said, I believe there could have still been a solution, but I would not say it was cut and dried, plug it in and you're done.

I have used Brent's wireless HDMI solution successfully in the past as well.