On March 30, 2012 at 22:05, schlepp571 said...
The difference is actually palpable. All of the manufacturers chose a standard and designed their data transmissions to be maximized by using that standard. The number of twists per unit length is the issue. The green and orange pairs have different number of twists. We all know how HDMI is finicky at best with the cable. Implement it over twisted pairs and use a different standard than recommended, boom issues most of the time. Micro-reflections can easily cause the issues you bring up due to non standard wiring terminations. Not saying that it is causing the real problem. I always pull shielded cat-6 for any HDMI matrix solution as I had nothing but problems with non-shielded. For the last year (fingers crossed while knocking on wood) I have had none on 4 Snap 4x4 matrix installs. Best of luck with finding the solution.
Yes, exactly. The different twists per inch in the standard for Cat-5e, and Cat-6 (and up) give a different length of actual wire in each pair. Green pair will have a different twist per inch than Orange and will be two different lengths. This matters for extremely high bandwidth signals only such as that found in HDMI transmission at 1080p (Blu-Ray DVD). It's more about the skew of the signals going through so that the clock can sync data properly at the other end and the data coming out is a better representation of the data going in.
Using shielded cable will likely give better results and help maintain signal integrity if properly grounded at one end and using shielded connectors. Grounding is usually taken care of by the manufacturer of the baluns or matrix switch. Also avoid running these particular cables (for HDMI baluns) anywhere near noise sources such as light cans, romex cable, hvac units, etc.
