Hi all,
I've been having some mixed luck lately with the Atlona and Zoom HDMI extenders. In my high end jobs I use all Crestron but I'm struggling to find a solid go-to in the lower to mid-range jobs. Any advice?
Thanks,
M-

What kind of RJ45 ends are you using?

Zektor has worked well for me. I've used snap with good results, but I keep my fingers crossed.

Shielded type that I pick up from Wave Electronics.

Dave,
The SOLOCAT HD is the one you are using? A couple of folks recommended their matrix switches to me but I haven't tried them out yet.

The Snap ones are working great for us. I did have one issue where the RX unit would lock up the emitter but the video itself has never faltered.

+1 on Zektor. You can't go wrong.

Also. Ethereal make a high quality HDBaseT extender.
And then there's Transformative Engineering, which also are really good.

I use a lot of Snap AV. They ship pretty quickly and are reasonably priced, plus snap has been really good to us about RA's and support. I've yet to have an HDBaseT Balun fail.

I actually (hold your breath) prefer the dual cat hdmi balun. I know their runs are shorter, and I know they don't have all the bells and whistles, but they have always worked better than the single cat (not baseT) baluns, especially with handshake and EDID issues.

Binary B-500-EXT-230-RS ([Link: snapav.com]) Currently have a savant job with 14 of these feeding out the SSP Matrix.

Ethereal. I've only had one ethereal balun go out, and I'm pretty sure it was lightning. If I ever talk to Atlona tech support again, it will be too soon. I had great success with atlona baluns for about 6 months. Then after about 6 months on the field I started having failures. It was like they would freeze up. If you disconnect them for a few days, they usually work again.

Not using model numbers means wandering around in the dark. A search at Wave Electronics for RJ45 yields 55 items. In the first page of 12 items are these:

*KD RJ45SC KEY DIGITAL Fat Cat Series RJ45 Shielded CAT6 STP bag)
*SCP 105A STRUCTURED CABLE PRODUCTS SHIELDED RJ45 CONNECTOR/ 100PK
*PLT 100020 PLATINUM TOOLS EZ- RJ45 SHIELDED CAT 5E CONNECTOR/ 50 PER BAG/

So you get the shielded type, huh? The same question still stands: what connectors do you use?

A shielded rj45 end is pretty useless your device has a shielded input. Which baluns are you using that support this?

What? You want model numbers too?

I would have to look them up. 80% of what I pull is Crestron DM 8G+ cable w/DM shielded connectors. I think what the other brand is whatever they stock on the shelf. There is only one that I have ever saw.

The reason I asked is because it says in most manufacturers request that EZ ends are not to be used if you want the most stable connection. This would be true of all HDMI extenders, HDBaseT or not.

I am not sure if you are using shielded ends because you are using shielded cat cable or...?

Snap even suggests shielded cable and connectors but I have used them without using shielded stuff and I haven't had anything go bad or have a bad signal or connection. I have practiced doing rj45 ends for a long time before I trusted myself doing them for clients and I have seen all kinds of bad connections from all kinds of installers, even ones in the company I work for. So I would examine the cable and connectors first, since it the easiest thing to screw up and the easiest to fix.

Baluns is the wrong term for these sorts of things.. That's a whole other animal.

We use Crestron, obviously with fantastic luck.
Otherwise we use Atlona.

They work pretty well on the other end of an Integra AVR with built-in HD-Base-T.

Haven't honestly done shielded since most of it was retrofit onto existing cat cable, but all new construction is being done with shielded.

And we have had the problems with the EZ connectors. The issue is the blade gets dull and does not cleave the end off of the conductors well enough. The result is the connector will not fit into the socket flush and you get unreliable connections.