Have you installed much of this SDI stuff? If so, any issues to be aware of?

After getting my ass handed to me too many times, I started prewiring upper end HDMI cables from Ethereal along with flexible conduit as a back up, along with Cat6. Even for 100 ft runs, Ethereal HDMI cables have proved to be way more bullet proof for me. Obviously not going to work for really large houses.

Some dealers seem to find the secret sauce of gear that always works consistently. For me, every time I'd find a set of gear that worked great at one house, suddenly I would have issues with the very same gear at another house. I've got a pile of baluns taken out of jobs.

The sh*t that makes the grey hairs grow is HDMI's propensity to work fine while you're at the clients house, and then have it f*ck up a week later after you leave. If it would just either work or not work it wouldn't be half as bad. You have to wait a month just to find out if you actually fix the problem sometimes.

I have had no issues to date but my experience is only 6 units.
A. Use shielded data cable like DM Cable. I know you're not a Crestron dealer but I'm sure Liberty or others have a knock off for sale.
B. Use shielded keystones for terminations and machine made jumpers

Do not terminate your own RJ-45s. Not saying it cannot be done. I am saying you will have more issues. Even with pre-made jumpers we have issues. But it's faster to change a jumper than to reterminate a cable.


Alan

I thought pre-made jumpers (I'm assuming you are referring to 'patch leads' here?)were made with stranded copper which is a no-no with all the product I have any experience of?.

You are correct but A. there are solid core patch cables, B. most products, eg., DM, support up to 4 patches. C. We do close to 1000 matrices/year and use of Datacom keystones has has made systems far more reliable.

That said, you are correct in terms of best practices. I'm still sticking my my experience in the field.

"Whichever network cable type you choose, ensure that the main wiring architecture is ‘solid core’, not stranded ‘patch’ cabling. Patch cabling can be used for the last few metres of a run (say from a wallplate) but should be avoided over the longer runs as signal transfer over stranded cores is heavily reduced.

The use of pre-made leads is not recommended unless you can be absolutely sure of their construction credentials (i.e. solid core 568B)"