Walked into look at a job yesterday. He has 7 TV's working off of Gefen extenders and a matrix. He is having issues with video drop out on a few of these TV's. The TV extenders are connected through a keystone jack behind the TV and then at the head end he has punched down to a patch panel; then jumps from there to the matrix. Of course the cat 5 going into the jack, at the TV, is short and not enough to pull out to go directly into the extender. Extenders are not HDBaseT.

I'm thinking it's not good to patch twice, let alone at all, for an extender? Any thoughts?

This was done by his IT person that has little or no knowledge of AV.

Don't recommend patch panels for hdmi, or keystones. point to point, please

As I though. Thanks Fred

I've never had an issue with baluns/extenders and keystone jacks and patch panels for what it's worth. I use all Leviton products for the most part.

Have you verified that the connections are solid and that they aren't using some cheap/crap keystones and patch panels?

it might have more todo with the GEFEN as that stuff is garbage. In this type of situation I too have never had an issue with HDMI through keystones (philly highrises where they are all terminated) I pop the plates off to make sure they are terminated correctly but other then that its solid...

no its not ideal, but sometimes there isnt even enough wire left to re terminate or go point to point.

The existing guy had someone come in to map test everything and they all mapped properly. Didn't take the plate off to see who the keystones belong to.

I'm going to quote him a Key Digital replacement solution. Stuff isn't cheap

In this case with all of the "breaks" in the cables I would use JAP

Never had issues with keystones and patch panels/cables.

It is actually much cleaner this way and less prone to error.

Crestron is trying to push shielded keystones and patch panels as standard for DM

I was typing this before i realized someone beat me to it...

Before you replace everything i would try reterminating each point in one of the cables and see if that makes a difference. Some of these cheapo connectors/jacks just plain suck.

You may also try solid patch cables before ripping it out. Manufactured patches are stranded for flexibility.

Just Add Power supports as many patch panels and/or "breaks" in the CATx cables as you need to get the job done.

This is true. We have a 8X12 out in the wild we did around 10 years ago. I despise patch panels BtW. Over 18 months ago, we yanked all the TV's and nixed the keystone jacks behind all of them. Brought out the wire through the hole in the plate and re-termed it and put the Rx right on the wall. HDMI from Rx to the TV of course. We left the punchdowns at the rack end because we basically had to.

It's running nice 18 months strong. This was using 2G with Cisco SG300 PoE for all JAP units.

This is what I was going to say.

Also based on the era of your system, make sure you're checking what source is dropping, deep color settings etc....

Years ago Snap told me that going through a keystone vs a coupler causes a .5db loss of signal (pre HD-base-T) vs a coupler. Whenever I would re-terminate to RJ45 and use a coupler (removing keystones and patch panels), problem usually went away for good. I stock shielded couplers specifically for reasons like this and it usually fixes these issues with legacy systems/inadequate wiring (takeovers).

Cheapest ones I can find. [Link: amazon.com]

Oddly, these are cheaper than the crappy non-shielded couplers I found and are more versatile.