Have you ever wondered how long an HDMI cable can be? Troy from Ask the Tech Guy received a question from a viewer in Texas, asking what is the best way to handle a 50-100-foot run for 4K video – whether to use a fiber HDMI cable or HDMI/cat6/cat7.
Technically, HDMI cables are intended to be less than three meters long. While expensive HDMI cables may work well at normal distances, anything over ten meters is prone to interference. Digital signals either work or they don’t – there’s no degradation.
To avoid issues with long HDMI throws, Troy recommends using Ethernet with a Balun, a device that converts a balanced signal to an unbalanced one. Baluns have HDMI on one end and Ethernet on the other, allowing users to run a long Ethernet cable with an active Balun to a second Balun that converts the signal back into HDMI. The good news is that Baluns are the least expensive way to solve the HDMI long-distance issue.
While Troy hasn’t personally used a Balun for a 4K HDMI cable, he believes that it should work fine as long as the HDMI cable, device, and TV support 4K. Generally, Ethernet has plenty of carrying capacity, and if it worked for a long-distance, 1080p signal, it should work for 4K too.
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