"hdmi>cat>powerline<cat<hdmi" is it even possible?

[Serge Sarkise]

I have a pretty complicated task at hand, and am wondering if my idea would be a possible solution.

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Background
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I recently moved into a brand new 3 bedroom apartment. I have a Satellite Dish and Digital Decoder (let's call this Decoder A), with an HDMI out port, hooked up to my large screen Samsung LED TV installed in the living room.

I have another Digital Decoder (lets call this Decoder B), connected to the same Satellite Dish and located right beside Decoder A, also in the living room.

I am unable to place a Satellite Dish in any of the rooms, due to the rooms being located on the South side of the apartment. And the Satellite that I need is on the north of the apartment. Plus I don't want to run the LNB's Coax cable from the living room, through the house to the rooms.

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Problem
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My problem is that I don't want to run cables through my house to the various rooms. But I need the HDMI signal from the Decoder (either A or B) located in the living room. My decoder does not have a Cat/RJ45 port.

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The Need
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I would like to have satellite TV in all 3 of my rooms. But for the purpose of this post, I will limit the need to just one room for the moment.
Therefore, I would like to take the signal (without laying Coax cable across the house or trunking etc) from Decoder B to my bedroom and have it hooked to the Philips LED TV in the room 1.

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The Idea
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I would like to use a "HDMI Extender" (http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Wireless-HDMI-Extender-Support-30M-3D-1080P-PET30D/1355011156.html) such as the one on this link, together with a "Powerline Adaptor" (http://www.tp-link.ae/products/details/?categoryid=1658&model=TL-PA4020PT+KIT) such as the one on this link.

Would this set-up work, and solve my problem? I would appreciate any and all advise.

 

[John Connor]

Thats a good question. I'm not sure what the voltage is in HDMI and so I'm not sure if an Internet LAN to power line adapter would work. It may. Those power line adapters are limited by the quality of your home wiring though. You may be interested in WHDI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROX-r_kHPks

 

[Serge Sarkise]

Thats a good question. I'm not sure what the voltage is in HDMI and so I'm not sure if an Internet LAN to power line adapter would work. It may. Those power line adapters are limited by the quality of your home wiring though. You may be interested in WHDI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROX-r_kHPks

Hi John,

I appreciate the response and suggestion.

I should have mentioned in my original post, but the distance between the Living room and the bedrooms are over 25 feet long and blocked by 3 different walls. Therefore a wireless solution is not going to be effective as a wired connection (or Powerline).

I would love for someone who may have an HDMI Extender and Powerline to test this out if possible.

Thanks again,
Serge

 

[imagoon]

[most]HDMI extenders don't use Ethernet so no, it won't work. Those that due require 10gbe which also won't work on powerline.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Won't work.

HDMI (and VGA for that matter) extenders use RJ45 and UTP cabling, but the signalling is different, it's not actually ethernet anymore.

 

[azazel1024]

Won't work.

HDMI (and VGA for that matter) extenders use RJ45 and UTP cabling, but the signalling is different, it's not actually ethernet anymore.

Correct and even if they did, powerline is going to give you at best around 200-250Mbps for a very good connection on the very newest and latest powerline adpaters.

For uncompressed HDMI you need in the area of 1-2Gbps for 1080p24b8. Not going to happen.

Now, you could stream h.264 1080p over power line EASILY, as that is only generally 7-50Mbps.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Correct and even if they did, powerline is going to give you at best around 200-250Mbps for a very good connection on the very newest and latest powerline adpaters.

For uncompressed HDMI you need in the area of 1-2Gbps for 1080p24b8. Not going to happen.

Now, you could stream h.264 1080p over power line EASILY, as that is only generally 7-50Mbps.

Well... unless the apartment is pretty huge, he can do it with WiFi.

Which brings up the best bet, IMO - get one of those network TV boxes, like a Slingbox. (Some models have HDMI, some don't. Read the manual before you spend money.) Then you can just use WiFi and a smart-TV device like a ChromeTV Stick at the other end to do the TV thing.

'Course, you'll have to walk into the other room to change the channel, since that's on the sat TV decoder.

 

[Serge Sarkise]

Thanks everyone, for your comments and suggestions.

I am disappointed with the lack of a good and economical solution to this problem.
Looks like trunking cables is my only solution.

Perhaps there is a business opportunity in here for a company to create a product for this purpose.

Thanks again.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks everyone, for your comments and suggestions.

I am disappointed with the lack of a good and economical solution to this problem.
Looks like trunking cables is my only solution.

Perhaps there is a business opportunity in here for a company to create a product for this purpose.

Thanks again.

The good, economical solution is the same as it's been since my great grandparents installed their first telephone.

Staple wires to the baseboards, run them under area carpets, and hide them with furniture.

If you use the HDMI/Cat6 adapters and run the Cat6 over distance, it'll cost you around $0.20 a foot.

 

[Serge Sarkise]

The good, economical solution is the same as it's been since my great grandparents installed their first telephone.

Staple wires to the baseboards, run them under area carpets, and hide them with furniture.

If you use the HDMI/Cat6 adapters and run the Cat6 over distance, it'll cost you around $0.20 a foot.

Thanks Dave

 

[Rio Rebel]

Thanks Dave

I've wanted to do this for years. I never got around to researching it in earnest, but I do know that they sell hdmi>cat>hdmi:
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=109&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011012&p_id=8122&seq=1&format=2
I have never heard of running powerline in the middle of that, but once the signal is converted to run on the ethernet line I don't know why it couldn't go through a powerline adapter and back to ethernet.

I have a good deal of experience trying to send blu-ray movies over various networking setups, and it is ALWAYS true that wired is preferred (that means ethernet, not powerline). Powerline is a more stable connection than wireless, though. Networking throughput for wireless is advertised in an average, not a constant throughput. So you may average plenty of room, but if it drops off sporadically, the video stutters and rebuffers. You need steady throughput.

In the end, I have a powerline connection that gives me a very satisfactory throughput for playing blu-ray rips through XBMC stored on a NAS. But to get to this point, I had to do some research on powerline (and ended up trading out a couple of breakers that were blocking signal for a more "powerline friendly" brand)

 

[imagoon]

I've wanted to do this for years. I never got around to researching it in earnest, but I do know that they sell hdmi>cat>hdmi:
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=109&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011012&p_id=8122&seq=1&format=2
I have never heard of running powerline in the middle of that, but once the signal is converted to run on the ethernet line I don't know why it couldn't go through a powerline adapter and back to ethernet.

I have a good deal of experience trying to send blu-ray movies over various networking setups, and it is ALWAYS true that wired is preferred (that means ethernet, not powerline). Powerline is a more stable connection than wireless, though. Networking throughput for wireless is advertised in an average, not a constant throughput. So you may average plenty of room, but if it drops off sporadically, the video stutters and rebuffers. You need steady throughput.

In the end, I have a powerline connection that gives me a very satisfactory throughput for playing blu-ray rips through XBMC stored on a NAS. But to get to this point, I had to do some research on powerline (and ended up trading out a couple of breakers that were blocking signal for a more "powerline friendly" brand)

This is because the wire is not "Ethernet line" it is category rated twisted pair. Ethernet is a protocol that runs on top of twisted pair cable [among others]. HDMI -> twisted pair cables are not required to use Ethernet and must do not due to the need of protocol converters (IE protocol processors, cpus, ram, software etc) instead of media converters (often a couple of dollars in passives.) Powerline converts Ethernet frames over twisted pair to Ethernet over powerline and back, not twisted pair to powerline and back.

 

[azazel1024]

This is because the wire is not "Ethernet line" it is category rated twisted pair. Ethernet is a protocol that runs on top of twisted pair cable [among others]. HDMI -> twisted pair cables are not required to use Ethernet and must do not due to the need of protocol converters (IE protocol processors, cpus, ram, software etc) instead of media converters (often a couple of dollars in passives.) Powerline converts Ethernet frames over twisted pair to Ethernet over powerline and back, not twisted pair to powerline and back.

Correct, and in this case, the cat6 cable is 4 wire pairs carrying a signal potentially up to around 650MHz or so. Powerline operates at around 60-85MHz IIRC.

You just CANNOT transmit a high frequency signal on power wiring. The losses are just too great. You wouldn't be able to hear it after a couple of feet.

You MUST have that high frequency signalling to be able to push a lot of data. HDMI is RAW UNCOMPRESSED VIDEO. As I pointed out it is 1-2Gbps for 1080p24, let alone a higher frame rate or anything like 4K video.

Powerline at its current best signaling rate is around 1800Mbps, but payload is closer to 400Mbps or so, and that is all on brandest newest barely released to the public stuff. Really you are looking at 600Mbps gear, that gets maybe 200Mbps with a tailwind as payload.

You cannot carry raw uncompressed video over a format that can't even do 1/5th the data rate that your video needs.

You absolutely can do compressed video over powerline, you can do it overwireless. Heck, you can do it over a regular internet connection.

An electrical wiring medium is likely to never have the bandwidth necessary for raw uncompressed video. Technically ethernet isn't encapsulating hdmi either, but you are using a physical medium, cat6 wiring, that can in theory, utilizing the 10Gigibase-T standard, transmit roughly 10Gbps of data up to 55 meters, so, so long as you don't get crazy, something like 4-8Gbps for HDMI signaling (~1080p60) is very possible on that physical medium.

Heck, you can use high speed wireless for uncompressed video, and it is in practice a lot faster than powerline (but again, you can do compressed video. If you are thinking Widi or miracast is sending video over wireless, it is, but it IS using h.264 compression, it is not lossless video over wireless).

 

[Rio Rebel]

Good info. Thanks.