VGA over IP?

yg17

Member
Jan 17, 2002
151
0
0
Does such a thing exist? I'm getting a high def TV soon, and want to hook my iMac, which isn't anywhere near the TV up to its VGA input for video playback. I'm not sure how feasible it is to run a VGA cable to it. But my home network is layed out so there's a switch by the TV for my TiVo and 360, and there's a switch at my desk for my computers And those switches connect to the router. So I was wondering if there was such a thing that would take the VGA output from my Mac, send it over the network in IP and something else by the TV would convert it back to VGA and display it.

I found something that lets you do VGA over cat5 for long distances, but it wasn't IP so it couldn't be switched through a network, it was just point-to-point. Thanks
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
As far as I know there isn't. I was thinking about how I would love to make such a thing exactly two weeks ago...
If you want to hook your iMac to the TV then MOVE the iMac so it IS next to the TX...
 

yg17

Member
Jan 17, 2002
151
0
0
Originally posted by: taltamir
As far as I know there isn't. I was thinking about how I would love to make such a thing exactly two weeks ago...
If you want to hook your iMac to the TV then MOVE the iMac so it IS next to the TX...

Thanks. Moving it is certainly easier said than done. I just realized that all I want it for is video playback, and if there was such a thing as VGA over IP, it would probably be a hell of a lot more expensive than an Apple TV or one of the other billion media set-top boxes out there, so I may just suck it up and go with something like that.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
I think I once saw a video over radio device...

but it is a 200$ pair of devices for very low resolution... (and it goes only through coax cables, so you will also need a vga to coax adapter)

Apple TV sounds like a very good idea. It is ideal for anyone except people who want to play computer games on their HDTV... and if that was what you had in mind then you would be using winblows, not a mac.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
18
81
i used to work at a place where our workstations were on a 1U server and we had basically PCI bus extensions to our desks over gigabit ethernet. keyboard, usb and 1 pci slot (With a matrox DVI card) in it.

so yeah it exists. it would be uh SUPER expensive.
 

Klinky1984

Member
Nov 21, 2007
48
0
66
Not to mention that VGA over IP would go from analog to compressed digital, back to analog, then into your HDTV to be converted to digital again. The quality on something like that would be pretty sad. DVI might fair better in these situations though, but if you're really looking at using it for more than a novelty I'd suggest you move your computer.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
We just did a build out in another room and ran dvi cable for 65ft!!! I really couldn't believe it worked but it did. So if you can get to dvi you could run that distance.
 

the DRIZZLE

Platinum Member
Sep 6, 2007
2,956
1
81
If all you want is to play video on the TV, then you can use the streaming capabilities of the 360, however I don't know if this works with mac.
 

Seggybop

Member
Oct 17, 2007
117
0
0
You can cut a VGA cable in half, and then splice the ends to an arbitrary length of cat5 cable. I don't know what the maximum distance this works for is, but at least 50'.