When I move house...

DIYSOS2018 said:

the best way to future proof the house

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You can't. Install what you need, not what might be needed in the future.

It's impossible to predict or know what might be required in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

Lucid said:

Which kit specifically, wireless access points or HDMI baluns?

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The baluns mate - apologies didn’t make that clear

DIYSOS2018 said:

The baluns mate - apologies didn’t make that clear

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Right now you don't need to worry too much about baluns. That's the whole point.

You said that this is all a long way off as you're not ready yet to sell your current home, so you have no new house to equip yet. Even when you have, at the point where you're instructing an architect or an on-site spark, all they're doing for you is making sure that cable is in the right places to get signals from A to B. That's CAT cable. What you decide to hang off the ends will be determined at the time you come to buy and will be governed by the video standards at that time.

All you really need think about is what's the most practical way to get high-bandwidth signals a relatively long distance from A to B in a home. HDMI is a non-starter because the standards are ever evolving. Whatever specifics you learn now will all have changed by the time you're ready to do anything.

Come back to this closer to the time.

Personally I'd do the minimum to get started but over time add ducting /routes as you do diy or decorate.
The problem with "future proofing" is predicting the future.
We could be using CAT10. by the time you need a link

Lucid said:

Come back to this closer to the time.

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Yes you are absolutely right. I think just now I was simply trying to learn

The basics aren't too complicated. You have a box converting a HDMI signal to something that will travel via some CAT cable. At the other end another box converts it back. Some of these box kits handle IR control signals.

The finer points relate to the bandwidth of the signal, IOW a combination of its resolution (SD, HD1080i, HD1080p, UHD 4K), the dynamic range (standard dynamic range - SDR - or high dynamic range (HDR) - HLG / HDR10 / HDR10+ / Dolby Vision ), the colour depth (8-bit colour or 10-bit colour for Wide Colour Gamut WCG) and the refresh rate in frames per second (f.p.s.). This ranges from 24f.p.s. for film content through to 60f.p.s. for gaming and maybe higher with High Frame Rate (HFR) and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) content from games consoles and gaming PCs. All these terms are searchable in Google if you want to read more. The whole lot though can be summed together under the various HDMI standards:

HDMI 1.4 (variants 1.4 / 1.4a / 1.4b) will handle anything up to a pixel resolution of UHD 4K (2160p) at 24 / 25 and 30fps, but none of the added features of HDR, WCG, HFR, VRR. If you had Sky Q 12 months ago it was limited to just the UHD 4K resolution and had none of the additional features. That has changed. Sky now offers premium 4K UHD content with HDR in the form of Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG). This brings us to HDMI 2.0

HDMI 2.0 - for film and TV enthusiasts the important version here is 2.0b. This is the one where you get all the colour and contrast goodies so you can watch in everything up to and including Dolby Vision which is the top-of-the-heap format for film and TV content. The only advance on this is HDMI 2.1 which is of most interest to hardcore gamers.

HDMI 2.1 is where there's support for higher refresh rates than 60f.p.s.

I mentioned bandwidth earlier on. These three standards each have a Gigabit rate associated with them. HDMI 1.4b is 10.2Gb, HDMI 2.0 is 18Gb, and HDMI 2.1 is 48Gb. This last one is so high because it covers 8K at 60Hz and 5K at 120Hz

In practical terms you're only going to choose one standard: HDMI 2.0. That's because you want 4K compatibility but it's impractical to try to game remotely, so both HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 are out of the frame. At some point in the future, when 8K TVs are as common as 4K now, and when Sky and Virgin are running 8K services with more than 25f.p.s. then you'll consider swapping out the HDMI 2.0 baluns for 2.1 versions.

Once you know which HDMI standard you're working to, and that you need IR pass-thru, you can start to narrow down some hardware choices.

The distance you're sending the signal is important. Check the specs of any balun kits. They'll quote the longest distances, but that will be for the lowest resolutions. When you dig a little deeper in the specs you'll find that the higher resolutions have a much shorter distance, so that's something to keep and eye on. I'm going to make a couple of recommendations. The first is to choose a balun system that uses twin CAT cables. These tend to use lower compression. The other thing is to choose a balun kit that comes with a mains transformer rather than one that runs from the limited power of a HDMI socket.

That should do you for starters.

Thanks so what balun kit meets the requirements you’ve recommended? Do you have a couple of links?

Just search on Amazon for something within your (anticipated) budget and read through the specs. You've got plenty of info in my previous replies to get you to the point where you can decide for yourself some or other product would meet your needs.

As always, if this or any other post help you dear reader then please show your appreciation by clicking the Thanks button for each one. You'll see it when you hover your mouse over "Multi-Quote Quote", and it takes just seconds to do.

Hi Lucid

Thanks for this. The problem I have seems to be the sheer amount of options on the likes of amazon and my naivety meaning I still don’t feel clued up enough to know what ones best

As an example there’s this one coming in at 14.29 which has double Ethernet to single HDMI, albeit without the DC power source but fits the double Ethernet requisite

1080p HDMI Extender Receiver&Sender,30M Transmission Distance LAN Ethernet Balun Extender Repeater via Cat5e/6 Support (1PCS) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07GFBLRXM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_GNKQNKBCWRX2BYZHHBBZ

Then there’s this one coming in at 162.99 which appears to be only single Ethernet, yet does have a powered source…

4K HDMI KVM USB Extender,KVM Over IP Cat5/Cat6/Cat5e low lentency for EDID Support Gigabit POE Network Switch,Support of 4K@30Hz YUV 4:4:4 Video, 5.1ch/7.1ch/DTS/Dolby Audio up to 459ft https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SZHG...abc_VYHSZ1GYHBMG6NWC6KTJ?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

…And then of course there is a load in between these two options…

As always, if this or any other post help you dear reader then please show your appreciation by clicking the Thanks button for each one. You'll see it when you hover your mouse over "Multi-Quote Quote", and it takes just seconds to do.

The trick here - if you can call it that - is to filter the choices by the criteria you need. I shouldn't really have to tell you this because you do it all the time when choosing other stuff. For example, if you want to buy trousers for yourself then you don't waste your time in the kids section or looking at pants that are clearly too big, right? You instantly dismiss products that are unsuitable for various reasons so you can narrow down the choices. Wrong size, wrong colour, wrong type, wrong style etc etc. All get rejected to leave you with a shortlist of suitable candidates.

So it is with your two examples. For your first, you already said it doesn't have external power, so surely that would have ruled it out pretty-much straight away, right? Beyond that though, do you really want just 1080p? Does it do IR relay?

For your second example, do you need an IP solution like this with its Power over Ethernet and distributing to several TVs? Do you need keyboard and mouse connections? Does it support IR relay? I would have thought it would be fairly easy to dismiss these products pretty much instantly; one being too low a spec and the other OTT and still not directly servicing your needs.

There is a piece of information I'm going to add in to the mix here, and it will explain why some balun kits are okay with a single Cat cable connection. That's some, but not all. It's mostly the more expensive baluns, and it's because they use an industry standard conversion system called HDbaseT.

The hardware inside a HDBaseT transmitter receiver kit works to a higher standard than your typical HDMI extender, hence the higher cost. But, it works better and more reliably. If you come across kits with a single Cat cable connection, look at the product to see if the Cat socketry is labelled HDBaseT. That or check the specs.


As always, if this or any other post help you dear reader then please show your appreciation by clicking the Thanks button for each one. You'll see it when you hover your mouse over "Multi-Quote Quote", and it takes just seconds to do.

Thanks again…. I guess we’ll need to leave it there. Not entirely sure why you’ve been happy to go to such exponential effort in the messages which have lots of technical detail as opposed to just sharing a link or two but knowledge is power I suppose

DIYSOS2018 said:

Thanks again…. I guess we’ll need to leave it there. Not entirely sure why you’ve been happy to go to such exponential effort in the messages which have lots of technical detail as opposed to just sharing a link or two but knowledge is power I suppose

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It's not a power game in the way you're suggestion. What I'm doing is trying to empower you. You chose though to see it in a rather mean-spirited way as me hoarding power to myself. Doesn't the fact that I have put in some considerable effort to educate you - to give you my power - doesn't that register at all?

Look at it from a more logical perspective. By your own admission you don't need this solution yet. You haven't bought a new house. You haven't even got close to putting your current house on the market.

So let me ask you, even if I made a product suggestion today, who's to say it will still be a valid choice by the time you actually come to hang boxes off bits of cable? Aside from shifts in standards, can you really predict what's going to happen with competition in this market and which products from various manufacturer are absolutely definitely positively going to be available in one- or two- or three-years time?

Have you got that crystal ball? Because I can tell you right now, I haven't.

I can't possibly predict what's going to be the right solution for you at some hazy point in the future, and neither can you. You have to wait until you're closer to that point in time in order to make an informed choice. That's not me being selfish; I'm actually being altruistic. I'm taking care of your needs above my own. Planning to put the CAT cables in the walls is about as close as you can really get until it comes time to buy the boxes.

You said you wanted to learn, so I gave you a chunk of my time, my life if you will, to teach you. But you've decided to throw it back in my face. It now looks like you weren't being sincere. You were just trying to wheedle-out a model name regardless of whether it will be the right choice when you're ready. How short-sighted and selfish are you acting?

It's trite but true when they say: Give a man a fish you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll feed his family for a lifetime.

I always try to leave to door open for someone even after they've messed up. We all have feet of clay.

I always find that Lucid is one of the most helpful members on here who really takes the time to explain things and his posts are jam packed full of helpful information.

Hi Lucid

Thanks for taking the time to reply again.

On reflection I can’t argue with your reply - I was being very narrow minded and not maintaining the appreciation I do have for the time you’ve taken on this thus far

On that note, apologies for being a bit of a prat!

Thanks again