[Gavin900]

First time posting here.
I have a new build house that has a CAT5 network throughout. I have 3 sky receivers one of which is sky+ HD. I am keen on the idea of home automation but am unsure of what is the best use of the CAT5 network.

The patchboard is located under the stairs which is where I have also located a pc which has a 1tb external hardrive and is hooked up to the house wirelessly via the BT homehub.

I have read about A/V over CAT5 but not sure of the quality of the received HD signal.

I am open to all ideas and would really appreciate some guidance on a variety of home automation uses of this CAT5 network.

[Joe Fernand]

Most 'HDMI over Ethernet' extenders are simply making use of the physical properties of the 'twisted pair' cable used in a CAT5 cable so don't integrate into you IT network and instead require either a single or dual point to point category cable between the Transmitter (Tx) and Receiver (Rx) units.

With 'over Dual CAT5' extenders the image and sound quality ought not to be affected over the signal run - on some of the 'over Single CAT5' solutions there will be some image compression due to the way the signal is processed in the Tx unit.

There are also HDMI over IP systems appearing that will integrate into your IT infrastructure - though they are more costly, as yet mostly untested in real world systems and have variable signal compression depending on what network traffic is passing through your IT hub.

Joe