Question Will HDMI cable run Ethernet?

cod4k

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Ok, title may seem slightly confusing, what i'm really wanting to know is whether i can cut both ends off a HDMI lead and use the twisted pairs inside to transmit ethernet signals. Are the twisted pairs in a HDMI cable the same specification as CAT 5?

The backstory:
I have used a 15m HDMI cable, buried in the wall, between a DVD player and my TV. I did not know at the time that a 15m run of HDMI would open a whole world of issues. It works, just about, but there is a lot of noise in the picture.

I have read about sending HDMI signals over CAT5 using an extender (this is what i should have done at the beginning), and that this method is capable of transmitting the picture over a longer distance.

My thinking, and this is where my question comes in: can I cut the plugs off both ends of my buried in the wall HDMI cable to expose the twisted cable pairs and fit RJ45 ethernet sockets on each end, to plug into the extenders transmitter/receiver, rather than running a new exposed CAT5 cable.

The run is 15m, i'm not too worried about getting the full 1080 HD resolution, just a clean image.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Hi @cod4k - is the HDMI cable active or passive? We wouldn't recommend cutting off the ends and trying to terminate it with RJ45 sockets. If you don't want to have to run Cat cabling that's exposed and are looking for a signal extension solution you could try using this in tandem with your current HDMI cable.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HDanywhere-Kordz-NEO-S3-Extender-Upgrade/dp/B00M0NAP1E


Ok, title may seem slightly confusing, what i'm really wanting to know is whether i can cut both ends off a HDMI lead and use the twisted pairs inside to transmit ethernet signals. Are the twisted pairs in a HDMI cable the same specification as CAT 5?

The backstory:
I have used a 15m HDMI cable, buried in the wall, between a DVD player and my TV. I did not know at the time that a 15m run of HDMI would open a whole world of issues. It works, just about, but there is a lot of noise in the picture.

I have read about sending HDMI signals over CAT5 using an extender (this is what i should have done at the beginning), and that this method is capable of transmitting the picture over a longer distance.

My thinking, and this is where my question comes in: can I cut the plugs off both ends of my buried in the wall HDMI cable to expose the twisted cable pairs and fit RJ45 ethernet sockets on each end, to plug into the extenders transmitter/receiver, rather than running a new exposed CAT5 cable.

The run is 15m, i'm not too worried about getting the full 1080 HD resolution, just a clean image.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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A HDMI cable wouldnt have the correct twists so it cant be used as UTP Cable.
 
The signal extender seems the best solution if you can find something.
 
DVD Player - which one and what signal is it set to Output.

Signal - are you going DVD > 15m HDMI > Projector or are there other devices/connections in the signal path?

HDMI Extender - a decent Powered Extender installed after the 15m HDMI will likely sort the problem.

HDMI as a CAT cable - is a non starter.

Joe
 
I might give this a go, as I have a couple of 20M HDMI with broken ends.

Not sure I would want to use it for gigabit speeds, but it is a twisted pair cable, so over just 20M I can't see why it won't work to some extent.
 
The impedance should be fine, it's the termination that could be tricky.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I have tried an extender (unpowered) and it did improve the picture quality, but not to a level i would class as a 'clean image'. There was still a lot of bad pixels - especially in a band sort of 1/4 of the way down the screen traveling from left to right.

I'm going to try and dig out a 5v power supply to attach to the repeater and see if that will give it the extra push needed to clear the signal 100%.

Noiseboy72 if you do give it a go tell me the results, i'd be interested to know whether it would actually work on a short(ish) distance run.
 
So, had a play today, using an old 20M "High Speed" cable. (Yes, I know, you can't certify a 20M passive cable for High Speed!!)

The construction is pairs of shielded solid core cables - somewhat thinner than you would find in Cat5/6/7. It took me a couple of attempts to get 4 pairs terminated using IDC punch down, but we got there eventually.

As the cables are shielded and untwisted, the cable performs very differently to Cat5, but we got 1Gbs to work along it. I don't have a cable analyser, so couldn't tell you how well it was actually performing.

The cable is quite fragile once stripped back. It also feels like CCA, but couldn't really tell!!

In short, feel free give it a go, but I would try conventional powered boosters first. Once you cut the ends off, that's it really, so maybe get a cheap, short cable, cut it in half and use a couple of back to back connectors to join them onto the existing cable. You can then play around with termination and running different signals along it without trashing your buried cable.
 
Just thought i'd write an update. I had a play around with my setup. As noiseboy72 suggested I bought a 99p HDMI 1meter cable and cut in in half and attached a RJ45 connector to each half.

There were 5 pairs twisted & sheilded in the cable and the rest of the 'pairs' were untwisted/unshielded. As mentioned previously the hdmi wires are very thin and were a bit reluctant to catch in an IDC connector, but we got there in the end.

The twist pitch on the HDMI is much less than CAT 5 cable.

I have had one side connected to my router and the other side connected to my laptop all evening, running through the HDMI buried in my wall, and have not noticed any issues with dropping connection, latency etc since it's been connected. Not really sure on the best way to 'measure' the connection.

As I said before the hdmi signal booster didn't seem to work for me, well not very well anyway, my next step will be to try a hdmi to cat5 extender over this setup. I'm more curious than anything to see if this will work. :)
 
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We transferred files from a PC to a NAS and back, with no problems, so I assume it did not "drop", but I did not have any way of checking to see if there was any increase in errors, packet loss, that sort of thing.
 
If the file transfer time is good compared with an Ethernet cable then it's good enough.
 

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