Ethereal's HDMI/COAX extends 1440p up to 300-feet
by Steven Kim 
posted Feb 19th 2008 at 1:51PM
HDMI has taken over in the living room, but custom installers still keep component video in their bag of tricks, especially for long runs (HDMI repeaters notwithstanding). There's plenty of bandwidth in coaxial, and longer runs are possible -- witness the Ethereal HDMI/COAX box that converts your HDMI input to signal on 4-conductor coax, and then carries the signal up to 300-feet downstream to an identical box that stuff all the bits back into HDMI. These HDMI-over-coax solutions are just the thing if you've already got coax running through your walls, you don't want to introduce any unnecessary digital-to-analog conversions into your data chain, and you've put your source components far away from their destination. No word on pricing, but you should be able to get your mitts on these in about 4 months.
Filed under: Other hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JVirg1 @ Feb 19th 2008 2:01PM
That's great. But now how many people have 4 conductor cable running around their house? Seems like it would be easier to just run the HDMI cable and get an extender.
Erwos @ Feb 19th 2008 2:21PM
I'm guessing this is marketed to the ultra-high-end market, where they are indeed running 4-conductor (which is for speakers, I think) throughout the premises.
IMHO, your best bet is still to run cat6 everywhere in your house - a couple drops per room (with 4-6 in a few key areas) connecting to a central location, and you're not going to run out of options for a long while. Shouldn't even be all that expensive, either.
JVirg1 @ Feb 19th 2008 2:15PM
Oh and instead of messing around with this kind of crap what they need to be doing is putting out a ATSC RF Modulator. I realize they won't for security reasons as they don't want us having as much control over our TV's. But with this we could just keep the same coax cable we have now and tune our TV's to channel 3.1 to get all the HD we can handle anywhere in our house.
Big Sam @ Feb 19th 2008 3:31PM
That would be awesome. And too good to be true.
Mike @ Feb 19th 2008 8:08PM
Hey,
I was wondering if you guys could help answer a question I have; I tried scouring the forums for an answer but couldn't find one. I want to get a Bluray player once one comes out that can internally decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-Master because I don't want to have to get a new receiver (my current one will be able to accept the new codecs via 5.1 analog audio inputs). Since I will be upgrading from my DVD player, and since some other stuff I have hooked up can now be connected to the TV via HDMI, I'm going to have some component cables hanging around. These are pretty good cables (that I probably paid too much for) and I would hate to see them go to waste. Currently I have all my audio via optical & coaxial going into my receiver and don't have the 5.1 analog audio cables. I was wondering if I would be able to use the component cables for the analog audio. I figured that both send an analog signals so it might work, and it could save me some money as well as putting some cables I've already bought to good use. Does anyone know if this is possible? If so, will it make a difference that the component cables were made for video? Will there be any noticable signal/sound degradation? Any info would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike
JVirg1 @ Feb 19th 2008 8:38PM
Yes component cables can be used to hook up analog audio. I did it that way as I had some high quality component cables and figured it would be better (if only a small bit) than thinner red/white type audio cables. Works great. I used two component cables giving me the six connections.
GhostDoggy @ Feb 20th 2008 4:13AM
1440p? So, what sources are sending 1440 lines worth of progressive resolution? And how many people need a football field of length to run between their sources and their imaging device? Seems a little silly to me, but then I'm a silly person. :)