I’ll tell you, I will worry about the loss of quality from a few dropped frames – if and when this wireless HDMI rig actually drops frames. I’d say I’ve now logged close to 100 hours with it, since I first hooked it up, and am still waiting to see my first dropped frame. As I said, it can be a little slow to lock on when a signal starts up, or if the signal changes, say from 1080p to 480i, or even from 1080p to 1080i, but once it grabs the source it seems extremely solid. (and better than the original 20 meter HDMI cables I had back in those days).

As to mason lines, etc. yep, that, conduit, etc. but, the point here is not everyone has that option. For whatever reason – the house came with component video run in the theater (and a 15 year old CRT that doesn’t work, and no conduit, etc., or just a bad decision, previously, the purpose for reviewing the Wireless HDMI was because there are plenty of people that no longer have an easy way to upgrade their cabling.

BTW, one of my noted concerns was bandwidth for 3D, etc. Well, fresh back from CES, I had some interesting discussions including with the HDMI folks at Monster.
Let’s just say this, apparently the magic number for 3D with 24bit, are cables rated 13.8 Ghz. Of course bandwidth will increase significantly as you jump to 10, 12, or 16 bit Deep Color.

That all said, the spec on the Gefen wireless HDMI is 60 Gigahertz – higher than, for example, than any of Monster’s most premium cables.

So, I withdraw my concern – as long as gefen can allow any firmware needed (and they do have RS-232 support, it should be good for many years, before obsolete.
That is good news for me, because I’ll be running deep color (and 3D as soon as possible in my theater. -a

Just wondering which HDMI extenders you have tested–as I have also dealt with some of the same issues using my ~50ft Cat6 run.

I tested a total of three pairs of sender & receiver units, and found the low-end ones to be extremely varying in performance. Having a switch in-between also made matters much worse.

However, the one product which solved it for me (so far, at least) was Octava’s HDMICAT product. I am running 1080p60 reliably over a run of 50ft (15 meters).

So far none of the wireless HDMI solutions I’ve looked at have offered the bandwidth necessary to run a 60Hz 1080p signal wirelessly. (Belkin has had a >$1000 unit in the pipeline for a long time which also didn’t support this)

As you probably are well aware of, anything in-between the baluns and the source and sink can interfere with the signal.

I spent an impressive amount of time trying to pin down a problem which turned out to be related to a cheap (~$60) TrueMatrix switch from MonoPrice where it introduced white flashes everything between 15m to an hour, and also made switching resolutions a true nightmare, 1080i for the most part worked ok, though, but not 1080p.

Since the issue only showed up in conjunction with the HDMI extender (not when hooked up directly), I immediately blamed the HDMI extender.

I’ve not yet been able to test a replacement Octava switch to see if that eliminates the issue, though. *knocks wood*.

–Martin

I can appreciate the simplicity of this solution. But it would just never suit me to have the potential for lost data. I ran a wired network throughout my house after it was built just because I wanted the reliability and data rates offered by direct wiring. Aren’t you worried about quality loss from a few dropped frames?

Did you get the EXT-WHDMI http://www.gefen.com/kvm/productother.jsp?prod_id=4318

Or the GTV-WHDMI
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=5990

Yes a nice thought for those who haven’t run their wiring yet, and also for those who had the option of running conduit. In the case of my great room, conduit wasn’t a viable option. Not only was the run just over 100 feet, but due to having to effectively “leave the room” to get to limited crawlspace, etc, there ended up being 7 separate points on the run with an angle of 90 degrees or less. No one (three different installing companies) felt additional cables could be guaranteed to be addible, without going to a conduit that was two thick to be practical. Actually one company said fine, but wanted to install to breaks in the conduit, with hidden access to “help” if cables snagged. When wired back in ’93 I put in the two cat-5, 2 component cables an analog computer, an S-video (I have no idea why I bothered with S-video, it was cheap), wiring for rear speakers, lighting control wiring for a crestron that I’ve never added (four banks of lights), and so on. It’s avery busy group of cables, neatly wrapped and was already well over 2 inches diameter. when run.

But, of course, for people who haven’t run wire yet, HDMI wireless (when a bit less expensive will be a huge option for many.

Most people have power on most walls, and in many rooms, also in the ceiling (basements, dining rooms, rooms with recessed lighting that’s not low voltage).

To get power, therefore to a ceiling or rear wall mounted projector is usually very straight forward and rarely more than a 10 or 15 foot run, through typically one, maybe two surfaces (two to bring power to a ceiling that doesn’t have it, for a ceiling mount job. one for virtually everyone rear shelf mounting.

Thus, it saves the trouble of opening up a lot more wall, etc. As we see more high quality, powered rear speakers, that are wireless, that will also cut down on the size of a wiring job for people. For those not doing the work themselves (and that definitely includes me), a couple thousand dollars installation bill can likely be reduced to hundreds of dollars with wireless hdmi and wireless rear speakers.

Likely, within two years you’ll see lots of LCDTVs/Plasmas with wireless HDMI or offer it as an option. But it’s far more valuable for projector folks because many of us have to go from front of room to rear, or ceiling, and not just from a receiver to a an LCTV 6 or 8 feet away. -art