Cat5e Cat 6 to HDMI question.

paperclips

Hello,

Can someone please answer me this, i'm obviously missing something here?

HDMI 2.0 will support 18 Gbps and my understanding is that CAT 6 will only do 10.

But I know that extenders such as the link below work just fine at 18gbps and they can have Cat 5 or Cat 6 in between the transmitter and receiver.

XTND 4K (100m) TPC Extender

Can someone explain to a simpleton like myself?

EndlessWaves

Category 6 is a cable standard, it doesn't deal with transfer rates itself. You're actually comparing HDMI 2.0 and 10Gbps Ethernet.

Ethernet is a two-way connection and operates full duplex, so it's capable of transferring 20Gbps. 10 one way, and 10 the other. I think Ethernet speeds may also be quoted without encoding, so 14.4Gbps would be the comparable HDMI figure.

It's also quite a different protocol with different needs. I don't know the engineering details but for example if HDMI data arrival times are much more flexible, a few milliseconds instead of nanoseconds, then that may allow transferring data through a cable when Ethernet couldn't.

andy1249

Its HDbaseT and is not lossless for UHD

From the wiki...

“HDBaseT delivers uncompressed ultra-HD video (up to 4K) to a network of devices or as a point-to-point connection. Uncompressed content supports all video sources, including legacy products, accurately renders gaming graphics and features such as electronic program guides, and does not degrade video quality or add latency. It supports TV and PCvideo formats, including standard, enhanced, high-definition, ultra-HD (4K), and 3D video.[13]

Due to bitrate limitations of 10.2 Gbit/s instead of the required 18 Gbit/s in the HDMI 2.0 specification, HDBaseT 2.0 can only support uncompressed 4K at 30 Hz with 4:4:4 color coding, or 4K at 60 Hz with 4:2:0 color coding, but not the full 60 Hz with 4:4:4 color.[14].

However, using either very light visually-lossless compression or color space conversion (CSC), it is possible to pass 4K/60/4:4:4 formats over an HDBaseT 2.0 link. The visually-lossless compression also provides support for HDR10 formats.”

Customerserviceman

Agree with andy1249.

Here is my experience about the situation of 18Gbps over HDBT.
18Gbps--transmitter--compress into 10.2Gbps for transmission over a Ethernet cable--receiver--depress back to 18 Gbps--4K UHD TV.