Cat 568A or B: Which is Right For HDMI?

So if 568A and 568B aren’t as reliable, why don’t manufacturers dictate that it must be done another way instead of putting out known to be inferior products in fear that we can’t RTFM!?!?!

Well, one well known manifacturer does not use 568 for their baluns. And they work every time.

And who might that be?  We use Crestron and even they state 568B for their DM terminations.

I’m with you Greg. Those are the only baluns I use.

This is a series of insults to every installer, after the HDMI folks invented a signal transmission method not meant to go more than about two meters.

Paragraph 2: it is the fault of the installer that we are using CAT5 at all.  It’s not that HDMI was invented without realizing that the cheapest installs almost always use short cables, the really fantasic installs hardly ever do, and HDMI inventors had zero clue about this. 

He also states that we could wire things up properly if we could just somehow stretch ourselves and learn how to hook up an RJ45 connector with wires in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.  But it’s too hard for us to learn that, he thinks.

And we should take advice from this guy?

Ernie, Jeff is a very bright engineer. He knows the limitations of HDMI better than most. If you ever get a chance to sit in one of his classes, do yourself a favor and do it! By the way, ask Brent about how many tech support calls he gets due to installers not following directions on pinout of his baluns.
And Crestron does use 568B for their DM, but it is a HDBaseT, not a balun.

Installers RTFM – you have to be joking; most throw the manual out with the packaging then get on the phone and shout at Tech support and then throw the bits THEY can’t get working in a Jiffy bag and then wonder why they get charged a re-stocking fee!!!

We have units that use Jeff’s recommended wiring and get them thrown back at us by installers as useless as they don’t use ‘standard’ wiring and they have already pre terminated the whole job ‘the way they normally do it’ and ‘no were not willing to give it a go in future – our guys would forget to go with your daft wiring plan’.

Joe

So who is this manufacturer that that uses this wiring scheme?

What is the website to see and purchase them?

Joe Fernand, it’s a bit unfair of you (not to mention making you lose sales!) to imply that you make such products without telling us your company name.  Your name is not like Noel Lee (wait—did I get that right?)—we don’t know the company just by seeing the name.

JoJo, this whole article refers to various companies that make “baluns” for HDMI over CAT5, usually dual CAT5.

Greg C, I don’t doubt that Jeff is a very bright engineer.  The problem, for me, is that he seems to act like a True Believer when HDMI was just rammed down our throats with little regard to the reality that products don’t work together and there’s nothing about HDMI itself that even requires products to work together!  HDMI is a disaster except on paper and in technical classes.