Hi there,

On projects where the theatre room was over 15 metres away, our previous designer in our company always specified HDMI O/ Cat 6 extenders to get the HDMI from a Blu-ray player all the way back to the receiver in the AV hub, and then send the sound all the way back into the room over the speaker cable, and the video over another HDMI O/ Cat6 extender to the video end-point (TV or Projector).

Well I’m the new designer, so I’m proposing we plug the HDMI in to the TV direct in the room, and send the digital coax out of the player back to the receiver in the AV hub - saving money on cabling and extender products.

Has anyone else done this and experienced latency or not with the audio signal compared to the picture on the screen?

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul,

It sounds like the BluRay and display are in the room locally, and the power amp/receiver is in an AV room remotely?

In this case, I would personally use the HDMI out to an HDMI extender with a local output
http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-HDMI-Extender-over-single-Cat5-6-with-local-video-output.-Transmitter-Unit.html. 
Extend the signal to the receiver over Cat6, use the loop out to feed the display locally, and send the sound back to the room on the speaker wire as always.

Going to digital coax for audio will make you lose some support for new HDMI only audio formats like Linear PCM and Dolby HD, etc.  If your AV receivers are doing any scaling, you will lose the ability to scale the BD player (although they have their own scalers anyway), and you will have to adjust your programming style to now actually change the TV input when swapping over to the BluRay as you are not sending the video all the way back on another balun allowing the receiver to switch the video.

Note:  If you are already extending HDMI back from the receiver for satellite programming etc that originates at a sat receiver in the AV room, you will gain nothing by changing to the scheme above.

Clear as Mud?  Sorry.  If you need me to clarify let me know.

Mark C

Thanks a lot for replying Mark.

All of that makes perfect sense to me.  I have since contacted the Atlona importers about this product as I believe that it’s the right tool for the job.

Thanks again,

Paul.