audio and video over CAT 5

[Jd925]

Hi i saw today a leviton quickport device that used one entire cat 5 cable for video or left or right audio.

So for example i want to run video and audio into my bathroom. I have a new master bath where there will be a small flat panel TV. I want to put DVD off of the whole house ent. system. So leviton says run 3 cat 5 wires on for video. one left audio and one for right. They each use all the pairs. What do you all think of this product. Any other suggestions. The wire that we ran in the begiing when the system was fist put in was very expensive and only available in 1000 feet rools. I only need about 1oo feet as i have cat5 already on a wall next to the wall where the TV will be going. Any other sugestions? Thanks Jake

 

[wires]

If you are talking about these type of connectors,

http://www.tselectronic.com/leviton/40735.html

, they only require one pair for each signal so you would be able to run all three on a single cat5.

When the work they work OK. If there are problems then plan on running the proper wires.

 

[Servamatic]

I have the Leviton Media devices in my home and they work great, just don't punch the wires down on the small units. Use an 8P8C plug on those.
I get much better picture quality on them than I do over coax from my DVD player and digital cable.
Keep the number of connections in the lines to a minimum as well.


Richard S. Anderson, RCDD

http://www.smartbuilthomes.com

 

[AvayaNovice]

You get a better picture off of twisted pair then coax? Can you explain that? I'm curious.

 

[robertjo24]

I think the Leviton Quickport device you are referring to at the start of the thread is the 48210 Decora Media System. The device allows distribution of audio and video throughout the house. This can either be point to point using one send unit and one receive unit, or point to multi point distribution utilizing the Decora Media hub. This is a real neat system you have stumbled upon. The wiring diagram shows one Cat-5 cable from the send unit, and one to each receive unit. If you were to do a distributed media center, (as it seems to be stated), there swill need to be one Cat-5 cable from your send unit to the hub, then one Cat-5 cable from the hub to each location you wish to place the receive units. See the wiring schematic at

http://www.leviton.com/pdfs/decora/Decora Dimensional Drawings.pdf.

The product can be viewed at

http://www.leviton.com/pdfs/decora/Decora Section F - VoiceDataAudioVideo.pdf,

page F6.

I have never used this device, but it sure looks nifty.

 

[Servamatic]

Whats to explain?
You can see a difference in picture quality.
You take a composite sugnal and impose it on a single conductor (coax) you don't get the same quality of picture as when you keep those signals separated on individual pairs in a cat 5. Not to mention stereo quality is better as well.
Plus you have the proper level of amplification on each outlet.

Richard S. Anderson, RCDD

http://www.smartbuilthomes.com

 

[AvayaNovice]

What I'm trying to understand, is that you're saying that you get better "picture quality" from Cat5 than you do from coax...

I find this hard to believe considering the inherent differences between the two types of cable.

I can compress over 500 channels in HDTV format on coax, which I cannot do on cat5 because of the signal loss, lack of proper shielding, etc.

If you're saying that cat5 acts better as a composite cable for short runs, ie stereo and video, rather than using something like an RCA cable, then sure. But I have never seen a difference in picture quality, that's just way too hard to actually determine.

I use bundled coax all the time and terminate RG-6 to RCA. I don't think you'd notice a difference in picture quality.

 

[wires]

I guess that Servamatic is comparing a modulated RF signal ("impose it on a single conductor&quot to separate video and audio signals. In that respect he is certainly correct. However I have never found cat5 to be better than coax for video and 22/2ws for audio.

The problem with cat5 for video is that it is not the correct impedance and once you introduce any sort of matching devices (baluns ect.) the signal is degraded. This degradation is usually not visible in normal use but is certainly there with testing.

In audio applications cat5 is not normally shielded and interference can easily creep into the signal. Additionally when two separate audio signals are run in a single cat5 cable crosstalk is greater than separate shielded cables.

That said I do run audio (and sometimes video) over cat5. In my house there are several cat5 cables carrying stereo audio on two pairs and IR (remote control) on the other two pairs. With no matching devices it works great with little interference except a slight buzz whenever IR travels down the wire.

 

[Servamatic]

Yes, the Leviton media center hub replaces the need for a modulator for a single source. (it's one drawback, single source)
Considering it is designed specifically for the purpose it does the work of a balun and modulator.
When it comes to DVD quality video, I have yet to see a modulated signal over coax be as clear as using the media center hub.
We tested the signal when I was at Leviton through a reel of cat 5e (1000') and it worked fine.
I have them in my home at about 75' of cable and I can see a visible difference in picture quality. I am no videophile, so if I can see it......


Richard S. Anderson, RCDD

http://www.smartbuilthomes.com

 

[Jd925]

Hi i saw today a leviton quickport device that used one entire cat 5 cable for video or left or right audio.

So for example i want to run video and audio into my bathroom. I have a new master bath where there will be a small flat panel TV. I want to put DVD off of the whole house ent. system. So leviton says run 3 cat 5 wires on for video. one left audio and one for right. They each use all the pairs. What do you all think of this product. Any other suggestions. The wire that we ran in the begiing when the system was fist put in was very expensive and only available in 1000 feet rools. I only need about 1oo feet as i have cat5 already on a wall next to the wall where the TV will be going. Any other sugestions? Thanks Jake

 

[wires]

"Hi i saw today a leviton quickport device that used one entire cat 5 cable for video or left or right audio."

As discussed above others in this forum have seen Leviton products that can send video and two audio signals using a SINGLE cat5. Leviton offers two ways of doing this, either with (decora media system) or without (quickport inserts) active electronics.

If you have some other product you would like us to look at please provide a link. Reposting the exact same text is NOT helpful to productive conversation.


"it does the work of a balun and modulator"

Actually it does the work of a balun with equalization circuits to improve signal quality. There is no modulation. The composite video and audio remain separate and are not in the RF domain. Since it carries composite video, display devices (TVs) have to be equipped with a video input.

The neat feature is the ability to do "multi-drop" installs without a distribution amp and "daisy-chain" installs without user-configured termination.

 

[Jd925]

Im asking if you guys know of other products like levitons that worked well for you. I dont want to just hear about the levitons i was hoping you all know of other products that worked for you or that you have instaled and liked. THANKS

 

[Servamatic]

I understand how it works, I was just trying to make it simple for some people to understand, I know it is not an actual modulator, but it acts in place of one so to speak to redistribute video and audio signal.
The balun comparison was directed at a specific question about different characteristic impedances.


Richard S. Anderson, RCDD

http://www.smartbuilthomes.com

 

[AvayaNovice]

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.

Coaxial cable is capable of much more bandwidth than cat5e... so if there's a visible picture quality difference, check out your modulator.

 

[wires]

OK now I see the question...

If it were me I would just solder some RCA connectors on the cat5 and give it a try. Most of the time it works fine.

Be sure to use pairs and maintain the twist into the connector. If you already have jacks in one or both locations just cut a patch cable in half (or in convenient lengths) and solder the connectors on the cut ends.

If it doesn't work properly there are a zillion places that will sell you baluns. In most cases you only need then for the video. Something like this should work fine:

http://www.svideo.com/500021.html

 

[wires]

"Coaxial cable is capable of much more bandwidth than cat5e... "

In general a true statement.


<RANT>

&quot;so if there's a visible picture quality difference, check out your modulator.&quot;

If there isn't a visible difference in picture quality between video and RF you have other problems. Possibly your eyesight is failing or your TV is on the fritz.

Modulated video will never be a &quot;clean&quot; as composite video.

Composite video will never be as &quot;clean&quot; as s-video.

S-video will never be as &quot;clean&quot; as component video.

The more you &quot;combine&quot; analog signals to get them down a single wire the more &quot;degraded&quot; the original signal will become. This happens with all modulators including the very expensive ones used at commercial television stations. The worst modulators in common use are the channel 3/4 &quot;tin cans&quot; found in VCRs, DVDs and video games. The ones used by cable companies win few prizes.

When I set up a good off the air antenna system customers are amazed at how much better the picture is than cable TV. Small wonder since the signal is either demodulated and remodulated at the cable headend or modulated with a modulator that costs a tenth of the one at the TV station. Differences in source material at the TV station become very apparent. Garbage in, Garbage out. If the station has a decent tech crew and equipment the studio camera and Betacam based field stuff can be quite good.


&quot;I can compress over 500 channels in HDTV format on coax&quot;

Bull.

You can put 500 channels on cable but not many of them in true HDTV. By the time you &quot;compress&quot; (actually reduce the bit rate since there is no such thing as lossless compression) 500 channels it gets fairly nasty. Just watch DishNetwork or DirecTV on a decent monitor. Watch what happens in the dark areas and in color gradient areas (like a blue sky). Digital cable is the same thing only without the money to have people on hand to address picture quality issues like the national satellite companies have.

Of course none of this is very apparent on a 15&quot; cheapo TV with the contrast, brightness and phase (tint) all whacked out.

</RANT>

 

[AvayaNovice]

I disagree.

I shouldn't have said 500 channels in all HDTV format, but I can compress about 1-200 over a forward data carrier, at a fairly low frequency, and since these are digital signals rather than analog, the inherent issues you are talking about no longer exist. There is no demodulation, etc. etc. there is a digital to analog conversion, only if the passthrough from the cable box to the TV itself isn't of high quality.

And we can also compress much more than the dish network, or direcTV. Not to mention we can pass about 60 megabits per second of data per node with newer 2.0 releases of CMTS's.

So if you want to tell me that we can't compress a ton of digital channels (and that's not HDTV, but we're getting about half of our broadcasts out on HDTV now in our pilot areas) then I highly disagree. The amount of compression we can achieve through HFC systems is unreal, and it's only getting bigger and bigger.

Recall that before fiber optics existed, RF was the only way to do it (and let me also reinterate that the basic charecteristics are the same).

So to end this argument.

For a single channel over coax, you can get far more data in there, and if it's digital -- the I don't care what you say, 1's and 0's don't change if they're over cat5, coax, fiber, or whatever you want.

 

[wires]

I don't disagree, I don't want to be disagreeable, but I know more than many about this subject...


Bandwidth:

Ku band satellites usually have 32 54Mhz transponders per bird. So that is about 1,700Mhz of bandwidth per bird (a bit more than a coax plant). DishNetwork has 5 satellites visible from CONUS so that is a over 8,000Mhz of bandwidth.

If you want a idea of just how much bandwidth Dish is using check out this channel list:

http://ekb.dbstalk.com/dishlist.htm

That list is over 1800 channels (yes some are audio only and both 61.5 and 148 are in there, but still...). They are getting ready to use another bird with the &quot;superdish&quot; so the channel count will go up.


&quot;Compression&quot;:

There is really no such thing as compression for data streams. What really happens is the bit rate is reduced by leaving out or extrapolating &quot;redundant&quot; data. As I mentioned before this can leave a lot to be desired. Dark areas get the &quot;creepy crawlies&quot; of shifting pixelazation. Subtle color transitions (like a blue sky) break into bands of discrete colors. I try NOT to point these problems out to everybody since it can &quot;ruin&quot; their enjoyment of a otherwise decent picture. Over-&quot;compression&quot; can take a nice subtle picture and turn it into a cartoon.

If you want to see what happens just take a piece of music you know and start encoding it to MP3 at lower and lower bit rates. Fairly soon you will have garbage.

The codecs that the cable companies have are also available to anyone with the money. It is really a non-issue.


Fiber:

Who has fiber to the home? If fiber doesn't go all the way to the set top box then you are limited to the approx 1.5Mhz bandwidth of the coax plant.


&quot;1's and 0's&quot;

No they don't change. However they are a digital representation of a analog world. To get an accurate representation it takes a LOT of 1's and 0's. Current &quot;compression&quot; algorithms and hardware do a decent job but they cannot be &quot;pushed&quot; as far as you seem to think and still put out a picture worthy of the very nice LARGE TVs that are all the rage these days. It would be a shame if all the investment in cable plant provided a picture that was only &quot;watchable&quot; on a 19&quot; TV.

I am sure this technology will improve but it seems that many people that should know better think that there is such a thing as a &quot;free lunch&quot;.

 

[Servamatic]

Wires

Whew...I was trying not to get so deep into this, just for the reason you mentioned, but I am glad you did. When I was at Leviton the Director of LIN was a true audio and videophile, he could pick out the smallest imperfection. Because of that I now look at TV differently. I have worked for a lot of those types and have learned one thing....never argue with a true believer.
You will never change their mind, no matter how logical and factual your case.
I am not saying they are never right, just that they sometimes spend a ton of money getting that last 1% that most will never see or hear. Which frankly, if they are spending it with me…all the better.
Our cable system here is FTTC and it sure is great for High Speed Internet, full meg and never slows down. However we have some channels no matter how I try to tune it, they never come clear, at least not now that I have spent many an hour with a videophile....lol
Another question that was asked earlier about cat 5 replacing coax....
It may very well, I am currently working on a home system that will do just that inside the home.
We can deliver clear streaming video in DVD quality over wireless to multiple devices without skip or degradation.
Sorry I can't tell you more, but watch for a major release this summer or fall.

OK, I am done rambling....

Richard S. Anderson, RCDD

http://www.smartbuilthomes.com

 

[wires]

Whoops - brain fart... As I slipped off to sleep I remembered that there was NO WAY I was viewing 1.7Ghz on a spectrum analyzer when setting up DBS dishes. Sorry!


Bandwidth:

I was looking at the wrong type of satellite. DirecTV and Dish (DBS providers) typically use spectrum from 12224Mhz to 12676Mhz (452Mhz) which is used for 16 24Mhz transponders. So the total bandwidth for use is 384Mhz times 2 due to polarization which is 768Mhz. This is about the same per satellite as the current approx 800Mhz used by a cable company (I was being WAY to generous with the 1500Mhz cable plant figure and later accidentally added a decimal point to make it 1.5Mhz, sorry...)

The thing I want to point out is that while cable company is limited to the bandwidth of a SINGLE coax DBS is not limited to a single satellite. DirecTV currently has 5 satellites and Dish controls 9. With these multiple pathways the DBS companies have more bandwidth than any cable company. So using DishNetwork as an example for total available bandwidth, cable is about 1Ghz and DBS is about 3Ghz.

Remember - as long as cable has to support analog signals (you don't want &quot;cable ready&quot; TVs not to work) they loose a huge chunk of bandwidth. If you want an idea just multiply the number of analog channels by 6Mhz and you can see that the available bandwidth for digital signals goes WAY down. Check out:

http://www.multiplextechnology.com/channelplus/support/ref1.html

&quot;Compression&quot;:

I forgot to make my main point which is that the picture quality is not so good on the DBS providers. They squeeze between 2 (HDTV) and 12 channels in per 24Mhz transponder. Viewed on a good large monitor even the HD offerings have visible artifacts on a regular basis.

Here is a good picture of how &quot;crowded&quot; a orbital location can be:

http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/dish110.shtml

. Notice the &quot;beam&quot; column which shows how they are able to squeeze more bandwidth into the limited number of orbital locations and frequency allocations. Transponder 2L at 12239Mhz has spot beams (directional antennas) set up for 5 different areas in the CONUS (continental US). This list covers TWO satellites at a single orbital location.


Sorry for the &quot;wild&quot; claims of bandwidth beyond belief. 8Ghz is in the same ballpark as 500 channels of HDTV on coax...