HT design & cable lengths

If you go bigger then 50 feet on hdmi you will will need an amplifier for the quality loss.

fakerus said:

If you go bigger then 50 feet on hdmi you will will need an amplifier for the quality loss.

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There is no hard and fast rule in regards to lenght and HDMI. It depends on a few factors, including the cable. While a run of 50' will probably need to be amplified, runs of 35' might need it as well.

Further FYI, I have installed 35' HDMI runs that did not need amplification. I used a a beefier cable for that run, though.

For RCA cables: I try to use shielded RG59 or RG6 coax with crimp ends if the run is longer than 20' or so (usually a subwoofer run). For a video run, I always get the shielded bundles of three conductor (both Belden and Canare make nice cables for this). The longest I have tested was a 50' run of the Belden for component video + audio (5 conductors) and it surprised me how clear it was. No noise picked up at all.

For fiber, you could probably do a 250' run without too much problem We routinely do 100' of standard multi-mode at work with no signal loss. Toslink (digital audio) should be comparable in terms of loss and signal strength.

Good luck.

That's what I needed to know. Thanks all.