There are baluns that work with fiber-optic cabling which afford greater distance capabilities. Fiber is, however, a more difficult termination, and many installers may avoid if for that reason.
Trip-Up: Baluns Meet Cat Wiring
Tip: If you choose to deploy baluns using Category wiring, it’s imperative that you pay strict attention to the termination requirements for both ends of the wire. You’ll want to also pay strict attention to the care of the cabling itself; don’t have excessively sharp radius or kinks and don’t try and splice the cable or extend existing cables.
I strongly recommend doing your utmost to keep the cable lengths as close as possible to each other if you are using a dual cat system. In my experience, better quality devices have power injection on the receiving side of the circuit to help offset voltage loss over distance issues.
Bonus Point
As time progresses, you’ll discover that HDMI is going to be the interface of default, if not choice, amongst equipment manufacturers. Costs of redundant outputs will be the likely culprit for the demise of extra sets of analog connections on source devices in the future.
HDMI is a complex and ever-evolving technology that is at the heart of today’s digital entertainment.
