Connecting Displays over 100 ft distance
Hello all, my first post here but been using OpenLP for about a year now.
This isn't really an OpenLP issue but considering that most people using it probably have it set up in church, I figured this would be a great community to ask the question.
TLDR: Best way to project signal to multiple displays over 100 feet distance.
Our church has 2 big screen TVs that are used as displays for lyrics and what ever we need to project to congregation. The TVs currently are connected to the PC via HDMI Extender Splitter, kind of like the one listed HERE which extends the signal to the TVs that are about 100 feet from the PC it self via cat5e cable. The issue we are running into is random complete signal loss to one or both TVs. To get it back we usually just unplug one of the cat5e cables from the base unit that corresponds with the TV that lost signal and plug it back in, that seems to restore it every time. But the problem is, it keeps happening several times during service, some days only a couple of times, other days it's every 5-10 minutes. I suspect it may be a faulty unit, or maybe I need to run better cables instead, like cat6/7 shielded cables. But I wanted to ask what are people doing for long distances like that? What are my options for connecting multiple displays? Also, I don't know if it helps, but the TVs are actually smart TVs, one of the very first generations of smart TVs but still, I thought maybe there is a way to send the stream over the network and maybe set up something like a DLNA server that pulls the display from OpenLP via "http://IP:4613/Main" page, and point the TVs to that, although I don't know if lag would be an issue. But this way seems way over complicated though.
Wandering what people do and what are some cost effective options out there that I may not be aware of.
Comments
When I last had to run a long HDMI cable, I used a powered HDMI cable, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079PQJCJN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
We're installing screens in our church currently.
We chose this HDMI to Ethernet Balun: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-HDMI-Extender-Ethernet/dp/B00OZV04BK/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=hdmi+over+ip&qid=1634524584&sr=8-3
It allows a dedicated LAN with multiple receiver units.
The best way to reliably run displays at long distances is SDI. I use short 1.5ft hdmi cables with blackmagic HDMI to SDI or SDI to HDMI converters on either end. Grab a roll of cheap RG59 cable rated for 3 ghz and a crimp tool for BNC connectors. If you want to splurge, go with a 12G compatible coax with crimp style 12G compatible BNC connectors. Don't cheap out on the BNC connectors.
HDbaseT with CAT6 cable is another route, but SDI is more reliable.
Don't mean to revive an old thread but, we ended up going with the HDMI over IP since we already had a good network setup in the building, thus connecting the TVs and video output from the PC to the network wasn't going to put much of a load on it. Latency was very minimal, nothing that you could really notice. The devices we used were Monoprice Blackbird, HDMI over IP kits. They have definitely gone up in price since we bought them, but have been very reliable for us. https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=39686