Building my New Multiroom HDMI Distribution Setup - OREI UHD88-EXB400R HDBaseT Matrix!

[@camerongray1515]

Buy the OREI UHD88-EXB400R HDBaseT Matrix on Amazon (Affiliate): geni.us/0vBnhY Other Products Used (Affiliate): - Cable Matters USB-C Ethernet Adapter with Power Passthrough: geni.us/vwMnR

[@docugraf]

"Buy the OREI UHD88-EXB400R HDBaseT" or just get a list of many others but not the EXB400-R

[@camerongray1515]

The link shortening service I use will attempt to find the product on your country's local Amazon store. If it doesn't exist or isn't available then it'll perform a search. It may be that the EXB400R isn't available in your country, you may be able to find it in other country's Amazon stores who'll ship to you. You may also want to look for the EXB230R which is essentially the same, but only extends up to 70m which should be fine for most situations.

[@techheck3358]

really appreciate the sponsor disclaimer at the start - makes your findings much more trustworthy compared to some channels that try to "hide" that

[@maxherman11]

Very excited to see where this goes! I'm getting this exact same matrix for my new home and cannot wait to see what you come up with!

[@mmaster23]

@22:15 .. don't mind you nerding out over fans.. in an 58 minute long video on a network hdmi matrix haha.

[@Rotwold]

He was in to deep to start worrying about needing out at that point 😂

[@michaelangello1]

I used to have a full Crestron 8x8 matrix. Ended up putting devices behind TVs. Its a better user experience for me. AVoIP is where its at now though. I have a full Dante distributed audio system now which is awesome.

[@Cablesmith]

Great bit of kit, might need one myself soon enough. Thanks for the video

[@GjbMcN]

You might like to look a Bluetooth Beacons use in Home Assistant so as you enter a room a customised for-that-room dashboard presents itself. Or you could have automatic follow-me music and tv as you move through the house(using that sole setup). The mind boggles also with a kvm and display control as well as feedin your NVR security cameras or a sorts wall on one screen(a different kind if matrix)

[@niklaso2112]

Yes please to a video on Bluetooth controller relay! I have tried and failed. Also, thank you for sharing. Looking forward to follow along!

[@larskbragdon]

Please do a deep dive into your HA and Node red setups. I'm interested in getting away from control4 and this seems like the perfect avenue to do so. Thanks again for posting the video!

[@kevinhughes9801]

Love the setup works well look forward to seeing more thanks

[@wapphigh5250]

Looking forward to the detailed HA setup tutorial. 😄

[@TH3xR34P3R]

Invest in some ESP BT Proxies so that you can do per room pressence detection and then you can automate the solo via confirmation to play in the current room you are in or just move with you if no one else is in the home.

[@DarrenMossAU]

It looks like it could work well (even though it is based on CEC) and there are definitely benefits to not running IR extenders which are an absolute PITA. It will be interesting to see how it performs once routed through amplifiers and connected to your Sky Box or FTA.

[@JessicaFEREM]

I wish someone made a version of this that was basically just a remote blaster satellite units, but the main unit is where all the HDMIs come out of, so you can use optical HDMI cables for full quality while still having the remote blaster portion. basically I'm just asking for a 2 in 1 8 way remote blaster kit and HDMI switch box, bring your own optical HDMI cables.

[@camerongray1515]

I mean, you could technically do that with this - use the HDMI outputs on the matrix and just use the HDBaseT recievers for their IR functionality. Or you can get separate "IR over CAT" systems that would handle the IR and then a basic HDMI Matrix switch. Personally though, I'd still go with HDBaseT - running HDMI cables through a building is extremely awkward and if that cheap optical HDMI cable ever fails due to the complicated hardware in the ends, you're completely stuck. The quality difference is absolutely miniscule and I'd challenge the average person to see a difference. The only option I have considered was HDMI over MPO fibre where you can run special multicore fibre and then connect special transcievers on the end, this would allow you to run a smaller cable and have upgradable/replacable tranceivers on the end, but in the end I decided that HDBaseT was more cost effective option.

[@popeter]

on the chromecast thing, i so wish there were POE to USB C network addapters so could power then off POE

[@camerongray1515]

They do actually exist: amzn.to/3Ozg3Uh (Affiliate) although admittedly I haven't tried them yet, although tempted to take a look at them in the future! As for my setup, I opted not to go for them this time as I don't have a tonne of ports free on my PoE switch (16 port switch that's needed for PoE or devices that support 2.5GbE or 5GbE) so I didn't want to waste them for a couple of chromecasts that are sitting right next to a power strip!

[@DIY_Donkey]

Search for poe power splitter you'll find every connection style and voltage available

[@BenCos2018]

they exist

[@harrygrumbar4589]

@@BenCos2018 I actually have a cheaper 10W version of the one @camerongrey1515 linked powering my Chromecast, and providing its ethernet connection, and it works really well. It's only 100Mbps but I doubt the Chromecast will saturate 100Mbps anyway.

[@jasonperry6046]

I want to say thank you so much for this video. I am curious to see an update video down the road on your thoughts of the system. I have a set up from a competitor. I had to get rid of my patch cables and wire the readmitted directly to the receiver. I also have to intermittently restart it. My one thought about that beep.why not set up a trouble shooting mode in home assistant that will turn beeps and lights on in all your different systems.

[@JordanLong20]

great video, glad you got an OREI. Love the Chromecasts on ethernet.

[@MK-em4nk]

Great overview Cameron. Quick q, what patch cables are you using there (the red ones in the rack)? Thanks!

[@markbooth3066]

It's great to see what's possible from Home Assistant. It's disappointing that it's HDMI 2.0 rather than HDMI 2.1 though, but even HDBaseT 3.0 doesn't support HDMI 2.1, so I guess I'm going to have to hope that HDBaseT 4.0 fixes that.

[@sezzars]

Please do detailed explanation for the home assistant process carefully please 🙏🏼 Thank you very much for this prefect awesome video 😍 it helped me

[@garytill]

How did I guess you'd go down this route too. I was able to fully implement my Matrixes REST API with Node-red integration (which I have tied into HA) and recently I found the Sofabaton X1S actually has HTTP GET/POST custom device support so I was finally able to use that and some Node-Red flows to have one button control sequencing my main media room that integrates both the local sources in that room, and remote sources coming from the matrix. My API also has endpoints that I can throw an IR hex string at and it will fire that code out of whatever IR port I want ( there are ports in room and for each source in the rack), so it has a fully controllable IR blaster system built in and I was able to get rid of a few Broadlink IR emitters after implementing that. After a couple of years of struggling with it, finally, it "just works"... i've never had a project finished and working.. I need to break something to have another project to work on now. A big tip with a video matrix is do some work on EDID management, lock the source devices to the lowest common denominator EDID you need for maximum compatibility and faster switching, and if the matrix doesn't officially state any Dolby Vision support, you will find that with the right EDID injected it should pass DV at 24FPS (because it is generally packaged into a normal 8bit RGB datastream that the TV then decodes) so movies work just fine. Same with audio formats it may not claim official support for, they usually work if you inject the EDID for it. Both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos TrueHD work just fine through my HDAnywhere MHUB-S unit. 1080p120 also works but I don't have a use for that. One trick for custom EDID if the matrix doesnt have an upload function is to get some of those $2 HDMI dummy plugs and use EDWriter to write a custom EDID to them, then plug those into the HDMI mirror outputs on the matrix and set that as the EDID source in the configurator.

[@camerongray1515]

That's extremely interesting on the Sofabaton front, thanks for pointing it out! I'd always ignored the X1 due to lack of local control, assume they've only added it recently! I've just ordered both an X1S and a (heavily discounted X1) to try out the HTTP side of things so expect a video on that soon, hopefully I can finally end my quest for a decent universal remote that allows local control of devices! Until today my plan had been to use a Switchbot universal remote and program custom IR commands into it and then have Tasmota based IR blaster in each room to recieve these commands and pass them to HA, an actual HTTP API would be even better!

[@garytill]

@camerongray1515 well.. I never said the X1s was "good" but with http commands and some nodered its a million times better than stock. Perfect remotebwould allow a custom grid button pad on a small touchscreen and a two way API to update variables on the screen. But baby steps I guess.

[@Reveqable]

Really cool setup

[@PaYtrIxHD]

I was hyped when you mentioned the Multiroom audio capabilities, with it having separate digital/analog audio outputs. But the fact that the audio outputs are directly tied to the hdmi sources makes it kinda useless for Multiroom audio, no? It would be awesome to have 1 hdmi source (chromecast i.e.) mapped to 1-8 audio outputs simulatniously

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

There appears to be Dolby Digital output listed in the menu of most LCD Panel TV sets like the SONY BRAVIA.

[@mohdem33]

great video. Any issues arising from HDCP?

[@mercian8051]

Great video. Are you involved with custom install? The best HDBaseT matrix I ever used were the Leaf/Control4 models with DD down mixing that made distributing Sky very easy

[@JamesLodge]

I have the BK-404 and use HA RESTFul command to manipulate the matrix if you’re interested.

[@mlscho]

I am interested in this! Can you share with me?

[@sir_tuesday]

Interesting as always! And as usual a way baller way of doing something I’ve just dipped my toes into. Have got similarly a wee bit carried away with TV’s in each room. However just got a hdmi switch, optical hdmi’s and a single Apple TV - everyone gets to watch what I want to watch 🤣. Interesting thought though brought up there was with regards to CEC. I hunted for ages for a hdmi splitter that would firstly scale one output to 1080p but also pass cec from the tv remote in the primary location to the Apple TV for control. Found one that did that. Could your setup allow you to control the selected input device via cec but using the output device’s cec commands?

[@djhworld_]

Great video and very interesting setup, I honestly did not know you could route HDMI over standard CAT cabling so learned something new there. Would really be interested in seeing the PS5 video if you can get that working, I think if I could put my gaming PC and PS5 in a rack downstairs AND route the video signal through something like this it would be amazing, assuming the compression doesn't mess with the fidelity too much. Obvious question then would be around the controllers, from my understanding the PS5 uses a special low latency version of Blutooth for their controllers (I might be wrong here) so would be interesting to see how that could be solved.

[@PedroMonrealGamer]

I love these devices, I use a 6x2 matrix

[@ElliotGraham]

Thanks for sharing this, almost perfect timing. Have you managed to get your Sky Q to work with this? I have the individual HDBase T pair and I’ve simply not been able to reliably get Sky Q to work. Other devices seem to work fine, including things like ps5 which I believe is HDCP2.2

[@3guk]

Might be worth sticking a HDFury device between Sky Q and the matrix - I do quite a lot with video and always have one in my toolbox for HDCP issues…

[@ElliotGraham]

@ will that have a similar effect to an EDID emulator? Just step the broadcast down to 1080p rather than 4K?

[@pn8902]

In the same boat with figuring out a good way of control and I think I will just stick with a smart remote for each TV. Then also I plan to have wall tablets/control tablets near to seating areas and since the tablet is fixed in its location I don't have to find the room first and then choose a source, I can just press PS5, Sky, PC etc. Of course I can still have a menu to control other rooms but it wont be the main menu. Brings me onto my next problem, finding a POE wall tablet, I found the fire HD10 plus has wireless charging and im working on a magnetic mount for it which also wirelessly charges the tablet and i guess the tablet will have to stay on wifi but ideally I do want a POE tablet, the only decent one I can think of is the Hikvision android tablet which lets you sideload one android app and the tablet itself is very slick, with some lighting underneath it too to help locate it in the dark.

[@danwetherald8627]

Could you share the interface yaml or overall strategy for getting the dropdown items in the top media source card?

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

What could you possibly need that for? The Acorn A5000 doesn’t have an HDMI port and is too beautiful to hide away 😅

[@timoknols3303]

How are you going to combine this matrix together with the sony AV receiver you got?

[@chilledpeperami]

Revotech* makes a dongle that takes PoE in, and outputs 5V over USB-C with 100megabit network connection. We use them with Chromecasts at work to show web dashboards on TVs. Makes the Chromecasts' connection more reliable and we can power cycle the Chromecasts using the PoE on the network switch. *that's the brand I find them under

[@camerongray1515]

They definitely look interesting and are something I want to take a look at in the future! For my setup here, I'm relatively short on PoE ports so didn't want to waste them for a couple of Chromecasts but defenitely a good option for many environments!

[@bobbydilley]

This is very cool, but wouldn't an individual Apple TV or Apple TV + Chromecast for Android users on each TV work out as cheeper, no compression and probably simpler to use?

[@davidrowley-ic6dx]

In the EDID options, I saw no provision for Atmos sound, HDR10 or Dolby Vision …. Would these options be covered by the “copy” functionality? … or are they simply not encompassed within the matrix architecture? I consider these critical factors for implementation of this technology in pretty much any scenario except a hotel (where you’d only ever be interested in distributing a basic configuration). The nature of this equipment is that it really needs to go into a rack. The need for direct connection through distributed area network cables will also point to the kit being rack mounted alongside the rest of your home network … typically just as you have shown, somewhere like a server room or your garage. So … you then have to co-locate your Sky Q, Apple TV box and other TV sources in the same rack area. So now you want to play a movie in your home theatre: you expect the best formats to be available to you, including Dolby Vision and Atmos sound. Perhaps more to the point … you also need to go out to the garage to load the relevant disc into your Blu Ray player. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this matrix device is any use to anyone really interested in a high end AV setup … which anyone with £2k to spend on home distribution will want. Fine in a hotel or guest house where standard streaming services would suffice … or, potentially, where you have your media ripped onto a NAS … but if you’ve also spent another £3k on your R.volution ripping NAS device, you’re still going to want your Dolby Vision and Atmos playback to be supported. The only sensible way I see it being used is to have a standalone system for the home theatre and the matrix based system setup independent for base level room to room TVs.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Is that the sort of device used in hotels and aboard super yachts to distribute the satellite TV?

[@camerongray1515]

Hotels will usually use a different system that's either IP based or uses the tuner built into each TV. HDBaseT wouldn't really suit since you'd need so many set top boxes and such a large matrix to handle the number of users that a hotel would have. HDBaseT systems are more likely to be used in higher end homes who want to centralise AV (as I'm doing here) or in commercial settings such as hospitality venues where you'd want to distribute video to a bunch of TVs around a venue (for example a bar with a bunch of TVs showing various sports or advertising slideshows)

[@MyStudentSite]

Are you doing a give away on your old gear!? I remember you putting it in your old place!!

[@mortenaronsen]

Apologies if I missed it, but is it possible for the tv to send CEC commands through the "client" to the "base" and to the source eg chromecast? In other words, use the "native" remote on the tv to control the source (even if that could lead to two clients wrestling over what to watch / what to click)

[@JamesLodge]

Be careful with Orei, they’re based in the US and warranty issues will require you shipping it back. I’ve been burnt. So if you spend £2k on a matrix, be prepared to have to ship it back to the US if there are any issue.

[@Fiddlepoo]

Are you buy any chance selling your 4x4 now you have an 8x8 please 😂Can't seem to find the 4x4 anywhere online

[@barerfont]

Hey Cameron, what do you think of using a non-HDbaseT matrix and running HDMI fibre cable instead? With HDMI 2.1 @ 48Gbps and HDMI 2.2 @96 Gbps seems like you would have more chance of future compatibility than using cat 6a

[@camerongray1515]

That's definitely an option and I'll be looking at a great product for doing this soon. However, running HDMI is generally more awkward since you need to fit the plugs through holes rather than a bare cable, and need to buy exact lengths. The other issue is that optical HDMI cables are tied to a particular standard, if you'd installed an optical HDMI 2.0 cable a few years ago and now want HDMI 2.1, you'd need to replace the entire cable (unless you get a pure fibre system with detachable ends, I'll be taking a look at this soon!). Realistically for my setup, I don't need any sort of HDMI 2.1 type transmission - it's just used for basic multiroom content consumption.

[@barerfont]

@@camerongray1515 oh no, now I am looking at MPO12 cabling!

[@camerongray1515]

@ Yep, that's what I'll be taking a look at shortly! Not something I have a huge need for myself (not going to rush in and start installing it everywhere) but it looks like it'll be a great option for people who need HDMI 2.1 and beyond!

[@barerfont]

@@camerongray1515 hope you have a hook up, even prices on aliexpress are uncomfortable if you are putting in multiple locations, I guess you could run MPO12 (12 strand OM4?) in the hopes the detachable connectors get sold separately at some point

[@barerfont]

@camerongray1515 take a look at TSP #256 - Mysteries of Optical HDMI Cables - Tutorial, Teardown & Analysis of Inexpensive Optics - not MPO but really interesting look at the HDMI optical interface

[@Lagittaja]

Long video, not sure if I missed it. Did you try using the TV remote to send CEC commands to the input source device? (ie arrows enter back etc to navigate Chromecast interface)

[@balsanghera]

Iv had the 4x4 matrix in my basket for ages and struggle to think what I would realistically use for the inputs never mind 8 inputs. I wonder if they do a 4x8 the 1800+ price mark also puts it out of range.

[@pineappleroad]

I did once try using HDMI over CAT6 adapters so that i could send the video from a games console to another room, but i ended up having issues (not just with the wireless controllers) When i tried using the second HDMI output on the AV reciever and used a downscaler (as the HDMI over CAT6 adapters, and the other TV, are 1080p devices), i was finding that while the games consoles would output 4K, other devices would only output 1080p for some reason (i had to unplug the second HDMI cable from the back of the AV reciever to get those devices to output 4K) I don't think it would be worth me trying again, as while the wireless controllers did work in the other room, they would sometimes lose connection, and the cost of getting a HDMI matrix (and rewiring my games console setup to bypass my giant 16 input HDMI switch) would probably cost more than just getting an additional games console for that room

[@ivarplaystetris9910]

Nice. Would be cool to see you try a similar matrix that supports 4k 120hz. Would be interesting to see if there is any noticeable latency when gaming on for example a PS5. Since all lines between the matrix and the receivers are dedicated lines, then fibre could be a viable option.

[@LtdJorge]

That requires at least 32Gbps. OM3/OM4 fiber can do that. Also, if using 10 bit per color without chroma subsampling, the bandwidth needed is 40.09Gbps. Latency should be indistinguishable from HDMI cables, I’m pretty sure. However, for this to work you’d need something like a transceiver in the network world 😂

[@ivarplaystetris9910]

@LtdJorge There is probably some latency in the matrix, and considering the 8x8 8k units on the market cost a small fortune, I'm not going to be the guinea pig for this experiment.

[@camerongray1515]

HDMI Matrices, HDBaseT or otherwise don't add any sort of noticable latency - you're talking latency measured in microseconds. For 4K120, I don't think you'll find an HDBaseT matrix that currently offers it so you'd be looking at pure HDMI matrices and need to find some way to get the HDMI signal to your TVs. Fibre for HDMI is an option, but it's not as simple as it sounds - the trancievers required to send HDMI over a single fibre are extremely expensive due to the data rates involved. Inexpensive "Optical HDMI" cables get around this by using a multi-core HDMI cable to send several lower speed streams in parallel along with regular copper for the ARC/CEC signals. As an in-between option there are some systems that use "MPO" fibre which is a type of multicore fibre cable with special connectors on the end to send HDMI video in a way that's similar to a premade active optical cable but have the advantage of allowing you to swap the trancievers on the end.

[@ivarplaystetris9910]

@@camerongray1515 ... So let's hope someone sponsors you.

[@SB-qm5wg]

you continue to surprise.

[@brianadriaanse3058]

what your doing with the old setup?

[@Tumleren]

This may be a dumb question but regarding data rates, your limiting factor is the cable, right? You won't be able to get the 14 gbps over the 6A cable or do the data ratings/capabilities differ when using hdbase-t compared to ethernet?

[@camerongray1515]

The data rates aren't related to ethernet so HDBaseT 3.0 can push 14Gbps over a CAT 6A cable without issue. The standards of cables don't specify anything to do with the data rates, just the frequency characteristics. Of course with HDBaseT you really do want to make sure you're using good quality cable that's terminated correctly.

[@robwalker864]

I haven't watched the video yet, but have you looked at the video over IP solutions? I use the 'Just Add Power' products and they're pretty good. You have a VLAN per source, and can then switch your receivers to the appropriate VLAN. I even have a load of 1080p ones going spare if you wanted some sending your way!

[@camerongray1515]

It's definitely an option for some environments, especially when you don't have the dedicated cables in place for HDBaseT, but for my setup I installed enough cables from the start since I've always planned on using HDBaseT. The downside with video over IP is you're going to have lower ovarall quality due to the reduced data rate (unless you're talkign about 10GbE) and increased latency. This system may be used for streaming games conoles between rooms in the future so the latency was an important consideration.

[@JordanReese]

If you make a home assistant integration, please share the code with us!

[@andyhello23]

When you set up your rack, can you do a video on how much electricity it is using I am sure others would be interested to know Its your business how much electricity you want to use, but i would be interested when you get it set up what sort of energy your using with your setup on a daily business If that is too personal and you do not want to share, i understand, but would make an interesting video, as electricity price now is important for people.

[@camerongray1515]

I showed this in my power distribution video. Currently sitting at around 230w with the matrix powered off (long term it'll only be powered on when in active use). Would cost around £40/mo all in to run although I have solar PV so that'll offset a fair bit of that during the day. A fair bit of that power is because I'm currently split across 3 network switches, each with different capabilities. Longer term I'd want to consolodate those which would save a fair bit of power, although the payoff in terms of power savings vs the cost of new switches wouldn't be quick!

[@TheDigitalToaster]

2K price tag, device still does not support Atmos..

[@TheDigitalToaster]

UHD66-EXB132-K 1/3 the price tag but does support atmos. Weird

[@camerongray1515]

Atmos would be nice to have, but not a huge issue for me. The difficulty when using a distribution system for things such as Atmos, is you'd need every display you're watching a source on to support Atmos to be able to get sound. With my previous setup this was an issue - if I had a source configured to output even Dolby Surround in one room, an older TV I had in another room wouldn't be able to output any sound. Therefore, my plan now is to use this matrix to only output a "safe" video signal for all TVs (4K60, SDR, 2.0CH Audio) so that all my TVs can accept it (using the matrix's downscaler for 1080p TVs). For situations where I care about HDR or Atmos (which would only really be in the living room) I'd then use either a Smart TV app or a streaming box local to that TV.

[@Holdeenio]

I think for most use cases, pubs, restaurants, office buildings etc. atmos is irrelevant. I think most use cases may not even use audio. Where they do it’s likely very basic using the TVs internal speakers, or an in house PA system which is likely stereo or dual mono. At least that’s been the case in every application of this kind of matrix I’ve seen.

[@StanislavJochman]

40w is quite a lot in standby. German has quite high electricity prices.

[@camerongray1515]

The 48w figure is when in use, around 8w when in standby

[@dansonamission]

Which thin patch leads are you using?

[@camerongray1515]

Most of them are these: patchsavesolutions.com/773-slim-small-diameter-pvc-snagless-patch-cables. However a few others from other suppliers have slipped in over the years.

[@v1Broadcaster]

Why are you calling it category cable instead of modular cable?

[@camerongray1515]

I've never heard it called "modular cable" - Modular Plug/Modular Jack to describe the terminations on the end sure, but never a modular cable. Twisted Pair cable would have possibly been a better description but I was just trying to emphasise that this device isn't using Ethernet or any sort of common "Network" protocol.

[@HelloHelloXD]

Shame there is no MQTT support...

[@camerongray1515]

MQTT isn't really used in the AV integartion space so it's not something I'd necessarily expect. With AV equipment the norm is to use some sort of console API over telnet or a serial port which this supports. Realistically, it's dead easy to integrate this into Home Assistant either through a custom integration or through Node-RED which I'm using.

[@davidrowley-ic6dx]

On a separate note on your highly informative review … and I apologise in advance for my criticism here … BUT … of all your investments in very costly equipment, can you PLEASE allocate some resources to resolving the auto focus on your camera … maybe because I’ve been watching this particular video rather late at night, but the auto focus (both lack of and slow response) has been turning my eyeballs inside out !! 😳

[@camerongray1515]

EDIT: I'm now holding you personally responsible for the fact I'm now looking at new cameras... 😂 As much as I also hate my camera's autofocus, it's not something I've really had the time or budget to replace during such a busy period. It'll probably be something I look into in the new year. I also don't want to just rush in and quickly buy a new camera, I need a lot more time to research and figure out what I want. All of the recent projects were budgeted way in advance and some (such as this matrix) used hardware provided by the manufactuerer, I don't have a completely unlimited budget.

[@harihoudini]

outside of a commercial setting or a one off like yours, I just don't see the value of this. I tried very hard to think of use cases - but maybe it's not for US homes. Chuck a Roku or Shield box to every tv in every room and you get most of the stuff you would need to watch at a fraction of the cost and avoid obsolescence.

[@eDoc2020]

Using a streaming box on each TV only works if your video is on streaming sources. So you wouldn't be able to something as simple as live TV. And you also lose sync which might be valuable. If you want the same thing showing on multiple screens (such as going back and forth between two rooms) you really want a proper mirroring setup.

[@harihoudini]

@eDoc2020 well actually KZbin TV and sling are live TV apps so that's not really a use case. Only thing I see is mirroring same feed on multiple TV's which is a rare use case

[@eDoc2020]

@@harihoudini If you have TVs in connected rooms (within earshot of each other) then mirroring is essential. Granted you could also use a simpler splitter/extender instead of a matrix if this is the only requirement. It really makes the most sense if the video sources cost more than the distribution equipment. This $2k box is too expensive but if you have cable then a cheaper versions can easily pay itself back relative to paying increased STB rental fees.

[@hotrodhunk7389]

If it can't go through switches it's not going to work for me. If I'm running a new wire I'll just run HDMI.

[@v1Broadcaster]

At almost 50% compression claiming to be both visually lossless and low latency is quite the bold claim

[@camerongray1515]

Bear in mind that the 18Gbit HDMI stream is completely uncompressed so even extremely sllight compression can yield significant bandwidth reduction. If you're say watching Netflix over this, the video you're feeding in has been compressed to below 20Mbps, even a UHD Blu-ray is going to be at most 128Mbps. Even the movie/TV show you're watching will have had several steps of somewhat lossy (albeit high bit rate) compression throughout its production so an 8Gbit HDBaseT stream isn't going to be anywhere near the thing that significantly impacts quality. Similarly, latency is extremely low - the compression is being applied on the fly using dedicated ASICs, there's no framebuffer or anything that would add latency. With HDBaseT systems, latency is in the order of microseconds.

[@2Fast4Mellow]

What about HDMI over longer distances. So I have a TV at 300 yards away, I can watch the TV, but if I also there have a PlayStation, how do I get the HDMI signal of the PS to the other screens? Sometimes I wonder if the people that design these devices actually use them themselves. Because I can't be the only one wondering about these kind of scenario's. Is it that weird that during a party at your house you want to distribute a video source to multiple screens. This solution requires to have the control box within 10 feet (maximum length of 4K HDMI cable without loss of quality) of *ALL* your input devices... If both the HDMI port at the back of the matrix is used AND the HDMI input port of the receiver, somewhere in the menu of the matrix you have to specify which input should be used for input 2. Anybody has a solution for these type of scenario's?

[@camerongray1515]

The idae of this sort of system is that you would have all of your devices alongside the matrix and then distribute the video to the displays over HDBaseT. If you wanted to send video from remote rooms back to the matrix for futher distribution then you'd need to either use an additional HDBaseT transceiver pair (over a second CAT6 run) or some sort of HDMI cable such as an optical HDMI cable which can handle the distance. I'm not aware of any system like this that also allows HDMI input devices to be connected to the remote receivers, while it's a "nice to have" for a home setting, it's not something that would really be used in the commercial settings that these sorts of devices are generally used for.

[@felixcheung-l5o]

Is this company good?

[@pabajestem]

Well a 2k price tag without MQTT or Atmos support doesn’t sit right.

[@camerongray1515]

MQTT isn't really used in the AV integration space so it's not something I'd expect on a device like this. In that space, telnet/serial protocols are the norm and are pretty easy to integrate into systems such as Home Assistant. Atmos would be nice to have, but not a huge issue for me. The difficulty when using a distribution system for things such as Atmos, is you'd need every display you're watching a source on to support Atmos to be able to get sound. With my previous setup this was an issue - if I had a source configured to output even Dolby Surround in one room, an older TV I had in another room wouldn't be able to output any sound. Therefore, my plan now is to use this matrix to only output a "safe" video signal for all TVs (4K60, SDR, 2.0CH Audio) so that all my TVs can accept it (using the matrix's downscaler for 1080p TVs). For situations where I care about HDR or Atmos (which would only really be in the living room) I'd then use either a Smart TV app or a streaming box local to that TV.

[@garytill]

Atmos should work. I run a similar 8x8 matrix at home and Atmos TrueHD passes through perfectly if you inject the correct EDID for it. dolby vision works too.

[@garytill]

​@@camerongray1515not hard to make a REST to MQTT bridge in node red or something. I control my 8x8 hdbt rig with node-red acting as a bridge for the API.

[@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios]

Why is the speaker racing to get the info out? Punctuation exist for the sake of comprehension

[@joachimtheboss5326]

its called RJ45!

[@camerongray1515]

RJ45 just refers to the connector or more specifically the particular pinout of an 8P8C connector when used in networking or, originally, analogue telephony applications. It doesn't refer to a particular type of cable. I called it a "category cable" in this video to encompass all relevant standards (CAT 5E, CAT 6, CAT 6A) while avoiding terms such as "Network Cable" or "Ethernet Cable" which could confuse people into thinking that this sort of device would be able to send video through network hardware.

[@ryancholmes]

$2300 for HDMI 2.0 which is a protocol that was released in 2013? 4K/60 12 bit or 4K/30 24bit? Don't be fooled by this device. It will be fine for watching tv or movies but not for any sort of gaming whatsoever plus the latency introduced is. NO THANK YOU

[@camerongray1515]

The main market for this type of device is for distributing video around a building, such devices tend to lag behind the bleeding edge HDMI standards. And while $2300 isn't an insignificant amount of money, this is still one of the cheapest 8x8 HDBaseT matrices on the market, with many others costing closer to $10k! As far as I'm aware, there aren't any HDBaseT products that support HDMI 2.1. Realistically, HDMI 2.0 is still perfect quality for the vast majority of cases. There's nothing stopping you also having devices local to TVs where quality is critical. Latency with these systems is in the order of microseconds, minuscule in comparison to even the input lag of a TV!

[@movax20h]

Eh. No IPv6. If that would be fixed that would almost perfect. Still no sure how useful it is at home even with many devices.

[@wagnsonner]

Watching at 0,75 Speed. Slow the heck down! Unbearable at normal speed!!😢😢😢

[@ChristopherKaspar]

I'm watching at 2x speed just fine. 😅

[@whosscruffylookin95]

Thanks for the life hack 😂