Sky HD on Samsung UE55H7000 flatscreen TVWe recently installed a home cinema system for a customer where one of the existing sources was a SKY HD box. This box was to provide an HDMI feed not only to the home cinema system we installed, but also three other flat screen TV's in the home, some of which were approaching 100m away from the SKY box. In these situations, it is not possible to reliably transmit HDMI signals further than about 20m with an HDMI cable, and a different approach is required. Luckily for us, the SKY HD box was located in the same cabinet as the cat 5 patch panel where all of the cat 5 cabling from every room in the house came back to. This gave us the option of using a relatively new technology - HDMI over cat 5 cabling, which is good for up to 100m transmission distance. One benefit of the CYP506 kit is that each pair of transmitter/ receiver only require a single cat 5 cable for full transmission of HDMI, infra-red and RS-232 control signals. Other brands we have looked into require two cat 5 cables to achieve this.
Here is the wiring diagram showing how the SKY HD HDMI signal is split into 4 separate feeds by a CYP QU14S-4K HDMI distribution amplifier, one of which feeds the TV in the Den via a 10m HDMI cable, and the other three feeds are connected to the HDMI input of the CYP 506 transmitters. The transmitters in turn connect via an ethernet patch cable to the relevant cat 5 cable connected to the room where the remote TV is located. A supplied mains power supply provided DC power to the transmitter box. At the other end of the cat 5 cable a CYP 506 receiver unit connects via a patch cable to the ethernet socket behind the TV, and a short 0.5m HDMI cable then plugs into the HDMI input of the TV. Infra red control signals are also passed by the CYP506 kit, so that the SKY HD box can be controlled via any of the TV's. Each CYP 506 RX box has an input for an IR receiver which can be located discretely close to the TV - also each CYP 506 TX has an IR blaster output which then repeats any IR commands sent by the user to enable full IR control of the SKY box.
The box marked RXV775 is a Yamaha AV receiver with HDMI inputs and outputs for switching of the video signal. Both the 506 receiver and transmitter feature a 'lock' LED which when illuminated indicates that all cores of the cat 5 cable are correctly connected end to end, and that both units have synced to the same data - ie we have a working transmission system.
The CYP 506 kit supports the latest HDMI v1.4 and also 4K video processing, plus 3D . All high definition sound processing formats are supported including DTS Master Audio and Dolby True HD right up to 7.1 channels. It is HDCP compliant and also repeats CEC commands for convenient 'one remote' operation of the entire system. We were very impressed with it's performance, the picture and audio quality of HD transmissions from SKY over the cat 5 connection was indistinguishable from the native HDMI to HDMI connection in the Den.
One slight practical snag we found when installing is that the supplied dc power supply for the 506 receiver is too deep to clear the rear of a flat screen TV if the mains socket is behind the TV. One way around this is to space the TV off it's bracket with nylon spacers which thread though the fixing bolts into the TV. An alternative solution would be to cut a hole in the stud wall behind the TV to allow the power supply to be 'dropped' behind the plasterboard wall, plugged into an extension cable fitted with a slim mains plug. A third solution is to power the receiver from an unused USB socket on the rear panel of the TV. This irritation aside, we would strongly recommend this CYP solution should you need long distance HDMI distribution.
