Just moving into a new house and looking into piping 4 sources around the house, has anyone had any experience with these ??

Wholesale - Lenkeng LKV344 (HDMI Matrix Switch) (4x4) hdmi 4 in 4 out, Free shipping, $241.14-243.47/Piece, 1 piece/Lot | DHgate.com

Seen mixed results with HDMI over cat5 so thinking of running the HDMI cables themselves, just wondering if anyone knows the actual cable run lengths etc, I know it says 10 meters by 28AWG cable; 15 meters by 26AWG cable on the specs but not sure how reliable this is.

Its about right mate, I would not recommend running cables over 15 meters though without a backup plan (2xcat6).

But people have run them even further using active cables.

I would also say it depends on what you want to pay as well.

A decent cat5/cat6 balun will piss 50 meters, but you will pay around £200+ for a decent hdmi balun, other cheaper makes (ebay etc) you take your chances... I had one for £80 from ebay and it worked a treat, I also had one for £45 and it was rubbish.

With that in mind you should run cat6 as the CSA is bigger and will increase the chances of success.

Regarding the Matrix (its 1.3 so not sure if it will support 3D at the 10GBS rate)
I am not sure, how is switching on this matrix achieved, and does it have IR pass through?
Not sure if it was my browser but I could not get a decent description showing on the finer details.

Shop around before you make any decisions.

I found these people to be ok for baluns (one broke though lol).

4x4 HDMI Matrix Switcher (High Speed with 3D support) - HKM44-UK

I mean I know the price is more but as far as matrix's go its pretty good value and 3D support

Regards
Mick

These are the full specs:

Lenkeng LKV344 | Others | The LAB eShop

I'm not fussed about 3D at the moment as I dont have a 3D tv and no plans to get one at the moment although will run the higher spec cables so would just be a case of swapping the matrix out if I do.

down.PNGup.PNG

The house is only quite small, I have attached what I want to do, its not to scale but none of the cables would be over 10m except the 2nd back bedroom.

Would I be able have a powered spitter/repeater where the cable comes in upstairs to run off into the back room ?? I realise this would only be able to be the same as the other bedroom but its only a spare room

I'm having new wooden flooring downstairs so hoping the cables can be run under that but cutting out channels in the 5mm underlay so its flush

I just looked at it and what is in the box is 1 IR repeater and 1 remote... but you have 4 areas to cover... so add the costs for the extras on that.

I am a little concerned if this has IR passthrough or not (not IR switching remote that comes with it), and also how it works in conjunction with the matrix?

It's not very clear to be honest.

Yes you should be able to have a powered splitter come from one of the feeds.

Regarding the underlay, should work... keep in mind that some hdmi cables are thicker than others of course.

Are you going to run redundancy in case the hdmi ever fails in the future, it does happen, either an extra hdmi cable or 2 x cat6?

Regards
Mick

I control all my sources over the network with my phone or bluetooth so I'm hoping you can switch the matix over LAN or create a custom webpage running on a webserver on my PC to control the RS232 software as it can be connected to my PC which is one of the sources in the same cupboard

I have asked the supplier the question, just depends how he interprets it with his broken English lol

Supplier got back to me lol:

"I thought I understood your mean, The rs232 is a serial port of the remote control. As for the LAN ports are reserved and currently can't access the network. Thanks!"

So controlling directly over LAN is a no go but been looking around and i'm pretty sure I can connect the switch to the PC with a serial cable and create a webpage to send the switching commands from it.

Once thats up and running I should be able to access it from my phone, so think i'm gonna take a punt on it, I fancy a little project to work on (not like I havent got enough to do with decorating a whole house haha).

If I cant get the switching over LAN working I would have to look at IR senders or replacing the switch with one of the more expensive ones you posted.

Think I will take your advice and run the redundancy cables downstairs while I have got the floor up just in case, dont think upstairs redundancy is as important as would be easy enough to swap out if something was to happen.

Changed my mind over the splitter upstairs, going to split the dining room feed out to the room on the left, which is currently a garage but intend to convert it into a theatre room with a HD projector at some point in the future but is defo at the bottom of my todo list at the moment.

I will run the 2 cables upstairs intead to give the choice of different feeds in the bedrooms but one would still need to go into a repeater for the extra distance.

If I get the webpage working ("IF" being the operative word ) I will post the details as think it would be a pretty good solution for the price

Sounds like a plan

Do keep us informed with pictures, we all love an AV build

I am also going to be sorting out my own AV cupboard this weekend coming... just in the process of buying a small rack etc.

Regards
Mick

You could also have a PC backend running myth TV and then a load of raspberry pi / apple TVs to run the frontends in your different rooms. HDMI over long distances can be a headache. Try to avoid running cables near any power cables

If you had an RTI setup it uses RS232 without the need for computers

RTI is a brilliant remote setup, it will allow you to drag config's for certain boxes, would be good to know if your box was supported by RTI?

if not you could easily write the config if the matrix provides the codes.

Mick

It comes with RS232 control software, I have asked the supplier if they can give me a copy of it so I can have a look before decide what to do.

My theory is..........if I monitor the output on the COM port when sending each command from the software I should be able to see exactly what is sent to the matrix for each input/output switching command.

From what I have read you can use PHP to write to the serial port so once I have got the output from all of the commands I can create a page to send the same commands from any browser.

Now I could be living in dreamland and just expecting things to be that easy but hoping it will work