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There are many challenges to overcome when designing systems that require long DVI / HDMI cable runs. These high-speed serial data formats operate at 10x (or higher) bit rates than corresponding analog signals. The bit rates of these digital signals increase in direct proportion to their resolution and color depth. As cable length increases, moving these high-speed bits over copper cables becomes increasingly difficult due to a variety of factors including: cable capacitance, inter-pair and intra-pair skew, crosstalk, differential impedance errors, group delay errors, etc.
In order to achieve successful digital cable runs, it is essential to use high-performance cables where these factors are minimized to the greatest extent possible. This especially true with longer cables >15 meters (50 ft.) because these degenerative effects become worse as cable length increases. Improvements in cable range are also possible using copper cable extender technologies, for which there are three (3) basic approaches:
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The most common type of extender technology is the active cable equalizer. Long cables suffer from high levels of insertion losses caused by cable capacitance. When insertion losses become too high, the cable will introduce an excessive amount of jitter (known as additive jitter) to the digital signal, which can severely degrade the cable’s performance. A cable equalizer can help mitigate insertion losses by restoring lost high frequency components of the digital signal; at the same time this reduces jitter to acceptable levels. Today, nearly all modern displays have a certain level of cable equalization on their DVI and HDMI inputs; however, in most cases, the amount of equalization is only enough for cable lengths of 10-20 meters (33-65 ft.). DVIGear’s range of Active Cable Equalizers (ACE™) provides sufficient range to equalize cable lengths of up to 60 meters (~ 200 ft.).
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DVIGear offers a wide range of copper cable extender solutions that utilize a variety of copper cable mediums, including: DVI/HDMI cables, CAT-X category cables and coaxial cables. Each type of extender offers certain advantages for different applications and budgets. In most cases, these extenders utilize two elements:
Transmitter Unit – accepts an input signal from the source device and conditions it for transport over the intended copper cable medium.
Receiver Unit – receives the signal from the Transmitter Unit and converts the signal to the intended output format for display or routing further downstream in the signal chain.
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In the digital world, the number one signal quality problem is excessive jitter. Jitter can be caused by a wide range of factors and every component in the digital signal chain adds a certain amount of jitter to the signal. In complex systems the resulting aggregate jitter can make the signal unusable. To solve this problem, the digital signal must be fully “re-clocked” using a digital repeater. These devices receive, de-serialize, buffer, re-serialize and then re-transmit the digital signal. In doing so they can make a significant reduction in signal jitter and other degenerative effects intrinsic in long cables runs. Repeaters can be used at the source side of long cable run to “clean-up” a noisy transmitter. They can be used at the display side end of long cable, and they can be used in the middle of two long cables for increased range. Unlike many competitive units, DVIGear’s range of DVI and HDMI Splitter/Repeaters fully re-clock the input signal, and offer independent re-clocked outputs.
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