Copper Cable Extenders

These products use twisted pair cabling typically found in data center applications to extend DVI and HDMI signals distances of up to 100 meters (328 ft.). Typically, CAT6A or CAT7 cables will provide the best results with respect to noise immunity and range. In addition to the twisted pair cabling, these extenders consist of two basic components

Transmitter Unit – accepts an input signal from the source device and conditions it for transport over the twisted pair cable.

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.

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 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 up to 65 ft. (~ 20 meters).  DVIGear's range of Active Cable Extenders (ACE™) provides sufficient range to equalize cable lengths of up to 200 ft. (~ 60 meters).