could you please test sending an HDMI signal to a transmitter and then directly hook the transmitter to a PC via its ethernet port? I would to use OBS to stream my game session from my gaming pc via ethernet to the PC that is going to compress the signal and upload the session (so that I dont lose FPS performance on my gaming pc) and I would like to do that over ethrnet so that I wont need to buy an expensive capture card. So topology would be gaming PC having 2 HDMI cables, HDMI1 hooked to my main gaming monitor, HDMI 2 hooked to that transmitter you showcase here and then ethernet from that transmitter hooked on the ethernet port of my second pc and then receive that signal over OBS.
@@apalrdsadventures Why would he need fiber as there are multiple ethernet standards faster than 1Gb (2.5/5/10Gb) which should be able to handle the bandwidth?
I used little HDMI to IP converter boxes like the ones featured in this video to drive several displays from a single media computer at a church about 8 years ago. They had several TVs spread around their building that they wanted to display their announcements and various other things on and already had ethernet to most of the rooms where these TVs were located so we thought that this would be a good solution for them. What we found out was that the converter boxes that we used got extremely hot while they were in use and ended up cooking themselves to death after a couple of months. We ended up coming back in and putting a low powered computer at each screen instead that could be managed via a VNC connection if anything needed to be updated. I haven't given these converters another thought after that job as we had a 100% failure rate on them in less than a year. I don't know if anything has changed since then but I feel like that is definitely something everyone should be aware of before buying into this solution.
Many manufacturers, especially ones selling cheaper devices, have horrible over heating issues. I work at a AV-systems integrator as a service technician and I've blasted my fair share of manufacturers, even big ones, about their really really bad thermal designs and inefficient electronics design. Before working at this company, I did a lot of electronics design so I have keen understanding of how electronics works and how to design stuff regarding thermals and for long service life... and it's expensive and takes along time and also usually makes the device much, much bigger. And many companies don't create their equipment for high duty cycles. Many expect that their devices are on for 1-2 hours a day and have ample free air to cool or are installed in a rack that's forcefully cooled... then people people and use them in unptimal conditions 24/7 stuck into another piece of equipment that heats uo the ambient... and that's that. One has to pay ridiculous amounts for equipment that can serve 24/7/365 for 5 years... and that makes the pool of equipment to choose from very small as well..
I was wondering about this. Like any computing device, they have to do the encoding and decoding on each end, not only heat but reliability is probably a big issue. How long until they fry or, worse, if they hang every couple of hours, and you need to reset the power manually on each one. I suspect these are fine for casual KVM use, but 24x365 hours a day running video, I guess they will not last long before they die. And if you have to get more expensive ones in terms of quality, at that point it is just more cost affordable to put budget thin clients on each endpoint that can do more things as well. They might involve more time in terms of management, but also more reliable in terms of electronics. Thanks for sharing!
@@Mtaalas Agree, but on their marketing page they list usage cases like security cameras monitoring, which means they are advertising them for 24 - hours use. As you said, based on experience, it is very unlikely they are actually rated for that sort of use, or they even tested them for longevity.
Same here. I noticed they got very hot and started dying, we use them for security camera monitors. This week I am replacing them once again because they just don't work for long. I had even made fan driven cooling boxes for them to no avail. I'm thinking now I want to just hack some of the HDMI optical cables with my own length optics and go that route.
I've not used HDMI to IP converter boxes, but if you only need a couple displays we've had good luck with cheap HDMI extenders attached to an HDMI splitter box. You do need to be careful in cases where you're attaching to TVs with different resolutions as the splitter can only use a single resolution, or have a device that's smart enough to run 2 separate streams for eg 720i and 1080p, and then use a separate splitter for each stream. The cheapest extenders don't carry the EDID information from the splitter/PC and so they don't allow you to set the resolution. They still work fine, but you need to make certain they are uniform (all 720i, or 720p, or 1080i, or 1080p with no mixing) and attach to TVs that support the hard-coded resolution. You can't run these extenders over switches; they have to be connected one-to-one: Tx-to-Rx. At the price point, even getting a few failures once in a while is fine. We've had problems with more expensive options that used DIP switches on the transmitter/receiver pair as they became extremely picky over time and failed. Current ones that just pass through EDID or are hardcoded for a single resolution haven't failed (yet), but they're cheap enough that keeping a couple spare pairs and replacing as needed isn't a problem. Still, they've lasted for upwards of 5 years in certain cases and are on 24/7. Considering how cheap the units are, I don't believe they do any conversion of the video stream and instead just send it as is with some limitations on refresh rate and colour depth to stay within the 1gig bandwidth. They get a bit warm but not hot, and i've yet to notice wire issues for the ones that use passive receivers. If you only need a single stream these extenders might be the more reliable option. A single Rx or Tx unit for the shown TESmart unit is about $50, or $90 for both. The dumb extenders are about $20-30 for a Tx/Rx pair, and as long as you stick to a singular model they're interchangeable. Add a splitter for about $100 ( assuming 1 in, 8 out) and you're good. You pay a bit more in space/money for HDMI cables to hook everything together, but there's less to fail since there's no active conversion. Food for thought, I'll be picking up a couple of these IP units for testing myself. I like the idea that I can hook up multiple racks/benches, and then have them be accessible from multiple workstations around the office. The fact that they don't pass through USB outside mouse/keyboard would actually be a plus in my use-case. One of my racks has a KVM that can change selection via IR, which this might work with. Pretty sweet.
I have literally been researching this the past two days and ended up just temporary putting a PC behind the TV until I could find a solution that was guaranteed to work without breaking the bank. Can’t believe I just came across this video that you were making at the same time I’ve been researching it myself. Definitely going to try this.
I literally listened to this on my way home from a robotics competition, heard your comment about scoring displays, and now I want to try this at one of the ones I run. Thank you for the idea!
there are other video over IP protocols if you can live with lower frame rates and have spare RPis or slow PC boxes avaiable. Fine for occasional events, not great solution for more permanent situations. heck even got HTML5 for scoreboards!
I'm currently using NDI for video-over-IP in a large live production setup. It works flawlessly over the existing network, and since it's software-based, we don't need additional hardware on the transmitter side - the machine is already connected to the network anyway, so it just sends it. On the receiving sides we use a mix of thin clients (raspberry pis) and hardware solutions (e.g. the $150 Birddog Play, which is super convenient) I was initially drawn to NDI because it's both low-latency and high-fidelity. The one cost is bandwidth - but for a hardwired gigabit network, you can afford a much higher bitrate than would ever make sense over the internet. Another lovely aspect of NDI is that there's a good amount of existing management software to handle its network connections, so you get pretty good visibility.
Multicast triggered a bad memory.. A long time ago at a company i used to work at.. we just bought Norton Ghost to image a bunch of machines. We found out the hard way that our infrastructure didn't like multicast. I've never seen the network guys run to fast in my life.
@@apalrdsadventures Yep! Newer networks have no issues. This was way back in the day on some 100Mb 3com switch stacks. We had many pcs running NT 4 if that tells you the year ;) I'm old af lol
@@apalrdsadventures IPv6 is fun. Works well with pfsense and several of my MikroTik switches. 😁 There is one thing I've discovered with pfsense's HA Proxy is if you have IPv6 on the WAN you don't need IPv6 on the backend server as pfsense will NAT6to4 it. At first I thought I needed that but it works fine without it since I don't have static IPv6 from Comcast to setup internal DHCP6.
HAProxy is a bit of a different beast, it's not really doing NAT, it's terminating the TCP socket and then opening a new one to the backend server and passing the data through (possibly doing TLS termination too). I actually have Comcast too, and I've found that DHCPv6 PD is effectively static. They haven't changed my prefix in over a year, so I treat it as static and use internal DHCPv6, but I also use a ULA prefix at the same time for internal communications.
Рік тому+45
5-6Mbps sounds very low though. Even if it using H.264 there should be some easily noticeable visual degradation at 1080p60 with full motion video. Especially if it transmits RGB/4:4:4. Otherwise it's a very neat device.
I doubt it's the raw video, and more likely JPEG or MPEG conversion to "update" the display. This would be similar to what thinclients or zero clients would do. That's amount of bandwidth usage would be about right.
The bank I was working for did something like this in 2009. They pulled in a fiber line then to our network stack. From there they had cat 6 running out. A few of those lines went to the display TVs we had. There would be an HDMI cable out from the TV to a box about the same size here that had both Ethernet and HDMI connections. We get news and promotions played on it during the day. It was a solid solution for us.
I've been searching for something like this for a while, and I didn't know this existed or what to search for exactly. It's 5am, and now I can rest. Thank you for this video!
This is a really cool device! It's super unfortunate it doesn't use general-purpose USB forwarding protocols (like what VirtualHere does, which works beautifully), because it really limits the potential use-cases if you want to do things like have a headset with bidirectional audio or use a gamepad at the remote end.
Yeah and given that volume control buttons don't work I strongly suspect it means even other HID devices like controllers and joysticks don't work at all or are risky. And depending on the distance and walls etc, I don't think you can assume even wireless devices will work if just plugged into the host machine
Exactly what I thought. It really sucks that the USB is not general purpose. Probably means that it doesn't work with wireless usb keyboards & mice either. Has a ton of potential if they can release a new version with full USB support though. Edit: Nevermind, he's using a wireless mouse. So I guess they work at least. That kind of widens the use cases for sure.
@@cheebadigga4092 I don’t see why not, separate USB over IP hardware should work fine, might get interesting if more than one USB input is used accidentally or intentionally
What a great video. I legit did not think I would sit through 20 minutes straight. I wasn't even looking for this video. Nice work. You seem to know how to make videos for people with a low attention span like me.
Thanks for the video. However it would be great if you would measure "the interesting" parts of the product. The lag, the compression artifacts, etc... Because if you are compressing 1080p60 which is almost 3Gb/s into a single digit Mb/s, then the compression must be pretty impactful. And this product is marketed more as IPKVM than a HDMI over IP. You do not need any fancy measurement tools to do it. For example you can set the input monitor and the output monitor side by side, write simple program to flash black and white and then record it on your phone with 60FPS. Then you can watch the video frame by frame and see what the delay is. Similar setup can be used to check for the compression artifacts. Switch different images fast, try one pixel wide black and white lines, 1 pixel checker board. Even the "standard" HDTV test patterns include patterns for checking some of these things. Or run a more demanding video or game/demo.
@@testthisfordecficiencies I have some experience with HDMI over IP. And one thing is for sure. 3Gbit/s > 1GBit/s 🙂 So unless you are using 10Gbit Ethernet you need to have some form of compression. And I've seen a fair share of weird compression artifacts...
@@radekhladik7895 Definitely compressed. But a good algorithm and enough processing, the picture can be uncompressed pixel perfect at the other end. 4K60 4:4:4 12 bit @ 18 GBPS over a 1Gbps ethernet. Crestron, QSC, Extron all do it at only a couple ms of latency. I have professional experience with AVoIP and broadcast. Evertz does it really well to.
There is hardware that can stream av1 at ridiculously low bitrates before it appears annoying. Most low action 4k would be transparent well below 1Mbps. I wonder if anyone can figure how to leverage that in a desktop streaming solution that gives the same experience as hdmi over ip. I don't know how many times to multiply the bitrate by to look the same at the lowest possible latency though. It's a clear tradeoff and probably would be noticeable; without caring about latency would be annoying where input lag is important.
Thank you for making these videos. Been watching you for only a few months but I've seen every video and I'm always excited to see what you put out next. No matter what it is I know it'll be incredible.
For general home usage, these are fine, nothing special. However, these are likely high latency in terms of encoding so I wouldn't recomment them for gaming as they are likely using H.264 for encoding/decoding. Curious if you can just pop open a VLC instance on a computer and watch the raw stream. Opening something like Bonjour browser on the network could point you toward the proper stream url. As for other other devices, I can name a dozen of them off hand. (Crestron NVX using M-JPEG2000 or M-JPEG-XS, Samsung/Harman/AMX/SVSI using M-JPEG2000 or H.264, SDVoE consortium, Dante AV using M-JPEG200, Biamp TesiraLux using M-JPEG over AVB/TSN capable networks, Extron NAV using their own hybrid codec, Atlona Omnistream using Dirac/VC-1 or Dirac Pro/VC-2, NewTek using NDI, SMPTE 2022 using MPEG2, SMPTE 2011 using uncompressed SDI encapsulated over IP for broadcast work, various H.264, various H.265/HEVC, and various AV-1 systems coming soon). The problem with so many is that while various vendors can use the same core codec, the discovery, encryption and handshaking protocols are all different between vendors. The reasoning being mainly vendor locking as many of these systems end up being the same price as HDbaseT equipment in terms of end points but they end up being 'cheaper' due to the presence of an existing networking switch at the business/enterprise/corporate level. Oh yeah, I forgot that HDbaseT-IP was also a thing for a little while as that was supposed to be the HDbaseT consortium's bridge to the IP world. This is why that while I strongly believe that AV-over-IP is the wave of the future, I tend to avoid it today until this period of proprietary vendor-lock in is over. For 1080p60, 1 Gbit Ethernet is fine with most of the various solutions I listed above. Things get challenging when attempting to do 4k60 over the same 1 Gbit Ethernet link. So far I've been able to tell that compression is invoked using all the capable codecs at 1 Gbit. Those that offer 10 Gbit support fair far better at 4k60. What I want to see are various 2.5 Gbit capable equipment as that can use the same cabling as 1 Gbit Ethernet because well they're nearly the same thing. For the consumer space, good quality, low latency 4k60 support is out of reach outside of the high end still. (Arguably at high latency, low quality, various solutions already exist today.) Those willing to look at used pro/enterprise gear for the consumer market is another story but buyer beware as with all used goods. One other aspect that differentiates between consumer and pro/enterprise gear is PoE support. This means less outlets to have around devices which is generally a good thing. Pro/Enterprise systems also have management features that are nice for admins but generally lost on consumers. Security is a big thing for business and all products aimed at them adhere to HDCP and encrypt their network traffic. Consumer systems are more wild west here. As for USB extension over IP, full encapsulated USB 2.0 support exists. A company called Icron makes the chipset to do it and resells them to various vendors. This is why most USB extenders over Ethernet look the same as they literally are minus the logo on them.
personally - i'm using optical USB 3.1/HDMI from aliexpress for quite cheap - and have 4k, HDR with full speed of USB 3.1 and quite low latency. Same could be achieved with Icron and their thunderbolt via optical (you can carry there usb3 and video signal with audio), but it would be not cheap at all
Most of those codecs wouldn't be feasible for this kind of application. Usually your main option would be NDI (which would likely work much better than the hardware used in this video)
Not sure how I have gone so long working with IT products and never thought of utilizing this feature. I am definitely interested in using this in my new houses basement so I can access my computer in the theater room. Thanks!
I connected two Lorex DVR security camera systems across 300 ft in our office at work. Using two JustAddPower transmitters (one TX for each DVR box with 4 cameras each) Out to 3 offices, each with 2 receivers (1 for each DVR) Also used 2 DLink unmanaged switches to distribute the 3 feeds per DVR to the 6 monitors.
How interesting! I just bought a fiber DisplayPort cable so that I could hook up my computer in a separate room as mine! Luckily it's right behind a single wall so cable length didn't have to be massive, but one thing I couldn't skimp out on was USB - I play a lot of games and did not want any latency so I got some thick USB 3 extension cables
Was working on hacking together this same solution for myself! It seems like so many of the use-cases are for commercial AV, glad to see someone else doing the same for home networking.
It would have been good if you could have covered all the IP based tech for HDMI transmission, like NDI. A company called Birddog makes similar boxes that use NDI, which allows you to do the same thing, however you can also view the signal from any web browser, VLC etc. I would have also liked to know if the boxes you reviewed supported: * 4K * HDR - Dolby Vision / HDR10 / HDR10+ * VRR * HDCP pass through and negotiation * EDID management Etc
We use BirdDog 4K NDI gear at work. Great hardware. Australian made too! For cheaper non-routable point-to-point 4K HDMI over UTP, we use CleanDigital TPU4120 kits, but they only do 4:2:0 - good enough for workplace presentation requirements, but what's great is that they are rock solid - they never ever fail, and one end conveniently powers the other end via PoE so it's just one PSU with a range of 100m - the supplied mains power PSU can be connected to either the TX or RX side. They also have serial connections to relay commands for those devices with RS232 connections.
Maybe one day there will be HDMI 2.1 boxes that work over IP. I'm talking 4k at 120Hz with VRR support. That would be cool to have. USB 2 would be nice to have. And if I want to use a webcam, I could just buy a camera, another HDMI over IP receiver/transmitter, and an HDMI capture card. Now that would be cool to have.
The Apple Tv supports the use of the original apple tv IR remote codes. So I use a combination of old apple tv IR remotes and universal IR remotes around the house to control newer apple tvs.
Have you measured the latency (both single path and roundtrip)? I'm interested in how many ms it is. Another use case that might be interesting to test is to have the streams recorded with ffmpeg or even vlc (if it's a generic h264 encoded format that is standardized, otherwise you might have to capture the raw packets and transcode it to a known standard in order to play them back). It would also be nice to get it working over a layer-2 VPN and see how it performs. Nice video and keep up the good work!
I don't have a way to measure HDMI latency without also introducing latency of the capture setup (which is not great with what I have). So at best I can try to get the number of frames behind at 60fps. I suspect it's either 1 or 2. But I can definitely do VPN testing in the future
@@apalrdsadventures an easy way to test the latency from transmitter to receiver is to passively split the hdmi on the input, connect it to a monitor directly and then put a second monitor next to it that is connected to the receiver (ideally it should be two monitors of the exact same type, but it won’t make that much of a difference). Then display a clock on the pc that also displays milliseconds (just an online timer will work fine). Take a photo with your phone or camera from both the screens at the same time, and the difference between the two clocks will be the latency with an accuracy depending on the frame rate. Thanks for the quick response btw!
@@apalrdsadventures you are right about the ms resolution. It still would allow you to test how many frames delay there are, with the accuracy in ms depending on the frame rate.
I think this is a very cool setup but i do wonder about high frame rate and high resolution video also in regard to input lag. However this could be a very nice KVM for administering your servers from anywhere in the house
“Do you want to put your PCs in the basement and connect from any desk” Yes. But specifically, wirelessly. I have a dream of a powerhouse pc and server in a home lab that I can remote to for gaming, storage, whatever from any room. Even stream media if I want. Following to watch your journey.
Slowly working there. Trying to test out and prototype all of the ideas first before I take the leap, so a lot of the projects for the next few months are related to a more reliable and well-planned back end network and virtualization environment. Soon I'll virtualize my desktop without moving it, so it's still nearby for troubleshooting but I can iron out any issues with passthrough and whatnot.
Excellent video, a few questions in case you do a follow-up: 1) will the transmitters constantly blast data at the router even if there are no receivers tuned to their channel? 2) what kind of power consumption are the transmitters/receivers using (especially when there are no receivers are tuned, are the constantly compressing the video)? 3) if you have a WiFi hotspot set up, it would be critical to ensure multicast is correctly handled in your network not to blast this into the air? how could one verify that's the case?
1. Yes, but the switch should ignore it if it supports IGMP snooping (no subscribers to IGMP group = nobody to forward the traffic to). If the switch doesn't support IGMP snooping, it will treat multicast as broadcast and send it to everyone, which is.... not ideal. 2. Transmitter doesn't turn off when there are no receivers. Transmitter pulls about 1.5W (Kill-a-watt isn't very accurate down this low though). 3. It depends. AFAIK a WiFI AP should always be doing IGMP snooping and only sending multicast packets to clients subscribed to the group, but I'm sure there's some AP out there that does this poorly. It would show up as a constant data rate when there are clients connected to the AP but otherwise not doing anything.
Multicast has been my nemesis in networking. The Ubiquiti stuff I use seems to work, luxul network products cause issues for cox cable streaming boxes. If a customer has ATT internet and cox cable tv, hardwire Ethernet works to the “wireless” cox cable boxes but ATT wifi6 causes issues. I hate dedicating a cat6 to a hdmi balun, hdbt allows for injecting your WAN/LAN into the matrix which then has a LAN port in each end matrix box but this is still a nightmare especially if you have addressed devices at the end. Your router will probably lose the route thru the matrix’s internal matrix. Your video seems prospectful for what I want to get done. Very good!
TiVo triggers me though. In my days with cox cable, no new techs could grasp the install process of a cable card converter with a TiVo box, but I could! So I got all the TiVo installs in my little region. Either it worked in 10min, or you had an opportunity to join your customer for breakfast lunch and dinner because you gonna be there the entire day. One install took 5 converters, 8 cable cards, and the customer even went to best buy and bought a new TiVo while I was jacking with the first one. Second one was an equal nightmare but eventually worked
Do you have an HDMI capture card? Would love to see an uncompressed recording (or at least a few screen grabs) of what comes out at the end both when there is not much happening (like reading text) or when there is a lot of motion (like gaming).
I just have a USB capture device (which itself encodes to MJPEG), and it also has a bit of a latency problem on its own, so I don't have a good way of doing this unfortunately.
I work at a University and we use Wyrestorm. Which is considerably more expensive but can be controlled more centrally. It does so raw USB and my favourite feature is PoE.
These could also be switched using VLANs rather than having to use their remote to set a number. Example VLAN1 has Transmitter1 connected VLAN2 has Transmitter2 connected. Then you can control which source your receiver gets by changing the VLAN assignment of your receivers switch port. Note. You'd need to leave all devices set to the same 1-16 number.
Of course, and that's the approach I'm using in the next episode with the Mikrotik hEX. But it's not as approachable in general, which is why I started without it.
@apalrd's adventures it should also make to product scale greater than 16 transmitters. Because they can all be set to channel 01 and not clash because of the VLAN isolation. This is how the JustAddPower devices work. There is no addressing for them. The homeautomation systems like Control4 have drivers to talk to switches and reassign VLANs
Subscribed: Your project looks like a similar end-goal to mine, but I am doing it all in software (NDI+USBIP) [that by definition does need hardware to run on] that runs on a Raspberry Pi 4, Jetson Nano, or similar SBC. Some details on my channel. I've also been following along Linus[Tech Tips]' home's 5 PC LAN trying to do something similar...but has much deeper pockets that either one of us and can afford $1500 fiber based USB 3.0 extenders. :/
had a few of these laying around that I forgot about an never looked up what they did, thanks for making this now Ive gotta dig those back out and put them to use
Really love your videos, watched quite a few and implemented lots of similar stuff in my own Homelab. This video really got my head scratching. What do you think about removing the compression (and thus probably some more latency) from the equation? Upgrading to 10gig (or more) Networking would allow for plenty bandwidth (1080p60 would be ~4gbit). Going for a cheap used switch + a few thin-clients (+ m.2+pcie adapters) + a few sfp+ network adapters would allow for a similar, completely software based solution. Am i going crazy or is this a great idea (and way to rationalize a 10/40gbit homenetwork)?
That's essentially what HDBaseT does, except not over an Ethernet carrier. It starts streaming the frame as soon as it starts receiving it over HDMI, so it doesn't need to wait for the entire frame to compress and transmit it. In a completely software based solution, you still need to wait for the frame to be rendered anyway, but not transmitted over HDMI. As long as the encoder can run at 2-3x the frame rate you won't be introducing much latency, and even a little compression makes a BIG difference in data rate. Using GPU accelerated encoding, getting down in the 20-30Mbit range is pretty fast, and the decoding is a more straightforward process that can probably be done by thin clients.
What about 4K? What about 120Hz? What about multi channel audio/Dolby Atmos? What about HDR/Dolby Vision? And which HDMI version does is support? I like the subject of the video, but I'm missing quite a lot of information.
I really wish you would’ve covered why someone would want to use this solution over something arguably more feature rich such as the PiKVM for Hardware Management, or Steam Link/Parsec for Gaming. For A/V purposes, if it is doing any kind of H264/H265 decoding then I’d have concerns about the quality it’s using, and whether or not it supports things like ARC/E-ARC, Atmos passthrough, or Variable Refresh Rate. Granted the Pi shortage has seen the price inflate, but given that this thing starts at $130….plus the cost of each additional endpoint? Yikes. If you’re the type of person interested in doing this type of project, you’re probably also the type of person that has a Pi or two kickin’ around, so that cost may not be an issue. A PiKVM all in one hat can be had for around £60 and lets you have unlimited endpoints. But if you did need specifically to have control of several rack devices, with USB passthrough…you could definitely DIY a cheaper and more feature rich solution. • Basic HDMI Capture Card - $15 • HDMI x 4 / USB KVM Switch - $30 • IR IP Extender (For KVM IR Remote) - $10 • DuPont Jumper Cable Pack - $1 This combined with the PiKVM software would arguably get you a better solution with unlimited endpoints, plus access outside of your network and manual power state control. If you wanted more dedicated endpoints, just grab an HP-T620 for $20 and you’re good to go. Or, if you don’t need some of those hardware features….just use VNC/RDP/Steam Link, etc. I really enjoyed the video and am definitely a fan of your channel - I just wish you would’ve compared other solutions to show how it compares to other solutions, especially latency.
There are better solutions individually for some use cases, but this is generic enough to be useful for a lot of cases. PiKVM is great for server management. I actually went into this project starting to build a PiKVM setup with a rack mount 8 port KVM switch, but I couldn't get a Pi which supported USB device emulation and this was more flexible for me. I do have a Pi 4 now, so I can build that project, eventually.
Thanks for the review of the device. It's a nice device, but there is a big downside to it (in my opinion: there is no extra output from the extender, I mean: if you want to play in your room and then stream the image to the living room, you need an extra switch for the HDMI or you need to change where the cable goes. I solved this matter at home using the nice Steam Link device. For the lucky ones who own one, it's the best solution to stream your computer(s) video signal to where you have the Steam Link connected. You can link multiple origin devices and switch between them easily. The downsides? It's not on sale anymore (at Steam shop), you need a Steam account :D
I love the youtube algoritm, I've been trying to find a video explaining just this a year ago. Couldn't find one that exactly explains the situation I'm in. This is great!
This is a really great video. I subscribed to you a while back, but I haven't tuned into your channel in a while. I think I'm going to change that now. I've been wanting to send HDMI over my network for a while. I'm so happy that you put this together before I purchased anything.
@apalrd's adventures you really saved the day for me sir!!! Thank you so much for making this video. I just got a CCTV system and have a 2 Storie home and didn't have a clue how I can see it on my tv or computer. This transmitter/Receiver kit works like a charm 👍
I've always been fascinated by remote screens Been doing 60fps 1080p video over lan for years Steam link, space deck, moonlight and remote ripple space deck is fast and can install on fire tabs allowing you to watch videos from the pc desktop and play pc games at 60 fps Basically giving you a 10ins ips portable pc using a controller and keyboard mouse to see pc on your tv you can plug in a firestick and install space deck this is on wifi5 and I've had no lag or fps drop thank you for the video as its always good to see and try other ways
Very interesting concept. I never would have even thought of doing it this way. I want to add my 2c for 7:36: UTP just means unsheilded twisted pair, what most ethernet cables are by default. STP (shielded twisted pair) is better if you want to run the cable through plenum, since they have shielding against EMR. A bit pedantic, but you seemed confused about it haha. Source: I'm a JR. network engineer.
Actually this is great for bussineses with lots of mirrored screens, since a single hdmi source is going over ip, the switch will duplicate that single input into different outputs withoud increasing the load of the source hdmi because of it, well, running a lot of duplicates
@7:40 there is no such thing as an "Ethernet Cable". Ethernet is a protocol which can be carried over many different media. UTP is a cable type, in which the U stands for unshielded, as opposed to STP, which is shielded.
Thank you so much for this great review! I've been considering options recently for moving equipment to another room to isolate it acoustically for audio recording. This is a great idea to throw into my considerations as I weigh options.
HDMI cable actually CAN be fixed. Back in mid 2000s we did DIY hdmi cables out of connectors and CAT6 shielded UTP cables. That was cheaper than buying a long ready-made cable, and also - allowed to pull the cable through concrete walls without drilling it for the connector to pass. Do not remember maximum length that worked, but it was around 15 meters or so.
you can also run XLR audio through Cat6 it's amazing. I work for a university I build smartrooms with my supervisor and we run HDMI through CAT6A. My faviotrie is tripp lite cat6 HDMI extendors. So far I been working there for a year now I haven't seen one fail yet. This video was insightful and helpful.
AES50 is the standard audio-over-ethernet and is pretty ubiquitous. AES67 is audio-over-ip and, though pretty mature, hasn't found the same level of adoption
Is there any way to reliably control the power button in a similar fashion. If i had my pc in the basement i have no idea how I'd be able to remotely turn it on to use the tech from this video
Funny you mention that "it's not UTP, it's Ethernet". It can be both. In fact, it is both. Ethernet is the link layer, UTP is the physical layer. So actually it's IP over Ethernet over UTP :)
Idk about HDMI, but I did meticulously solder on a replacement DisplayPort connector. Also learned my hands aren't fit to be a brain surgeon. The cable worked in the end though.
Great video. Iwas looking for a solution to manage my coomputer from another room without having to make holes thru the walls and your video gave me the solution. You got a new subscriber. Keep up the good work 😂
I have 2 years using active UTP KVM's ( from amazon ) , ASTER Multiseat, i generate 8 Virtual PC's with a ryzen 7 2700X, 64GB of RAM, 1TB hybrid AMD StoreMI, 2 8GB AMD RX570 and a 750watts powrr supply and everything works great, the largest UTP 6 cable i have is 53m
Throwing science at the wall, seeing what sticks! Haha. Nice test, and I like the idea of KVM-over-IP. The multicast feature is interesting too, but bandwidth issues, oh my... time for a 10Gbps switch :).
There are things and tools that allow you to make an HDMI cable the right length: the right HDMI cable, HDMI connectors and HDMI crimping pliers. I have experience making 80m cable this way and it works well!
A free option for simpler needs. OBS can send anything it can capture over a home network to a client but unintuitively you need to select recording not streaming and custom output FFmpeg. Then a client such as a tablet with VLC can be used to view OBS output.
My guy, you can repair HDMI cables because they do make something called an HDMI breakout board. It has terminal blocks that you attach the wires to and it has a female end on it or you can get it with a male end.
I got it thinking worst case I needed a gigabit switch with SFP uplink, and end up using it for basically everything that requires some test networking. Super handy!
@@apalrdsadventures I generally like the versatility of Mikrotik devices. A few days ago, I recovered a Mikrotik device on a remote site by creating an EoIP tunnel between my local device in my home office and an upstream device on a remote site. A literal virtual network cable.
I want to do an experiment using my CRS328 as a router, but it's too important to my network to use for anything else. I've been happy with all of my Mikrotik stuff and put it to work very quickly.
in 2021 I bought a 8K fiber HDMI cable on Amazon, for a steep 158 euros, with some brand that was awarded with crazy revolutionary stuff for video over fiber. Yesterday I found out that the issues i've had since I bought it (trying to have use it on my TV in the past always had issues and hardly ever worked flawless) was broken. As it didnt even want to transmit PC to monitor information. Luckely because it was of a external seller amazon is like just sent it back and we give a 100% refund (holy cow?) So yeah... Looking for some 4k over IP solution now.. There's so much options and there's always one thing missing. either its only 30hz or its only HDMI 2.0 or even 1.4 etc etc etc And also while watching this video half of the options on Amazon don't even imply any way to work with a switch... Anyway Im going to keep watching because now youre going to throw my solution ;D thanks in advanced
The box actually says it's a KVM box, so things like CEC would not normally be needed for KVM (though nor would IR unless the equipment is specialist or ancient). A decent single-board computer could probably do this, and would include USB-over-IP for other devices (which I tested and was amazed by!) An SBC would also run Apple TV and other streaming services as they're supported. I don't think this device is suitable for media in this way. The fact that it works well with gaming is likely a result of HDMI and USB being standards. 1080p is definitely enough for KVM equipment. One thing that I think is missing is the bandwidth use when you have multiple devices connected. It won't be much but it would be nice to see multicast working that tiny bit harder.
Nvidia Shield Pro costs about the same and has quite a bit more functionality. I fought it for awhile myself.. even pondering various NDI solutions since they hinted at the lowest latency. The shield is just the best.
Currently no ability to stream to VLC, although it's just streaming bare h.265 with no encapsulation (this seems to trip up VLC). We (my discord community) were able to decode it, but not with VLC.
I made an update video answering YOUR QUESTIONS! ua-cam.com/video/5n-hQ29qWh4/v-deo.html
could you please test sending an HDMI signal to a transmitter and then directly hook the transmitter to a PC via its ethernet port? I would to use OBS to stream my game session from my gaming pc via ethernet to the PC that is going to compress the signal and upload the session (so that I dont lose FPS performance on my gaming pc) and I would like to do that over ethrnet so that I wont need to buy an expensive capture card.
So topology would be gaming PC having 2 HDMI cables, HDMI1 hooked to my main gaming monitor, HDMI 2 hooked to that transmitter you showcase here and then ethernet from that transmitter hooked on the ethernet port of my second pc and then receive that signal over OBS.
i need a solution for 4k 144hz hdmi is there something out ?
@@QuaK3RRR You'll need fiber for that
@@apalrdsadventures Why would he need fiber as there are multiple ethernet standards faster than 1Gb (2.5/5/10Gb) which should be able to handle the bandwidth?
Powering off the TVs usb is probably not going to be enough power, but it’s worth checking.
i friggin love how unpolished these videos are, straight to the point. we get the info we want without too much fluff
Feels just like a bro explaining cool shit theyre into 😎
So did you subscribe?
I was thinking "this feels like an early 2000s yt video" 😂
I used little HDMI to IP converter boxes like the ones featured in this video to drive several displays from a single media computer at a church about 8 years ago. They had several TVs spread around their building that they wanted to display their announcements and various other things on and already had ethernet to most of the rooms where these TVs were located so we thought that this would be a good solution for them. What we found out was that the converter boxes that we used got extremely hot while they were in use and ended up cooking themselves to death after a couple of months. We ended up coming back in and putting a low powered computer at each screen instead that could be managed via a VNC connection if anything needed to be updated. I haven't given these converters another thought after that job as we had a 100% failure rate on them in less than a year. I don't know if anything has changed since then but I feel like that is definitely something everyone should be aware of before buying into this solution.
Many manufacturers, especially ones selling cheaper devices, have horrible over heating issues. I work at a AV-systems integrator as a service technician and I've blasted my fair share of manufacturers, even big ones, about their really really bad thermal designs and inefficient electronics design.
Before working at this company, I did a lot of electronics design so I have keen understanding of how electronics works and how to design stuff regarding thermals and for long service life... and it's expensive and takes along time and also usually makes the device much, much bigger.
And many companies don't create their equipment for high duty cycles. Many expect that their devices are on for 1-2 hours a day and have ample free air to cool or are installed in a rack that's forcefully cooled... then people people and use them in unptimal conditions 24/7 stuck into another piece of equipment that heats uo the ambient... and that's that.
One has to pay ridiculous amounts for equipment that can serve 24/7/365 for 5 years... and that makes the pool of equipment to choose from very small as well..
I was wondering about this. Like any computing device, they have to do the encoding and decoding on each end, not only heat but reliability is probably a big issue. How long until they fry or, worse, if they hang every couple of hours, and you need to reset the power manually on each one. I suspect these are fine for casual KVM use, but 24x365 hours a day running video, I guess they will not last long before they die. And if you have to get more expensive ones in terms of quality, at that point it is just more cost affordable to put budget thin clients on each endpoint that can do more things as well. They might involve more time in terms of management, but also more reliable in terms of electronics. Thanks for sharing!
@@Mtaalas Agree, but on their marketing page they list usage cases like security cameras monitoring, which means they are advertising them for 24 - hours use. As you said, based on experience, it is very unlikely they are actually rated for that sort of use, or they even tested them for longevity.
Same here. I noticed they got very hot and started dying, we use them for security camera monitors. This week I am replacing them once again because they just don't work for long. I had even made fan driven cooling boxes for them to no avail. I'm thinking now I want to just hack some of the HDMI optical cables with my own length optics and go that route.
I've not used HDMI to IP converter boxes, but if you only need a couple displays we've had good luck with cheap HDMI extenders attached to an HDMI splitter box. You do need to be careful in cases where you're attaching to TVs with different resolutions as the splitter can only use a single resolution, or have a device that's smart enough to run 2 separate streams for eg 720i and 1080p, and then use a separate splitter for each stream.
The cheapest extenders don't carry the EDID information from the splitter/PC and so they don't allow you to set the resolution. They still work fine, but you need to make certain they are uniform (all 720i, or 720p, or 1080i, or 1080p with no mixing) and attach to TVs that support the hard-coded resolution. You can't run these extenders over switches; they have to be connected one-to-one: Tx-to-Rx. At the price point, even getting a few failures once in a while is fine. We've had problems with more expensive options that used DIP switches on the transmitter/receiver pair as they became extremely picky over time and failed. Current ones that just pass through EDID or are hardcoded for a single resolution haven't failed (yet), but they're cheap enough that keeping a couple spare pairs and replacing as needed isn't a problem. Still, they've lasted for upwards of 5 years in certain cases and are on 24/7.
Considering how cheap the units are, I don't believe they do any conversion of the video stream and instead just send it as is with some limitations on refresh rate and colour depth to stay within the 1gig bandwidth. They get a bit warm but not hot, and i've yet to notice wire issues for the ones that use passive receivers. If you only need a single stream these extenders might be the more reliable option. A single Rx or Tx unit for the shown TESmart unit is about $50, or $90 for both. The dumb extenders are about $20-30 for a Tx/Rx pair, and as long as you stick to a singular model they're interchangeable. Add a splitter for about $100 ( assuming 1 in, 8 out) and you're good. You pay a bit more in space/money for HDMI cables to hook everything together, but there's less to fail since there's no active conversion.
Food for thought, I'll be picking up a couple of these IP units for testing myself. I like the idea that I can hook up multiple racks/benches, and then have them be accessible from multiple workstations around the office. The fact that they don't pass through USB outside mouse/keyboard would actually be a plus in my use-case. One of my racks has a KVM that can change selection via IR, which this might work with. Pretty sweet.
I have literally been researching this the past two days and ended up just temporary putting a PC behind the TV until I could find a solution that was guaranteed to work without breaking the bank. Can’t believe I just came across this video that you were making at the same time I’ve been researching it myself. Definitely going to try this.
thats how algorithm workz.
@@h8h81 Well the video was posted at the same time as the commenter researched, so some coincidence was involved there
These devices seem to have a high failure rate on Amazon.
was this successful long term?
Your phone🕵🏻♂️
I literally listened to this on my way home from a robotics competition, heard your comment about scoring displays, and now I want to try this at one of the ones I run. Thank you for the idea!
Small digital world
@@JaWz6 Yo no kidding! Microscopic
there are other video over IP protocols if you can live with lower frame rates and have spare RPis or slow PC boxes avaiable. Fine for occasional events, not great solution for more permanent situations. heck even got HTML5 for scoreboards!
I'm currently using NDI for video-over-IP in a large live production setup. It works flawlessly over the existing network, and since it's software-based, we don't need additional hardware on the transmitter side - the machine is already connected to the network anyway, so it just sends it. On the receiving sides we use a mix of thin clients (raspberry pis) and hardware solutions (e.g. the $150 Birddog Play, which is super convenient)
I was initially drawn to NDI because it's both low-latency and high-fidelity. The one cost is bandwidth - but for a hardwired gigabit network, you can afford a much higher bitrate than would ever make sense over the internet.
Another lovely aspect of NDI is that there's a good amount of existing management software to handle its network connections, so you get pretty good visibility.
Can u show us set up please?
@@djpotnoodle2013 I'd appreciate that too.
Multicast triggered a bad memory.. A long time ago at a company i used to work at.. we just bought Norton Ghost to image a bunch of machines. We found out the hard way that our infrastructure didn't like multicast. I've never seen the network guys run to fast in my life.
Proper support for routedIP multicast isn't easy to get right, but on a single layer 2 network it's not bad with modern smart switches
@@apalrdsadventures Yep! Newer networks have no issues.
This was way back in the day on some 100Mb 3com switch stacks. We had many pcs running NT 4 if that tells you the year ;)
I'm old af lol
Networking has come a long way! Now you can migrate everything to IPv6!
@@apalrdsadventures IPv6 is fun. Works well with pfsense and several of my MikroTik switches. 😁 There is one thing I've discovered with pfsense's HA Proxy is if you have IPv6 on the WAN you don't need IPv6 on the backend server as pfsense will NAT6to4 it. At first I thought I needed that but it works fine without it since I don't have static IPv6 from Comcast to setup internal DHCP6.
HAProxy is a bit of a different beast, it's not really doing NAT, it's terminating the TCP socket and then opening a new one to the backend server and passing the data through (possibly doing TLS termination too).
I actually have Comcast too, and I've found that DHCPv6 PD is effectively static. They haven't changed my prefix in over a year, so I treat it as static and use internal DHCPv6, but I also use a ULA prefix at the same time for internal communications.
5-6Mbps sounds very low though. Even if it using H.264 there should be some easily noticeable visual degradation at 1080p60 with full motion video. Especially if it transmits RGB/4:4:4. Otherwise it's a very neat device.
Yeah I was thinking the same. Taking 12+Gb data from HDMI and converting it to 3Mb stream is hugely compressing it. more than 1000:1 in fact.
So this should even be enough over wifi doesn't it?
I doubt it's the raw video, and more likely JPEG or MPEG conversion to "update" the display. This would be similar to what thinclients or zero clients would do. That's amount of bandwidth usage would be about right.
The bank I was working for did something like this in 2009. They pulled in a fiber line then to our network stack. From there they had cat 6 running out. A few of those lines went to the display TVs we had. There would be an HDMI cable out from the TV to a box about the same size here that had both Ethernet and HDMI connections. We get news and promotions played on it during the day. It was a solid solution for us.
I've been searching for something like this for a while, and I didn't know this existed or what to search for exactly. It's 5am, and now I can rest. Thank you for this video!
Glad I could help!
This is a really cool device! It's super unfortunate it doesn't use general-purpose USB forwarding protocols (like what VirtualHere does, which works beautifully), because it really limits the potential use-cases if you want to do things like have a headset with bidirectional audio or use a gamepad at the remote end.
Yeah and given that volume control buttons don't work I strongly suspect it means even other HID devices like controllers and joysticks don't work at all or are risky. And depending on the distance and walls etc, I don't think you can assume even wireless devices will work if just plugged into the host machine
Exactly what I thought. It really sucks that the USB is not general purpose. Probably means that it doesn't work with wireless usb keyboards & mice either. Has a ton of potential if they can release a new version with full USB support though.
Edit: Nevermind, he's using a wireless mouse. So I guess they work at least. That kind of widens the use cases for sure.
is it possible to use both solutions at once?
@@cheebadigga4092 I don’t see why not, separate USB over IP hardware should work fine, might get interesting if more than one USB input is used accidentally or intentionally
@@JasonWho thanks. Might setup something like this if need be.
You are a badass dude. Teaching using mikrotik, explaining multicast perfectly, explaining the unique behavior of the product. very cool!
Glad you liked it!
suggested vid that I will never search for in my entire life but I've watched it all and learned something new. Thank you
BRO, THIS IS LITERRRRRREALLLLLYYYY WHAT I HAVE BEEN LOKING FOR SINCE 2020
What a great video. I legit did not think I would sit through 20 minutes straight. I wasn't even looking for this video. Nice work. You seem to know how to make videos for people with a low attention span like me.
Thanks for the video. However it would be great if you would measure "the interesting" parts of the product. The lag, the compression artifacts, etc...
Because if you are compressing 1080p60 which is almost 3Gb/s into a single digit Mb/s, then the compression must be pretty impactful. And this product is marketed more as IPKVM than a HDMI over IP.
You do not need any fancy measurement tools to do it. For example you can set the input monitor and the output monitor side by side, write simple program to flash black and white and then record it on your phone with 60FPS. Then you can watch the video frame by frame and see what the delay is.
Similar setup can be used to check for the compression artifacts. Switch different images fast, try one pixel wide black and white lines, 1 pixel checker board. Even the "standard" HDTV test patterns include patterns for checking some of these things.
Or run a more demanding video or game/demo.
On these crappy units, sure. If you go high-end its lossless with ms response times. Look at Crestron DM-NVX for example. 10 times the price though.
@@testthisfordecficiencies I have some experience with HDMI over IP. And one thing is for sure. 3Gbit/s > 1GBit/s 🙂
So unless you are using 10Gbit Ethernet you need to have some form of compression. And I've seen a fair share of weird compression artifacts...
@@radekhladik7895 Definitely compressed. But a good algorithm and enough processing, the picture can be uncompressed pixel perfect at the other end. 4K60 4:4:4 12 bit @ 18 GBPS over a 1Gbps ethernet. Crestron, QSC, Extron all do it at only a couple ms of latency. I have professional experience with AVoIP and broadcast. Evertz does it really well to.
There is hardware that can stream av1 at ridiculously low bitrates before it appears annoying. Most low action 4k would be transparent well below 1Mbps. I wonder if anyone can figure how to leverage that in a desktop streaming solution that gives the same experience as hdmi over ip. I don't know how many times to multiply the bitrate by to look the same at the lowest possible latency though. It's a clear tradeoff and probably would be noticeable; without caring about latency would be annoying where input lag is important.
Thank you for making these videos. Been watching you for only a few months but I've seen every video and I'm always excited to see what you put out next.
No matter what it is I know it'll be incredible.
Glad you like them!
I just found your channel last night. I love how no frills, to the point and information packed your content is.
Good to see Michael Falk is doing fine and doing tech videos!
For general home usage, these are fine, nothing special. However, these are likely high latency in terms of encoding so I wouldn't recomment them for gaming as they are likely using H.264 for encoding/decoding. Curious if you can just pop open a VLC instance on a computer and watch the raw stream. Opening something like Bonjour browser on the network could point you toward the proper stream url.
As for other other devices, I can name a dozen of them off hand. (Crestron NVX using M-JPEG2000 or M-JPEG-XS, Samsung/Harman/AMX/SVSI using M-JPEG2000 or H.264, SDVoE consortium, Dante AV using M-JPEG200, Biamp TesiraLux using M-JPEG over AVB/TSN capable networks, Extron NAV using their own hybrid codec, Atlona Omnistream using Dirac/VC-1 or Dirac Pro/VC-2, NewTek using NDI, SMPTE 2022 using MPEG2, SMPTE 2011 using uncompressed SDI encapsulated over IP for broadcast work, various H.264, various H.265/HEVC, and various AV-1 systems coming soon). The problem with so many is that while various vendors can use the same core codec, the discovery, encryption and handshaking protocols are all different between vendors. The reasoning being mainly vendor locking as many of these systems end up being the same price as HDbaseT equipment in terms of end points but they end up being 'cheaper' due to the presence of an existing networking switch at the business/enterprise/corporate level. Oh yeah, I forgot that HDbaseT-IP was also a thing for a little while as that was supposed to be the HDbaseT consortium's bridge to the IP world. This is why that while I strongly believe that AV-over-IP is the wave of the future, I tend to avoid it today until this period of proprietary vendor-lock in is over.
For 1080p60, 1 Gbit Ethernet is fine with most of the various solutions I listed above. Things get challenging when attempting to do 4k60 over the same 1 Gbit Ethernet link. So far I've been able to tell that compression is invoked using all the capable codecs at 1 Gbit. Those that offer 10 Gbit support fair far better at 4k60. What I want to see are various 2.5 Gbit capable equipment as that can use the same cabling as 1 Gbit Ethernet because well they're nearly the same thing. For the consumer space, good quality, low latency 4k60 support is out of reach outside of the high end still. (Arguably at high latency, low quality, various solutions already exist today.) Those willing to look at used pro/enterprise gear for the consumer market is another story but buyer beware as with all used goods.
One other aspect that differentiates between consumer and pro/enterprise gear is PoE support. This means less outlets to have around devices which is generally a good thing. Pro/Enterprise systems also have management features that are nice for admins but generally lost on consumers. Security is a big thing for business and all products aimed at them adhere to HDCP and encrypt their network traffic. Consumer systems are more wild west here.
As for USB extension over IP, full encapsulated USB 2.0 support exists. A company called Icron makes the chipset to do it and resells them to various vendors. This is why most USB extenders over Ethernet look the same as they literally are minus the logo on them.
personally - i'm using optical USB 3.1/HDMI from aliexpress for quite cheap - and have 4k, HDR with full speed of USB 3.1 and quite low latency. Same could be achieved with Icron and their thunderbolt via optical (you can carry there usb3 and video signal with audio), but it would be not cheap at all
@@s.i.m.c.a do you have a aliexpress reference you can share?
Most of those codecs wouldn't be feasible for this kind of application. Usually your main option would be NDI (which would likely work much better than the hardware used in this video)
Not sure how I have gone so long working with IT products and never thought of utilizing this feature. I am definitely interested in using this in my new houses basement so I can access my computer in the theater room. Thanks!
For power you could also use a PoE power adapter to run the whole setup from the network switch, may help cut down on wire clutter :)
From the website they don't seem to advertise using PoE, but it certainly would make things much nicer.
The device can accept POE?
@@Robert-sq7bp Probably not directly but you can get dongles that accept POE and split out to a network and power connection
@@rfitzgerald2004 Really? That's interesting, I'd love an example
@@Robert-sq7bp Look up PoE Splitter. TP-Link has one.
I connected two Lorex DVR security camera systems across 300 ft in our office at work.
Using two JustAddPower transmitters (one TX for each DVR box with 4 cameras each)
Out to 3 offices, each with 2 receivers (1 for each DVR)
Also used 2 DLink unmanaged switches to distribute the 3 feeds per DVR to the 6 monitors.
How interesting! I just bought a fiber DisplayPort cable so that I could hook up my computer in a separate room as mine! Luckily it's right behind a single wall so cable length didn't have to be massive, but one thing I couldn't skimp out on was USB - I play a lot of games and did not want any latency so I got some thick USB 3 extension cables
Does any vendor offer do it yourself USB cable ends that you are aware of?
@@Terran.Marine.2 I do not know if any :(
Was working on hacking together this same solution for myself! It seems like so many of the use-cases are for commercial AV, glad to see someone else doing the same for home networking.
It would have been good if you could have covered all the IP based tech for HDMI transmission, like NDI.
A company called Birddog makes similar boxes that use NDI, which allows you to do the same thing, however you can also view the signal from any web browser, VLC etc.
I would have also liked to know if the boxes you reviewed supported:
* 4K
* HDR - Dolby Vision / HDR10 / HDR10+
* VRR
* HDCP pass through and negotiation
* EDID management
Etc
He mentions at the end they are 1080p 60fps and that HDCP did appear to work.
@@alexatkin yeah I would have liked him to show the testing with those devices, plus HDR, VRR etc.
We use BirdDog 4K NDI gear at work. Great hardware. Australian made too!
For cheaper non-routable point-to-point 4K HDMI over UTP, we use CleanDigital TPU4120 kits, but they only do 4:2:0 - good enough for workplace presentation requirements, but what's great is that they are rock solid - they never ever fail, and one end conveniently powers the other end via PoE so it's just one PSU with a range of 100m - the supplied mains power PSU can be connected to either the TX or RX side. They also have serial connections to relay commands for those devices with RS232 connections.
Read about HDBaseT... it's amazing, but expensive technology. But it's completely transparent to the user.
The fact that their website makes it practically impossible to find the prices, tells us everything we need to know about how unsuitable that is.
What a great video. You can really tell how much thought and work went into it while watching. Thank you! :)
Maybe one day there will be HDMI 2.1 boxes that work over IP. I'm talking 4k at 120Hz with VRR support. That would be cool to have. USB 2 would be nice to have. And if I want to use a webcam, I could just buy a camera, another HDMI over IP receiver/transmitter, and an HDMI capture card. Now that would be cool to have.
Wow! This is pretty cool. A type of solution that I wasn't aware of for distributing media. Thanks for another rad video! You are awesome!
Glad you enjoyed it!
AV guy here- we've been doing this for years.
only 1080p. no 4K :(
The Apple Tv supports the use of the original apple tv IR remote codes. So I use a combination of old apple tv IR remotes and universal IR remotes around the house to control newer apple tvs.
Have you measured the latency (both single path and roundtrip)? I'm interested in how many ms it is. Another use case that might be interesting to test is to have the streams recorded with ffmpeg or even vlc (if it's a generic h264 encoded format that is standardized, otherwise you might have to capture the raw packets and transcode it to a known standard in order to play them back). It would also be nice to get it working over a layer-2 VPN and see how it performs. Nice video and keep up the good work!
I don't have a way to measure HDMI latency without also introducing latency of the capture setup (which is not great with what I have). So at best I can try to get the number of frames behind at 60fps. I suspect it's either 1 or 2.
But I can definitely do VPN testing in the future
@@apalrdsadventures an easy way to test the latency from transmitter to receiver is to passively split the hdmi on the input, connect it to a monitor directly and then put a second monitor next to it that is connected to the receiver (ideally it should be two monitors of the exact same type, but it won’t make that much of a difference). Then display a clock on the pc that also displays milliseconds (just an online timer will work fine). Take a photo with your phone or camera from both the screens at the same time, and the difference between the two clocks will be the latency with an accuracy depending on the frame rate. Thanks for the quick response btw!
That will still round to the nearest frame though, not a millisecond number. So it would be either 16.6 or 33.2ms, not an exact ms.
@@apalrdsadventures you are right about the ms resolution. It still would allow you to test how many frames delay there are, with the accuracy in ms depending on the frame rate.
Another way would be to measure the audio delay.
UA-cam algorithm doing its thing you came up in a suggested video ❤️
I think this is a very cool setup but i do wonder about high frame rate and high resolution video also in regard to input lag. However this could be a very nice KVM for administering your servers from anywhere in the house
“Do you want to put your PCs in the basement and connect from any desk”
Yes. But specifically, wirelessly. I have a dream of a powerhouse pc and server in a home lab that I can remote to for gaming, storage, whatever from any room. Even stream media if I want.
Following to watch your journey.
Slowly working there. Trying to test out and prototype all of the ideas first before I take the leap, so a lot of the projects for the next few months are related to a more reliable and well-planned back end network and virtualization environment. Soon I'll virtualize my desktop without moving it, so it's still nearby for troubleshooting but I can iron out any issues with passthrough and whatnot.
Excellent video, a few questions in case you do a follow-up:
1) will the transmitters constantly blast data at the router even if there are no receivers tuned to their channel?
2) what kind of power consumption are the transmitters/receivers using (especially when there are no receivers are tuned, are the constantly compressing the video)?
3) if you have a WiFi hotspot set up, it would be critical to ensure multicast is correctly handled in your network not to blast this into the air? how could one verify that's the case?
1. Yes, but the switch should ignore it if it supports IGMP snooping (no subscribers to IGMP group = nobody to forward the traffic to). If the switch doesn't support IGMP snooping, it will treat multicast as broadcast and send it to everyone, which is.... not ideal.
2. Transmitter doesn't turn off when there are no receivers. Transmitter pulls about 1.5W (Kill-a-watt isn't very accurate down this low though).
3. It depends. AFAIK a WiFI AP should always be doing IGMP snooping and only sending multicast packets to clients subscribed to the group, but I'm sure there's some AP out there that does this poorly. It would show up as a constant data rate when there are clients connected to the AP but otherwise not doing anything.
Multicast has been my nemesis in networking. The Ubiquiti stuff I use seems to work, luxul network products cause issues for cox cable streaming boxes. If a customer has ATT internet and cox cable tv, hardwire Ethernet works to the “wireless” cox cable boxes but ATT wifi6 causes issues. I hate dedicating a cat6 to a hdmi balun, hdbt allows for injecting your WAN/LAN into the matrix which then has a LAN port in each end matrix box but this is still a nightmare especially if you have addressed devices at the end. Your router will probably lose the route thru the matrix’s internal matrix.
Your video seems prospectful for what I want to get done.
Very good!
TiVo triggers me though. In my days with cox cable, no new techs could grasp the install process of a cable card converter with a TiVo box, but I could! So I got all the TiVo installs in my little region. Either it worked in 10min, or you had an opportunity to join your customer for breakfast lunch and dinner because you gonna be there the entire day. One install took 5 converters, 8 cable cards, and the customer even went to best buy and bought a new TiVo while I was jacking with the first one. Second one was an equal nightmare but eventually worked
Do you have an HDMI capture card? Would love to see an uncompressed recording (or at least a few screen grabs) of what comes out at the end both when there is not much happening (like reading text) or when there is a lot of motion (like gaming).
I just have a USB capture device (which itself encodes to MJPEG), and it also has a bit of a latency problem on its own, so I don't have a good way of doing this unfortunately.
I work at a University and we use Wyrestorm. Which is considerably more expensive but can be controlled more centrally. It does so raw USB and my favourite feature is PoE.
These could also be switched using VLANs rather than having to use their remote to set a number.
Example
VLAN1 has Transmitter1 connected
VLAN2 has Transmitter2 connected.
Then you can control which source your receiver gets by changing the VLAN assignment of your receivers switch port.
Note. You'd need to leave all devices set to the same 1-16 number.
Assuming your switch has API/SSH/Serial interface the switching could be controlled by HomeAssistant, Alexa, etc
Of course, and that's the approach I'm using in the next episode with the Mikrotik hEX. But it's not as approachable in general, which is why I started without it.
@apalrd's adventures it should also make to product scale greater than 16 transmitters. Because they can all be set to channel 01 and not clash because of the VLAN isolation.
This is how the JustAddPower devices work. There is no addressing for them.
The homeautomation systems like Control4 have drivers to talk to switches and reassign VLANs
@@gavinnoname1424 if the HID traffic is using UDP, it would make trying to use keyboards and/or mice at each receiver quite interesting
Right, right. The Ethernet I already have. *cries in old house*
That's a simple KVM extender, old technique.
I really had to wait for the unboxing just to see "KVM extender"??
Why not writing into title?
‘I get my news from reddit’ respect level 100%
But how will you get the forcefed media biased stories?
Subscribed: Your project looks like a similar end-goal to mine, but I am doing it all in software (NDI+USBIP) [that by definition does need hardware to run on] that runs on a Raspberry Pi 4, Jetson Nano, or similar SBC.
Some details on my channel.
I've also been following along Linus[Tech Tips]' home's 5 PC LAN trying to do something similar...but has much deeper pockets that either one of us and can afford $1500 fiber based USB 3.0 extenders. :/
had a few of these laying around that I forgot about an never looked up what they did, thanks for making this now Ive gotta dig those back out and put them to use
Really love your videos, watched quite a few and implemented lots of similar stuff in my own Homelab. This video really got my head scratching.
What do you think about removing the compression (and thus probably some more latency) from the equation?
Upgrading to 10gig (or more) Networking would allow for plenty bandwidth (1080p60 would be ~4gbit).
Going for a cheap used switch + a few thin-clients (+ m.2+pcie adapters) + a few sfp+ network adapters would allow for a similar, completely software based solution.
Am i going crazy or is this a great idea (and way to rationalize a 10/40gbit homenetwork)?
That's essentially what HDBaseT does, except not over an Ethernet carrier. It starts streaming the frame as soon as it starts receiving it over HDMI, so it doesn't need to wait for the entire frame to compress and transmit it.
In a completely software based solution, you still need to wait for the frame to be rendered anyway, but not transmitted over HDMI. As long as the encoder can run at 2-3x the frame rate you won't be introducing much latency, and even a little compression makes a BIG difference in data rate. Using GPU accelerated encoding, getting down in the 20-30Mbit range is pretty fast, and the decoding is a more straightforward process that can probably be done by thin clients.
Dude! This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do! So glad you made this, you got a sub!
What about 4K? What about 120Hz? What about multi channel audio/Dolby Atmos? What about HDR/Dolby Vision? And which HDMI version does is support? I like the subject of the video, but I'm missing quite a lot of information.
Look it up
NDI is the industry standard for video over IP but good to see other alternatives be tested.
This is what I was going to say. Surprised the video didn't mention NDI
I really wish you would’ve covered why someone would want to use this solution over something arguably more feature rich such as the PiKVM for Hardware Management, or Steam Link/Parsec for Gaming. For A/V purposes, if it is doing any kind of H264/H265 decoding then I’d have concerns about the quality it’s using, and whether or not it supports things like ARC/E-ARC, Atmos passthrough, or Variable Refresh Rate.
Granted the Pi shortage has seen the price inflate, but given that this thing starts at $130….plus the cost of each additional endpoint? Yikes. If you’re the type of person interested in doing this type of project, you’re probably also the type of person that has a Pi or two kickin’ around, so that cost may not be an issue. A PiKVM all in one hat can be had for around £60 and lets you have unlimited endpoints. But if you did need specifically to have control of several rack devices, with USB passthrough…you could definitely DIY a cheaper and more feature rich solution.
• Basic HDMI Capture Card - $15
• HDMI x 4 / USB KVM Switch - $30
• IR IP Extender (For KVM IR Remote) - $10
• DuPont Jumper Cable Pack - $1
This combined with the PiKVM software would arguably get you a better solution with unlimited endpoints, plus access outside of your network and manual power state control. If you wanted more dedicated endpoints, just grab an HP-T620 for $20 and you’re good to go. Or, if you don’t need some of those hardware features….just use VNC/RDP/Steam Link, etc. I really enjoyed the video and am definitely a fan of your channel - I just wish you would’ve compared other solutions to show how it compares to other solutions, especially latency.
There are better solutions individually for some use cases, but this is generic enough to be useful for a lot of cases. PiKVM is great for server management.
I actually went into this project starting to build a PiKVM setup with a rack mount 8 port KVM switch, but I couldn't get a Pi which supported USB device emulation and this was more flexible for me. I do have a Pi 4 now, so I can build that project, eventually.
The problem with that solution is the small number of USB ports available. You can put a HUB, but that will slow things down.
eh the USB ports only do keyboard/mouse, so you don't really need more than two. It's not tunneling USB.
@@apalrdsadventures O_O
Where do I plug the pendrives and the other stuff?
I'm a non tech savvy dude, and this is the coolest thing I've seen all dayXD
Our cable co tivo boxes are actually Bluetooth once paired. The box is TiVo branded but made by Arris.
Thanks for the review of the device.
It's a nice device, but there is a big downside to it (in my opinion:
there is no extra output from the extender, I mean: if you want to play in your room and then stream the image to the living room, you need an extra switch for the HDMI or you need to change where the cable goes.
I solved this matter at home using the nice Steam Link device.
For the lucky ones who own one, it's the best solution to stream your computer(s) video signal to where you have the Steam Link connected.
You can link multiple origin devices and switch between them easily.
The downsides? It's not on sale anymore (at Steam shop), you need a Steam account :D
I love the youtube algoritm, I've been trying to find a video explaining just this a year ago. Couldn't find one that exactly explains the situation I'm in. This is great!
I always liked the idea of having a monster computer in the basement wired up to every screen in my house. One day... One day...
someday... someday...
That's what I run essentially with Sunshine + moonlight. Can do up to 4k 60 fps.
That's a really well prepared video. Thank you!
This is a really great video. I subscribed to you a while back, but I haven't tuned into your channel in a while. I think I'm going to change that now. I've been wanting to send HDMI over my network for a while. I'm so happy that you put this together before I purchased anything.
Glad you liked it!
@apalrd's adventures you really saved the day for me sir!!! Thank you so much for making this video. I just got a CCTV system and have a 2 Storie home and didn't have a clue how I can see it on my tv or computer. This transmitter/Receiver kit works like a charm 👍
I've always been fascinated by remote screens
Been doing 60fps 1080p video over lan for years
Steam link, space deck, moonlight and remote ripple
space deck is fast and can install on fire tabs
allowing you to watch videos from the pc desktop and play pc games at 60 fps
Basically giving you a 10ins ips portable pc using a controller and keyboard mouse
to see pc on your tv you can plug in a firestick and install space deck
this is on wifi5 and I've had no lag or fps drop
thank you for the video as its always good to see and try other ways
My wife is going to be so happy when I move all of our PCs to the basement. lol This is such a cool idea.
Very interesting concept. I never would have even thought of doing it this way.
I want to add my 2c for 7:36: UTP just means unsheilded twisted pair, what most ethernet cables are by default. STP (shielded twisted pair) is better if you want to run the cable through plenum, since they have shielding against EMR. A bit pedantic, but you seemed confused about it haha.
Source: I'm a JR. network engineer.
Actually this is great for bussineses with lots of mirrored screens, since a single hdmi source is going over ip, the switch will duplicate that single input into different outputs withoud increasing the load of the source hdmi because of it, well, running a lot of duplicates
@7:40 there is no such thing as an "Ethernet Cable".
Ethernet is a protocol which can be carried over many different media. UTP is a cable type, in which the U stands for unshielded, as opposed to STP, which is shielded.
You can also insert MoCA in the middle to really make things trippy.
Thanks - I enjoyed yer content, like I have previous videos... keep going. Appreciate you.
Thank you so much for this great review! I've been considering options recently for moving equipment to another room to isolate it acoustically for audio recording. This is a great idea to throw into my considerations as I weigh options.
Glad you liked it!
“I get all my news from Reddit”… no shit.😂
prob the best video ive seen this year
Bro I wanted to learn to code my own solution, waiting for part 2! Great video
HDMI cable actually CAN be fixed. Back in mid 2000s we did DIY hdmi cables out of connectors and CAT6 shielded UTP cables. That was cheaper than buying a long ready-made cable, and also - allowed to pull the cable through concrete walls without drilling it for the connector to pass.
Do not remember maximum length that worked, but it was around 15 meters or so.
Delivery and editing is getting much better!
Glad you think so!
UA-cam is a grind
Damm this is so legit cool connection solving complex connection and budget friendly.
you can also run XLR audio through Cat6 it's amazing. I work for a university I build smartrooms with my supervisor and we run HDMI through CAT6A. My faviotrie is tripp lite cat6 HDMI extendors. So far I been working there for a year now I haven't seen one fail yet. This video was insightful and helpful.
Can you run xlr over IP? or just on a single Cat6 line?
@@alexstevenscreativemedia you can convert to Dante digital audio but it's a headache.
AES50 is the standard audio-over-ethernet and is pretty ubiquitous. AES67 is audio-over-ip and, though pretty mature, hasn't found the same level of adoption
Is there any way to reliably control the power button in a similar fashion. If i had my pc in the basement i have no idea how I'd be able to remotely turn it on to use the tech from this video
We use HDBT at work quite a bit. It's great.
Funny you mention that "it's not UTP, it's Ethernet". It can be both. In fact, it is both. Ethernet is the link layer, UTP is the physical layer. So actually it's IP over Ethernet over UTP :)
Idk about HDMI, but I did meticulously solder on a replacement DisplayPort connector. Also learned my hands aren't fit to be a brain surgeon. The cable worked in the end though.
Great video. Iwas looking for a solution to manage my coomputer from another room without having to make holes thru the walls and your video gave me the solution. You got a new subscriber. Keep up the good work 😂
I have 2 years using active UTP KVM's ( from amazon ) , ASTER Multiseat, i generate 8 Virtual PC's with a ryzen 7 2700X, 64GB of RAM, 1TB hybrid AMD StoreMI, 2 8GB AMD RX570 and a 750watts powrr supply and everything works great, the largest UTP 6 cable i have is 53m
its a KVM thru Ethernet😊
and yes one of the many things you can do with a KVM (depends mainly on what features you got for your kvm)
Throwing science at the wall, seeing what sticks! Haha. Nice test, and I like the idea of KVM-over-IP. The multicast feature is interesting too, but bandwidth issues, oh my... time for a 10Gbps switch :).
Bandwidth isn't actually that high with these, but they aren't doing 4K either
Great video. I never thought of this but now I want to set this up for myself.
There are things and tools that allow you to make an HDMI cable the right length: the right HDMI cable, HDMI connectors and HDMI crimping pliers. I have experience making 80m cable this way and it works well!
Not a new discover technology, is call KVM switchers and KVM extenderse over CAT5
A free option for simpler needs. OBS can send anything it can capture over a home network to a client but unintuitively you need to select recording not streaming and custom output FFmpeg. Then a client such as a tablet with VLC can be used to view OBS output.
guy looks like he hasnt drank liquids in 13 years, we love you mate
Multicast is awesome, especially for imaging lots of computers at once, much prefer that to the modern method that SCCM defaults to which is Unicast.
there are HDMI optical adapters that use standard single or pair of fibers. The fiber wiring stays the same, if you need to replace the HDMI ends
My guy, you can repair HDMI cables because they do make something called an HDMI breakout board. It has terminal blocks that you attach the wires to and it has a female end on it or you can get it with a male end.
Great video! Made it super easy to understand. Keep ‘em coming, brother. ✊️
What a lot of wires in your new set-up!
Good video. Looks like a decent product. I am going to be staying tuned in for the HA video as that would be really good!
That was a really good deep-dive. Props for using that hEX router. I found them very useful for inspecting traffic, especially for wireless.
I got it thinking worst case I needed a gigabit switch with SFP uplink, and end up using it for basically everything that requires some test networking. Super handy!
@@apalrdsadventures I generally like the versatility of Mikrotik devices. A few days ago, I recovered a Mikrotik device on a remote site by creating an EoIP tunnel between my local device in my home office and an upstream device on a remote site. A literal virtual network cable.
I want to do an experiment using my CRS328 as a router, but it's too important to my network to use for anything else. I've been happy with all of my Mikrotik stuff and put it to work very quickly.
@@apalrdsadventures I use Mikrotik devices in our office network, as well as customer installation, as well as my home network. Very satisfied.
in 2021 I bought a 8K fiber HDMI cable on Amazon, for a steep 158 euros, with some brand that was awarded with crazy revolutionary stuff for video over fiber. Yesterday I found out that the issues i've had since I bought it (trying to have use it on my TV in the past always had issues and hardly ever worked flawless) was broken. As it didnt even want to transmit PC to monitor information.
Luckely because it was of a external seller amazon is like just sent it back and we give a 100% refund (holy cow?)
So yeah... Looking for some 4k over IP solution now.. There's so much options and there's always one thing missing. either its only 30hz or its only HDMI 2.0 or even 1.4 etc etc etc
And also while watching this video half of the options on Amazon don't even imply any way to work with a switch... Anyway Im going to keep watching because now youre going to throw my solution ;D thanks in advanced
The box actually says it's a KVM box, so things like CEC would not normally be needed for KVM (though nor would IR unless the equipment is specialist or ancient).
A decent single-board computer could probably do this, and would include USB-over-IP for other devices (which I tested and was amazed by!) An SBC would also run Apple TV and other streaming services as they're supported.
I don't think this device is suitable for media in this way. The fact that it works well with gaming is likely a result of HDMI and USB being standards. 1080p is definitely enough for KVM equipment.
One thing that I think is missing is the bandwidth use when you have multiple devices connected. It won't be much but it would be nice to see multicast working that tiny bit harder.
Nvidia Shield Pro costs about the same and has quite a bit more functionality. I fought it for awhile myself.. even pondering various NDI solutions since they hinted at the lowest latency. The shield is just the best.
You don't even need that for something like this. A $10 Android TV stick will do the job.
The only issue is ensuring the connection always stays up.
NDI is pretty fantastic, but you can get similar performance from Moonlight as well if you spend some time tuning it.
Can 2 or more TESmart HKE12MMA20 devices be connected to the Mikrotik router and can be streamed via VLC on a PC? like IPTV players?
Currently no ability to stream to VLC, although it's just streaming bare h.265 with no encapsulation (this seems to trip up VLC). We (my discord community) were able to decode it, but not with VLC.
the next version of this should try to support POE to reduce the cables clutter at both ends but it's still quite nice