HDUDI....Connecting devices to 4K Interactive TV's

[SeeFights]

Where I work we all staff have a laptop and all rooms have a Viewsonic Interactive TV. Now sadly these TV's are 4K which poses a big problem. We cant use faceplates as some cables need to be 10M long so not only do we need a 10M cable but the faceplate supposedly adds about 10M of cable and then to connect the laptops to the face plate we need roughly a 3M cable so all together the runs tend to be 23M (10 for the cable between faceplate and TV + 3 for the faceplate to laptop + 10 for the faceplate)

 

I want to know how do you do it?

 

we use basic copper "4K rated" HDMI cables and I have put forward the suggestion we possibly use something like a HDMI extender or even fibre optic HDMI cables to lower that length but im sure you Techs know what Im faced with...as Mr Krabs would say "money money money".

[Bedders]

Someone here would probably chime in with something better, but I recall using HDMI over CAT5 converters that weren't all that expensive and allowed the running of HDMI at high quality over distance. Unsure if it's feasable here or at that resolution, it was a few years ago?

[SeeFights]

9 hours ago, Bedders said:

Someone here would probably chime in with something better, but I recall using HDMI over CAT5 converters that weren't all that expensive and allowed the running of HDMI at high quality over distance. Unsure if it's feasable here or at that resolution, it was a few years ago?

see I have thought about that too but ideally we need them to be face plates and not something we screw to the wall.

[SamanthaD]

If your staff have a known laptop (ie Windows, Mac, Chromebook) then I might be tempted to go wireless casting. Find a device that has Miracast, Airplay or Chromecast support depending on your standard device and deploy. It's going to be much easier (and cheaper) than trying to find reliable cables that work at that distance.

 

I'm not sure where you might have seen that a faceplate adds 10m though. I usually work on 1m per break in the chain, so a faceplate with the faceplate connector, a small pigtail cable then another connector I usually allow around 2.5m of "length". If you were to replace the faceplate with a brushplate then a 15m cable would work? Although there are cheaper available I'd be looking at https://www.vdctrading.com/products/vdc-active-high-speed-with-ethernet-hdmi-20-lead-15m

[SeeFights]

26 minutes ago, SamanthaD said:

If your staff have a known laptop (ie Windows, Mac, Chromebook) then I might be tempted to go wireless casting. Find a device that has Miracast, Airplay or Chromecast support depending on your standard device and deploy. It's going to be much easier (and cheaper) than trying to find reliable cables that work at that distance.

 

I'm not sure where you might have seen that a faceplate adds 10m though. I usually work on 1m per break in the chain, so a faceplate with the faceplate connector, a small pigtail cable then another connector I usually allow around 2.5m of "length". If you were to replace the faceplate with a brushplate then a 15m cable would work? Although there are cheaper available I'd be looking at https://www.vdctrading.com/products/vdc-active-high-speed-with-ethernet-hdmi-20-lead-15m

i don't think a brush plate would work as the idea is we want the smallest amount of cable to replace if it breaks. So for example most rooms have a faceplate plus a pigtail connector going into a 10m cable that goes to the TV so on the staff side theres just a silver plate on the wall with a HDMI near their desk.

 

The idea behind this is staff are staff, they will break cables and its a pain replacing a 10m cable that goes behind filing cabinets. (the cabinets werent there on the original installation)

[mavhc]

Just don't run them at 4k resolution, pointless anyway, can't read things that small, or notice the difference in resolution when you're 2m away

[DWilson1997]

We use Fiber HDMI cables from the board to the faceplate (between 8-15m), with a HDMI module (Vision) then a standard HDMI cable between the faceplate and the device/docking station. Seems to work well for us. 

 

FIBBR 8K HDMI Fiber Optic Cable 5M, 48Gbps 8K@60Hz 

 

I know they are more expensive, but you have to think about the costs of IT staff constantly visiting classrooms to diagnose technical issues - which soon adds up! 

Edited July 1, 2025 by DWilson1997

[Gongalong]

We use Antiference cables, which are the only reliable HDMI cables we've found. With those we can run 10m to a wall box, and 2m from a wall box. it will still require dropping the refresh frequency for the screen to 30Hz in Windows. It's a right faff, and a shame that all screen manufacturers don't have an EDID setting for 1920x1080 (Benq did, not sure if they still do).

[mavhc]

https://nircmd.nirsoft.net/setdisplay.html

[Gongalong]

Ooh!

[Ben_Netsupport]

@SeeFights have you looked at Vivi? You can use Vivi for wireless screen sharing, which has helped us avoid the long HDMI cable runs altogether. It works over Wi-Fi or LAN and supports 4K screens, so staff can present directly from their laptops without needing to plug in. It’s been a good cable-free solution, especially in rooms where long HDMI runs were a hassle or unreliable.

[SeeFights]

@Ben_Netsupportwe have started to explore wireless casting but we dont want to overload the network. we only so far have adopted it in the Math Department.

[mavhc]

The idea of replacing a cable with wifi because the cable is too slow sounds insane

[SeeFights]

Just now, mavhc said:

The idea of replacing a cable with wifi because the cable is too slow sounds insane

tbf, we got the money to upgrade our wifi/network infrastructure so all our AP's are WiFi 7 I believe, now do we push enough bandwidth to each AP to maximize it? F No.

 

We have a gig line and thats pretty much what our AP's run at.

We didnt have the budget to buy £100 HMDI cables so we only did what we could do and sometimes the £20 10m cable off amazon just isnt that good and its a shame really but you get what you pay for.

[Ben_Netsupport]

@SeeFights Vivi’s screen sharing is designed to be very low bandwidth as it uses it's own proprietary protocol which is optimised for efficient performance across school networks either wifi or ethernet. You can also change the streaming method to WebRTC that will automatically throttle or speed up the stream depending on network load. I have no idea how they do it but it does provide a stable and low bandwidth screen sharing / mirroring solution. 

[SeeFights]

@Ben_Netsupport

is it some kind of hdmi plug in and play device?

could you give me a little run down if you yourself use it?

 

[Ben_Netsupport]

@SeeFights Vivi is a Linux/Android box ( running ViviOS ) that has HDMI out, audio out, POE ethernet, WiFI and USB pass through ports. It connects to your network via ethernet or WiFi and teachers use a app or web page to connect to the device wirelessly. You can share screen, share your camera, share a tab and play YouTube videos ( without the ads ) and with play content you don't even have to share your screen, the YouTube video plays directly from the box thus preventing lag and sync issues when compared to playing it whilst sharing a teachers screen.

It supports all platforms so Android, Linux, Chrome, iOS, MacOS and it has a web app. They also have a software version for FireOS, AppleTV and Android if you don't want the physical boxes. Students can also share to the device but the teacher is always in control of that side of the casting.