miamicanes
Active Member
Today at Home Depot, I noticed that the Leviton ports that allow you to connect 2 cat5 pairs to the back of a S-video interface only cost about $9 each. Ditto, for a pair of RCA jacks for line-level stereo audio.
How well do they actually work? Are they baluns? The cheapest s-video-via-cat5 baluns I remember seeing were about $80/each. On the other hand, the $80 ones I remember seeing used a single cat5 cable to transmit s-video AND stereo audio, whereas it appears that Leviton's require one cat5 cable for the video, and one cat5 cable for the audio.
If I wanted to feed the s-video output of a DirecTV HD-DVR into one of the Leviton ports (say, 6-12' of decent-without-being-neurotic cable), routed it to the other end via ~10 feet of cat5, and connected the other end to a TV via a 12' s-video cable, would I be likely to get good video quality? Would I need a s-video amplifier?
Also on the topic of those Leviton ports... besides having plastic inserts of the wrong color, if I wanted to use one that was intended for composite video to carry the 'Y' component video signal, and use a pair intended for stereo audio to carry the Pr and Pb signals, would it be likely to work well... say, if there were a set of 6' cables at the receiver end, ~10 feet of cat5 inside the wall running up to the next floor above, and a final 15-25 foot run of cable to the TV?
Assuming they DO work, do they need shielded cat5 cable? Would using shielded cat5 cable be likely to make a meaningful difference, considering that we're talking about 10 feet of cat5e between the two jacks?
Assuming they're worth considering as a component-video option, would the RCA-jack variant ALSO be good enough to carry coaxial SPDIF (same topology... ~6' cable at receiver end, ~10' of cat5 in the wall, ~15-25' cable to the TV itself).
How well do they actually work? Are they baluns? The cheapest s-video-via-cat5 baluns I remember seeing were about $80/each. On the other hand, the $80 ones I remember seeing used a single cat5 cable to transmit s-video AND stereo audio, whereas it appears that Leviton's require one cat5 cable for the video, and one cat5 cable for the audio.
If I wanted to feed the s-video output of a DirecTV HD-DVR into one of the Leviton ports (say, 6-12' of decent-without-being-neurotic cable), routed it to the other end via ~10 feet of cat5, and connected the other end to a TV via a 12' s-video cable, would I be likely to get good video quality? Would I need a s-video amplifier?
Also on the topic of those Leviton ports... besides having plastic inserts of the wrong color, if I wanted to use one that was intended for composite video to carry the 'Y' component video signal, and use a pair intended for stereo audio to carry the Pr and Pb signals, would it be likely to work well... say, if there were a set of 6' cables at the receiver end, ~10 feet of cat5 inside the wall running up to the next floor above, and a final 15-25 foot run of cable to the TV?
Assuming they DO work, do they need shielded cat5 cable? Would using shielded cat5 cable be likely to make a meaningful difference, considering that we're talking about 10 feet of cat5e between the two jacks?
Assuming they're worth considering as a component-video option, would the RCA-jack variant ALSO be good enough to carry coaxial SPDIF (same topology... ~6' cable at receiver end, ~10' of cat5 in the wall, ~15-25' cable to the TV itself).