Am I able to convert an Ethernet cable into a monitor cable?? I remember reading an article about POE if i remember rightly (Power over Ethernet). However not sure on how complicated this is, and if I'm able to do it also with a HD monitor.
I doubt this is possible. A vga connector has 15 pins, a dvi at least 20 depending on the type. An ethernet cable has 8 wires. And even if you had enough wires, you might suffer signal degradation as I think the wires in an ethernet cable are thinner than those in vga/dvi cables. I'm intrigued though - what are you trying to do exactly?
I want to run my monitor a lot further than the cable it comes with and Ethernet cable is cheaper thus my decision to use it. Might not be possible with DVI but I'm nearly almost certain that you can do it with VGA?? Or maybe I had a few to many beers that night!
With proper electronics for converting impedances etc... yes. Cat 5e and the like are 100ohm transmission lines, with the coax in the VGA cable being 50 ohm, the impedance mismatch over a long distance (or mabey not so long) will cause bad ghosting if you just make an adaptor cable. Unfortunately the converter boxes probably cost as much a VGA booster and a long cable. :-/ If you do wanna try to make an adaptor, lookup the pinout of a VGA cable and of a standard patch cable. You want to have the Red, and Red ground on one pair, green and green ground on another pair, blue and blue ground on another pair, and H and Vsnyc on the last pair.
I don't know what you are trying to do, but here are some options (obviously you need the supported hardware) - Component cable - Composite cable - S-Video - Network Projector (require supported projector) - Wireless Projector (expect poor and slow image quality + require supported projector) - HDMI - Display Port - DVI - VGA - USB (no fancy HD movie rendering, no 3D rendering, and lack of other fancy things as there is no real video card)
PoE is completely different to what you are talking about, it is for sending power and data over one cable to low-power devices (wireless access points, IP CCTV etc). Useful when there is no power outlet near the device. You can send a VGA Signal over Cat5, but you require special hardware. We serve our call center stats from a server in the server room through the patch panels to plasmas on the walls. I'm not sure of the exact hardware, but it's something like these: www.cyberselect.co.uk/category/18
I've used Cat5-e (shielded) as monitorcable several times. it's no problem, the monitor only needs GND, R, G, B, H-sync and V-sync. I used THIS, but instead of the RJ45 plug, I soldered the Cat5-e directly to the 15-pin VGA plug, and mounted the standart housing on the plug, I'v used Cat5-e up to 20 meter without noticable quality loss. have no idea how long they can be before you get problems.
at work i have VGA extenders that can send 1280x1024 + 2.0 audio up to 490' over CAT5e. we use them to do marketing displays on the teller line & drive-ups. they are made by star-tech, and run about 160$ a set. they also have a model that will do HDMI 1.3 (vid & aud) over a pair of CAT5e's. a bit pricier if i remember rightly. new egg has them in stock most of the time, as do CDW.
Or you could make one no problem for about $20 CAD, I did it for a friend of mine because he has his computer in one corner and a projector in the middle of his CompLab. But I forgot where he got the idea from, there were pictorial instructions on how to do it...
