<h2>What is the longest VGA cable you have used?</h2> This is realated to my post in the electronics forum. Instead of getting the tech details, I decided to go for experience. Are long cables any good? I have read that they can be used without problems up to 30m, but that seems unlikely! I usually run at 1280x1024 85Hz on a CTX Pro Trinitron so I need really picture quality. Looking at 10 - 15m of cable... MoJo
If you want to run higher res over a long cable... make sure you get a thicker one (with thicker wires inside), you'll get a lot of ghosting otherwise. That said I think 10-15m would be pushing it a bit.... unless you can find some sort of amplifier (not sure if they exist though).
I did one for my friend's server... his server was in the basement and his monitor was in the first floor... and we did 50 feet. (15.15 meter) and it looked great!!! but it wasn't for gaming so I don't know how it will be with that long cable... shouldn't be a problem tho.. if the image isn't to your taste, there must be some kind of amplifier for that.
Yes, there are VGA Amplifiers, and Distribution amplifiers as well, for use with more than one monitor, but the same picture on both... Here is one, That will let you go 100 feet (about 30 meters)
if you have a CTX PRxxxx (professional series) they have a BNC5 connector which is meant to be used for longer distances. (the 5 shiny connectors in the back next to the vga connector) you usually wouldnt want a standard VGA cable for much longer than a couple metres so find a BNC cable for much much better picture quality over longer distances
Yea; split, individually shielded cables are better than 1 blob of wire. Im sure you can get VGA-BNC converters. BNC cables are cheap as anythin too.
Where can I get these cheap BNC cables from? I use a 15pin VGA to BNC cable at the moment, but it's only 1m long. The limit seems to be the GeForce card rather than the monitor at the moment. Thanks for the hints guys. Belkin do a VGA amp that costs about £30. Might try without first though, because the amp itself is bound to be a source of noise. MoJo
I've run 10 foot extensions before, the ones that are thicker gauge wire and have a ferrite bead are far superior. You could try adding a ferrite bead to a cheapie, it can't hurt.
Longest I've made/used I've made up and used a 60 mtr VGA cable, bloody tricky to get the connections soldered and all fitted inside, picture was good on 1024 x 768 (the highest we use offshore). No amplifier or distro unit used. just a matrox G450 and a iiyama flat screen Monitor. I know Black box make a distrobution product that will send VGA signals down a standard CAT5 Cable (1 box sender -> 1 box receiver). Regards MiniG
10 - 15 miles! wow!!! Seriously, quality is everything here. As you increase resolution cable quality becomes even more important. Anything more than a couple of metres is going to cost big bucks if image quality is not to suffer.
I think me meant meters You can get 10-15 miles out of a DVI Fiber Optic cable. (Or more if you want)
Speaking of DVI, what is the limit on length for that? In theory, digital DVI with an analogue converter on the end should give excellent image quality, since the data is sent digitally over most of the cable length. I have seen DVI over Cat 5 but they start at about £3500 MoJo
monitor cables have individually shielded RGB coax lines in the bundle. The deal with the RG-59 (right number? It's late) is that the cable has a better dielectric for a good, consistent capacatance, resistance, and signal velocity. That said, I have seen projectors set up with very long VGA cables, I'd guess 50-80 feet in some cases. no signal degregation I could see. As for signal boosting, here is a link. The circuit was originally intended to drive multiple monitors, but by using only one set of outputs instead of two, you can use it as a signal booster. As for the sync signals, I belive thay are TTL, so some really fast TTL buffers (fast so the proogation delay won't hurt your picture) should work.
the trouble with really long monitor cables is the price as the cable ain't cheap. If you're going to run it over anything ~>30m then it could almost be cheaper to have a cheap pc and the control end and use a remote access program to get the display. You've a lot of added benefits then... Alternatively if you only need the monitor output for something like a projector then you could do it how we do it the theatre and use BNC to send the signal as S-Video... tis one cable then.
The goal here is to have my computer in another room, and just the monitor/keyboard/mouse in my bedroom. That way the heat and noise that the computer generates is kept out of my bedroom. Extending the keyboard and mouse is easy. Might even go for a USB extension as that could not only do kybd/mouse but also joysticks, sound, even cdroms etc. The only problem is the monitor cable, which would have to be about 15m. Remote desktop via something like VNC is just too slow for games and other 3D apps, or watching movies etc. Looks like I'll have to see if I can find a really good cable. MoJo
Baluns are you friend: http://www.intelix.com/products/baluns.html That's how they do pro video installs, Baluns on each end of cat-5 runs.
you can get RG-6 coax for pretty cheap, it would require a few differnt runs, and be a thicker bundle, but for the price, it should do fine. The trick will be making a couple of adaptors on either end to split up the signal, but it shouldn't be too bad with some stripboard and HD-15 d-subs that are PCB mounted. You could even throw in the signal boosters if you were so inclined. The DIY solution may not be as pretty as a real cable, but i shold be pretty cheap.
