A pet peeve of mine has been that when the kitchen was remodeled, the workers installed an inferior HDMI cable through the wall that didn’t work … and there is no way to replace it without tearing open the wall again. So, I’ve had a proper cable hanging out of the cabinets to connect to the TV … a really tacky looking fix. Knowing that possibly there are wireless HDMI adapters available, I’ve been testing several and the results are pretty awful. If you ONLY look at photos or other still images, these devices work perfectly fine … but ANY movement will immediately tear the video with gross artifacting. It can be so profound that if you’re prone to vertigo, it’ll make you dizzy if you don’t turn away. The video is essentially unwatchable, and from experience I know that it provokes some to screaming at the TV during the Super Bowl when it looks like one of Gerhard Richter’s photo-paintings combined with horizontal striping just as a possible touchdown is being thrown. In simpler words … awful.
Installation is simple (assuming you have an available TV USB port with enough amperage to power these things or you’ll have to use a not-included charger plug) … just plug the receiver and transmitter in, and it creates its own little network. In less than a minute you’ll have a picture, provided your area isn’t as flooded with 2.4/5GHz signals as my home is. If you want to share pictures from a computer or phone onto a big screen and you don’t have “smart sharing”, these things are perfect. Should it be ANY video, of any resolution, you’ll get the same issues I mentioned above.
It was at that point when I realized more aggressive action was mandated and contemplated drills, conduit, masonry drills and loads of fun. I then decided to go with ethernet cat5/6 and adapters … it worked PERFECTLY, but still required a ton of work. I DO recommend this choice for loooong distance runs over an HDMI circuit.
Not really wanting to spend an entire day dealing with this I tried one last option: a powered HDMI booster. Yeah, a bit obscure, but those things DO exist … be certain to get one where only ONE end requires power to operate. I tried a passive unit a few years back … don’t waste your time. And just like that, when it arrived, a problem that had really bugged me for years was gone. The cable was not broken, but just a crappy cable and the booster made it work properly. No drilling, special cables, complicated ineffective wireless solutions or anything that took more than five minutes to resolve.
Here I was, “hell-bent” on an once-and-for-all solution, regardless of cost or work, and it proved ultimately to be an easy fix. I’d have done anything to fix this eyesore, and as it turned out … it was a simple fix provided I had gone with a powered version.
Classic “you can’t see the forest for the trees” applies here correctly … sometimes, you need to just step back, clear your head and start over … it can be the best fix mentally, emotionally & financially.
UPDATE – 11/11/24
Well, my luck just ran out and the HDMI amplifier cable decided to go to tech heaven and left me with no other choice than breaking out all the tools and doing it the hard way. Yep, it was a pain, but now that it’s done, I don’t have to worry about this problem cropping up again. It’s fairly clear that there still isn’t a reliable way to fix HDMI problems without cheating, so to speak. I made the new cable mods future-proof by getting access to run any cable I’ll ever need. This will keep me from hauling a huge flat screen downstairs for the Superbowl or having HDMI cables all over the kitchen for people to trip over. Nobody is perfect, and I just proved that sometimes, the hard way, IS the correct way … oh well.