Digital Home Thoughts: How Long Can HDMI Cables Be Run?

"One of the glorious things about the traditional analog video formats is their robustness over distance. Our customers have run analog component video for hundreds of feet without so much as a booster box to keep the signal together. When DVI and HDMI first hit the market, many people had trouble running signals over even modest distances; 15 feet would be reliable, and anything longer was a gamble. That situation has improved, though HDMI will never rival analog video for reliability over distance. Here, we address why that is, and what you can expect if you need to run HDMI cable over distance."

I've never really understand the reasons why digital cables couldn't have longer run distances than analog - you'd think analog signals would be subject to more degredation - but this article does a good job of explaining what they've discovered through their testing. They don't go into the physics of how and why the digital signal degrades, but what matters is what they've discovered in their tests - and how just because you see a 50 foot cable on a store shelf doesn't mean that it will work the way you think it should work. If you're going shopping for HDMI cables, this article is a must-read.