Color degradation with long vga cable - signal booster?

blargoe

I was wondering if any of you have any experience with improving video quality over a long run of VGA. I'm in a situation where we have a projector system in a medium sized church, and there is 75 feet of VGA cable between the computer and the projector system. The signal is degraded such that the screen is tinted red. It really looks like crap. Based on the research I did, 25 feet was as far as you can expect to go with cheap cable, and 100+ with really good shielded cable. They got what looked like a good shielded cable as far as I can tell.

I've seen vga "signal boosters" on the Internet but am having trouble finding info on how and when to use one. Would they apply in this situation?

Thanks

dynamik

Maybe you can do something with running VGA over Cat-5:
http://www.datapro.net/products/vga-over-cat5-video-extender.html
http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/09/vga_over_cat5_ethernet.html

AmpdChaos

I agree.. over Cat5 is your best bet.. that's what we do here over..

Plantwiz

I will third the above.....go with the CAT5. Way easier to deal with, install, move, etc.. and it works.

We have several installs and it is a much more professional finished product when you are done. Sure you can bury the VGA cable behind things, but why when you can more easily run CAT5?

BlackBox.com has some great hardware!

blargoe

Yeah... but the cable has already been run. I'm going to have a hard time convincing them to yank the cable they already bought and paid someone to install and replace it with something else if I don't even know how much it will improve things, if at all...

I was just wondering if anyone had any experiences with trying to boost the signal.

Plantwiz

It should work.

Just not the best solution these days. 10 years back...sure.

http://www.google.com/search?rls=ig&hl=en&q=VGA+signal+booster&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

Various blurbs on several pages. Some claim improvement up to 210ft.

JDMurray

Using CAT5e or CAT6 will get the signal farther, but there is also premium VGA cable that is good for runs up to 200 feet without a signal booster (or so the advert says).

I have used VGA and RF signal boosters, and they do work, but they are expensive and need to be powered. There certainly are enough ads for VGA line signal boosters and DVI signal repeaters to be found using Google.

I have also played with wireless VGA transmission units, but had problems with interference (although this one uses 5GHz 802.11a). They are lower res and expensive too.