Review on 🔌 Cable Matters HDMI Extender Wall Mount (TCP/IP Support) for 1-to-Many Setup - Up to 300 Feet via Ethernet Cable by Vincent Blitz

tl;dr----You can "do the job" for certain scenarios, but if you care about even modest image quality, look elsewhere. Long story ---- I bought these so I can mount our TV over the fireplace and put the AV receiver and sources in a rack in the closet. I only ran Cat5e cable in the fireplace wall (for temporary installation) and Cat6 from the TV to the shelf in the closet. I then connected the HDMI and Ethernet cables and everything worked as expected. I don't use IR. Then I noticed that the picture was very dark, much darker than usual. Everything that would have been dark gray is now just black and you forget to see anything in the shadows. I tried watching The Dark Knight and noticed that in several scenes, different characters' eyes looked like little white dots, which was not only weird but also very distracting. There were also some noticeable compression artifacts ("blocking"), but I figured that might be the source (maybe it's a lower quality/bitrate copy in Plex?), so I downloaded a copy from the iTunes store and it was almost identical: still dark, still pixelated. Tried several other movies with light and dark scenes. However, in trying to improve/fix this, I wanted to get rid of the simple/stupid things first: - Various HDMI cables, including the two I used before installing the extenders (they had no picture quality issues). before) - Various Ethernet cables (Will Cat6 be so different from Cat5e in the very short term?) - Adjusting the picture settings on the TV and AppleTV - Bypassing the AV receiver: here AppleTV via HDMI to the extender, short Ethernet cable to the other extension cable, then HDMI to TV No difference with both. I was starting to think the TV might go away as it's a 2009 Panasonic 42" Plasma (720p only) so I ordered a new Samsung 55" UN7100 (4K UHD, 2018). All plugged in and... wait... no _real_ changes! The problem is those stupid extension cords! Image quality is slightly better due to the better panel, but the image is still VERY noticeably compressed. How do I know if these are extension cords? I connected an HDMI cable straight from the TV to the AppleTV and *BAM*: AMAZING picture with fantastic colors and NO compression artifacts! Why didn't I try this with my old plasma TV? Well I think so. I think. But I remember the colors didn't get any better, which prompted me to buy a new TV. And what now? Well I'm out of the return window so I'm stuck with them. I will either buy real HDbaseT extenders or get a super long HDMI cable. I'm still doing my homework on which provides the best image with the least effort and cost.