VGA/DVI Cable Length

[vegascat]

I'm trying to reduce the number of cables visible around the house, especially with new house layout (built in mid-90's new to us). How far can a VGA or DVI cable be run from the computer to a monitor? The computer room backs up to the garage so I'd like to run all camera connections through wall from garage, then run video cable to a monitor in the family room in middle of house. There is an open corridor and vaulted ceilings in between, so what I did with "exposed" LAN cables at old house is not viable here. I have a program that lets me remotely control a computer over LAN but the house wiring LAN has limited capability; I don't think it can handle TiVo/Netflix streaming and CCTV streaming.

Suggestions/comments appreciated.

[kenm]

I'll give you my thoughts based on what I've been able to do in the past but first all tell you that "It Depends" is the best answer.

I've been successful at running a VGA cable about 110' without regeneration using a high quality cable. The cable I used had what was called "triple-shielding" to reduce crosstalk and outside interference. This installation was in an auditorium at a high school and was a little longer than it needed to be because we took extra care to route far away from electrical lines and an AC unit above the room on the roof. What I mean by successful is that the video had no noticeable degradation in quality as compared to a 17" monitor on a 6' cable. Degradation would have been easy to see since the 1024 x 768 image was being projected onto an 18' diagonal screen.

Since VGA is analog I think the results depend on the cable quality(size of center conductor and shielding), the signal strength of drivers on the video card, and the sensitivity of the monitor. Also the routing of the cable near noise sources could have a significant affect.

In the case of DVI, since it's digital, I would guess that it will work fine "up to" some length at which point it will either not work at all or you will start to see artifacts due to dropped data.

Since you're near Vegas I would think it should be fairly easy to find someone who has a 50', 75', 100', or longer VGA cable for you to try since I know they use long VGA cables at trade shows.

Worst case you can make a 50' run to a $30 video mux that will re-gen the signal at which point you can easily go another 75'+ to the monitor. But that just adds more complexity that may not be needed if you can get it to work with a high quality cable.

Hope this helps,
Ken