Extending VGA over UTP cat5 cable
There are several reasons to extend a VGA cable. A Media Center PC is a great tool to manage your music, movies, pictures etc. To avoid a noisy computer blowing in your ears while watching a movie a VGA extension cable could be a great help. Mounting your home theatre beamer on the ceiling is a good idea, but how to get there with the VGA signal? Extend it using cheap cat5 UTP cable!
Connect the cables as listed in the following table. Wire both connectors the same way.
| Pin | Signal | CAT5 Conductor |
| 1 | Red | Orange |
| 2 | Green | Green |
| 3 | Blue | Blue |
| 4 | No Connection | |
| 5 | Ground | No Connection |
| 6 | Ground | Orange/White |
| 7 | Ground | Green/White |
| 8 | Ground | Blue/White |
| 9 | No Connection | |
| 10 | Ground | No Connection |
| 11 | No Connection | |
| 12 | DDC DAT | No Connection |
| 13 | Horizontal Synchronization | Brown |
| 14 | Vertical Synchronization | Brown White |
| 15 | DDC Clock | No Connection |
The only drawback is the slightly notable ‘ghosting’ as a result of the difference in impedance with a regular VGA cable. With the extension I use (12m) the ghosting is only visible when showing black text on a whte background. But since the beamer is only used to watch movies, television and pictures I never had complaints about the quality. If you really want to improve the quality, an STP cable could be the solution.
on Feb 7th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Should I solder the utp cable directly to the connector? Or is it possible to use a RJ45 connector and a normal network cable?
on Jul 14th, 2011 at 7:30 am
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