Bench the link before it goes in the wall
Most faults on a KVM extender link are found in ten minutes on a bench and in two hours in a ceiling. Before the Cat6a is pulled, put the transmitter and receiver on a table with a short patch lead between them, the real source at one end and the real display at the other, and confirm you get a picture and a working keyboard. If it fails here, it is a setting or a cable spec — not the run.
What the link needs
- Cat6a, minimum U/FTP 23AWG, solid core, terminated to TIA-568B at both ends. Cat5e will give you a picture at short range and drop it at length, which is the worst failure mode there is.
- One run, no patch panels if you can avoid them. Every extra mated pair costs headroom you may need at 40m.
- One 24V/2A supply. Power either end — PoC is bi-directional, so the other end is fed over the same cable.
Fault-finding
No picture at the receiver?
Confirm the transmitter's HDMI loop-out shows the source on a local monitor. If the loop-out is blank the problem is upstream of the extender — source, cable or EDID — and the link is not involved. If the loop-out is good and the receiver is blank, halve the problem: patch the two units together directly on the bench. Working on a patch lead and failing on the run points at the cable, its termination or its length.
Picture drops out intermittently?
Almost always the cable. Intermittent 4K over CATx is the classic symptom of Cat5e in a Cat6a job, a run over length, or a termination with too much untwist at the punch-down. Re-terminate before you replace hardware.
USB device at the far end is not seen?
Check what the device is. A keyboard, mouse or hub works on any KVM extender. A 4K camera, an external SSD or a dock needs USB 3-class throughput — the whole reason for this SKU. If the device works when plugged directly into the workstation but not at the receiver, confirm it is in one of the three downstream ports and not daisy-chained behind another hub.
Ultrawide display falls back to 1080p or looks stretched?
This is nearly always the source, not the link. Confirm the workstation can output 5120×1440 or 3440×1440 at 60Hz to that panel with the extender out of the path — plugged straight in over HDMI. A laptop dock is the usual culprit. Also check the panel accepts the timing over HDMI rather than only over DisplayPort; several ultrawide monitors publish their headline mode on DisplayPort alone.
Audio missing from the room system?
The 3.5mm output is de-embedded from the HDMI stream, so the source has to be sending audio the display or DSP can take. If the source is set to bitstream for a device that only accepts PCM, the de-embed will be silent while the picture is fine.
Before you call
Have these to hand and the call will be short: the part number, the serial from the label underneath, the cable type and measured run length, what is plugged into the receiver's USB ports, and whether it works patched directly on a bench. Technical support is on (888) 975-1368, Monday to Friday, 6:00am–5:00pm Pacific.