UKHA_D Meet and Keiths KAT5...

["Phillip Harris" <phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>]

Just wanted to say it was great meeting you all yesterday ... nice crowd
and
I think much was had by all from the many discussions that went on. (Much
to
the bemusement of the bar staff who I think just thought that we were a
bunch of sad t**sers but what do they know.)

Obviously we do all thank Li for his great generosity yesterday and also
the
guys at HAL for braving the shark pit and bringing over a demo of their new
product - even if it was found to be anti-Scottish!

Keith's briefcase sat unopened in the centre of the room for faaaaar too
long ... definitely a ploy there from Keith just to keep up the interest
(as
if that was needed). You could almost feel the "Yeah OK the new
version of
HAL is coming but that's Keith's briefcase and I wish he'd get on with
it..." oozing round the gathering. There was an interest in seeing the
contents that the Chancellor of the Exchequer can only dream about...

Well ... I proudly carried my KAT5's home with me (I believe that Keith
said
that although mine were not the first ordered - how could they be since it
seems that some of you guys have been waiting since you handed in your
boarding cards when getting off the Ark? - they were the first to have been
sold.) and after crawling into my front door at about 2:30 I did what any
dutiful husband-to-be should do and thought "Bugger it, I'm in the
doghouse
and gonna be in the spare bedroom tonight anyway so I might as well do this
now...". I trawled out a few needed cables and started sticking things
in
Keiths box.

What a pile of crap guys ... don't bother!

(Ooops, reading from wrong piece of paper ... )

Erm ... "Does exactly what it says on the box" is a good term. My
main
problem which I was wanting to cure with this "special edition"
KAT5 box was
a gound loop issue with my video scaler and that, it was easy to hear, had
gone away from the start. Running up my projector gave pleasing results too
... image quality seems to have been retained (not that we were doubting
you
Keith but I people want to know these things) and is certainly good enough
for you to pipe video (and I assume audio will be on the same par) around
the house to another TV or TVs without you knowing that the source
component
isn't there.

I tried as a quick test swapping out the 1m RJ45 lead that I was using and
inserted a 20m in its place ... with a simple s-video feed over that
distance I'd expect a noticeable drop in brightness and also noticeable
smearing of colours - similarly (but to a lesser extent) with component
which is what I'm using here. With the 20m lead there was no difference in
image quality noted.

Any reservations? Hmmm ... maybe just two. Firstly, and I haven't had too
much time to look at this and I have a feeling that it's not the KAT5 but I
do need to check. I was very tired last night by he time I'd got home but
my
projected image seemed a little darker than usual. As I say I do need to
look into this and from the outset I'd say that *MY BELIEF IS I'M GOING TO
FIND THAT THIS ISN'T DOWN TO KEITH'S KAT5*. (There ... that's as loud as I
can say it but I do need to check and for that I need to be fully awake as
I
think it's down to the picture controls on my projector and video scaler
having different weightings across their range and I think one of them has
either reset or has been reset whilst I was trying to isolate this ground
loop problem).

Secondly, These things are quite obviously very labour intensive for Keith
to make up ... it's probably been relatively easy for Keith running up a
few
PCBs over the last few days in preparation for the great unveiling
yesterday
but it'll be a nut aching job constantly building these up for people over
the next few weeks once people start putting in their initial orders so I
guess I'm just saying take it easy on the bloke if you don't maybe get
yours
straight away ...

So guys ... get ordering KAT5s from Keith. As a 4-channel ground isolator
(which is what I'm using this for) then this has cost me £100 (£80 for the
KAT5's and £20 for 2 PSUs) the only other route that I could have taken
would have been to import a set of passive ground loop isolators from the
US
at about $150 *EACH* (+VAT and import duty) and I'd have needed four of
them
(for component video and composite) plus another two for when I do s-video.
As a balanced line transmitter and receiver pair for distributing line
level
audio and video then I reckon it's going to be a pearler.

We look forward to Keith's audio/video switcher with great enthusiasm and
I've asked my five year old to keep a look out for announcement of its
release on Marks site as I'll probably be too old by then to see the
screen!
*grin* (Only kidding Keith.)

Cheers for a very enjoyable day yesterday...

Phil (The fat anoying bloke with the blue T-shirt and the camera!)