I am hopefully moving into a new house which has been wired up with Cat5 cabling.  Is there any way of taking advantage of this for linking b&o products for sound or audio?

Thanks

I'm not 100% sure but I think the new link system coming out is based on CAT7.

I´m sorry to say, that Cat5 is not usefull.... it schould have been Cat7, for use of the new "BeoNet"

Indeed, but it is sort of possible to use CAT5 to carry conventional Masterlink - search the forum and you'll find a number of different pinouts, some of which allegedly even work

If the cable conduits are spacious enough, it might be possible to use the old cables to pull in new CAT7. It will probably be very frustrating work, though.

http://forum.beoworld.org/forums/p/9181/69538.aspx#69538

Cat 5 will work.... not with beonet but using it for ML and / or PL.

Ralf

Thanks to everyone for their replies.

So reading Ralf's link, if I purchase 2 masterlink to RJ45 cables I can use one in one room with my beovision 7 and say put a Beolab3500 in another room connected using the second cable?

Yes, if you connect the two rooms via the patch panel.

Ralf

Thanks for your help.

I have no control over the cabling so it does seem ashame for a new build to have cat5 and not 7, but better than nothing at all.

kallasr:

Cat 5 will work.... not with beonet but using it for ML and / or PL.

Well, it might.  We'll just have to wait and see.

For the communcations part of Beonet, it may be likely they just use standard IP over Ethernet.  If they require gigabit (not hugely likely), then CAT5e (most likely what's installed) is good for a fair distance before you see degredation.

For video, you need 2 runs for HDMI.  CAT7 would be ideal, but CAT5/6 will still work - just over shorter distances.

It may be that CAT7's recommended at the moment just for futureproofing - and the fact that then individual pair shielding is beneficial for old fashioned analogue MasterLink.

CAT7 is indeed more future proof. Due to cable quality, twisting and shielding, the quality of transmission is much higher, especially for larger distances. The most important difference is that CAT7 is rated for transmission of higher frequencies, hence better support for video; CAT5 is certified up to 100 Mhz, CAT6 up to 250 Mhz, CAT6a up to 500 Mhz and CAT7 up to 600 Mhz, CAT7a up to 1000 Mhz (thus supporting 862 Mhz. Cable Television directly without the use of transponders you need for CAT5/CAT6).

The same applies for the transmission speed, CAT6 is for up to 10 Gigabit connections (short distance :-), whilst CAT7 went up to 100 Gigabit for short distances.

However if distances are not that large and the quality of the cable is high, not to many bends, etc., you can expect decent till good quality on CAT5 as well. Just try it out I would say. I have tested  high quality CAT5 cabling for TV signals distribution up to 25 meters and that was running smoothly. 

Is Cat 7 backward compatible with Cat 5?

Yes.  They're both just 4 pair cables that look pretty much identical.  Just one is rated for higher bandwidths.

Wikipedia has an interesting site for the different twisted pair cables:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

cat 5/7 is not the issue , if you want to use it for ML network ! BUT The Shield is !!

most cat 5 cabling in home are unfortunaly NOT shielded because of construktor/electrican not understand why they should always use Shield in Cat 5 cabling

so check if your outlet and cable i s shielded if so -no problem with RJ45-ML Beonet cables

/Tompa