Based on the comment of 15k spinning drives this must have been quite some time ago, but there's very definite reach length limits on DVI and displayport cables. Let's say this was in 2007 and the maximum state of the art was a dual link DVI 2560x1600 display, you can't extend that in any practical way beyond about 15 feet. Extending USB keyboard and mouse by comparison is trivial. Unless all of the desks and workstations were set up directly on one side of an acoustic barrier wall, a hard problem to solve.
> you can't extend that in any practical way beyond about 15 feet
For passive cables, that makes sense. But with repeaters, wouldn't you be able to go further? Maybe cable repeaters like that are newer than I imagine.
I bought an expensive 10m (30ft) active HDMI cable for connecting my PC to my TV. It said it was UltraHD rated, but could never get it to work reliably beyond 1080p.
So the issue was more that dual-link DVI was very rare, and getting hardware to encode/transmute it reliably and at high bit-depth was almost impossible.
By about 2014 hardware encoders were good enough to send decent quality video over gigabit.
> I bought an expensive 10m (30ft) active HDMI cable
I think what I was referring to are repeaters you put between cables, that amplifies the signal. You connect that device between two HDMI cables (say 5m) + connect it to power for it to actually extend the distance the signal can travel.
I'm not sure what an active HDMI cable would be, maybe circuitry inside the cable that draws power from the HDMI port?
Sounds like hocus pocus to me (like gold plated connectors), maybe you get like half a meter of extended distance or something with those? If I had to I'd go the repeater way (or as others mentioned: fiber, but sounds expensive and not maintenance free)
