The short explanation
A simple booster amplifies what arrives, noise included. An active extender or repeater receives, cleans up and retransmits — a genuinely fresh signal. Extenders over network cable or fiber go further still by changing the medium entirely.
Where you run into it
Distance is inversely related to bandwidth, and dramatically so. The same cable that carries 1080p across fifteen meters may manage 18Gbps UHD across five. Any distance claim is meaningless without the format attached to it.
That is also why a run that worked for years fails the day you upgrade a source: the cable did not change, the bandwidth demand did.
How the DR HDMI 8K handles it
The DR HDMI 8K works as a booster and extender as well as an EDID manager: roughly 15m in and 15m out for 1080p (30m total), around 10m for 10.2Gbps UHD and around 5m for 18Gbps UHD. Because it also equalizes both ways, placing it in the middle of a long run is the usual way to get the most from it.
Want to test your own HDMI chain?
The DR HDMI 8K is sold through the HDFury.eu web shop.