Not that long ago good advice for selecting an HDMI cable was pretty simple nowadays not so much
Welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and if I look like Homer Simpson right after he licks
a toad right now well I got my eyes dilated today and honestly I can't see a thing I'm
not high I swear okay you got me I totally am high on giving good HDMI cable advice
that's not funny hey at least I tried I mean honestly talking about HDMI cables may not sound
like a riveting conversation but I'm telling you you're going to want to hear what I have
to say here whether you're just about to set up a next-gen game console or building a big
entertainment system if HDMI is involved then you need to know the game has changed and if you've
already discovered that something is up because you've been having problems getting picture
or sound on your new Gear Well then you have definitely landed in the right spot because I'm
about to explain a little about why your new stuff might not be working but also how to avoid running
into that problem in the first place before I dig in if you're new to the channel welcome it's nice
to have you hopefully I meet you in the comments section but to do that you gotta comment so let
me know how you got here and if this video was helpful and while you're down there some clicks of
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know when we come out with a new video that's that business now let's get down to some HDMI
business so in the recent past my advice for folks who were looking for guidance on H HDMI cables was
pretty simple your bread and butter HDMI cable it links up to about 15 feet were almost guaranteed
to work okay and up to 25 feet you'd probably be safe but any longer than that you'd want to
at least look at a lower gauge cable keeping in mind the lower the gauge number the thicker
the copper in the cable basically the longer your HDMI cable needed to be the more it would need to
resemble a fire hose as opposed to say a drinking straw or you could step up to a different kind of
cable but more on that in a second outside of that you wanted to do your best to make sure
you had good build quality a solid connector on each end and then there were bonuses like high
flexibility for easier cable management and maybe there's a color you like better than black so for
a long time I was perfectly okay with most folks going with an Amazon basic style cable for most
practical at-home consumer uses audio files and video files stop cringing you'll be fine because
so long as the cable wasn't complete garbage it would usually get the job done the ones and
zeros would make it from point A to point B and you got picture and sound and hey if you wanted
to spend insane bucks on a high-end cable hoping you'd get slightly better video and audio quality
then knock yourself out well my friends things are different in the world of HDMI 2.1 or more
specifically a world in which new HDMI cables are supposed to be able to handle 40 to 48 gigabits
per second of bandwidth which by the way is way up from the 18 gigabits per second standard we
all had before well all bets are off well not all of them just enough to cause some problems today
if you buy a cable that's supposed to handle up to 48 gigabits per second at lengths between two
and three meters so roughly six to nine feet then the odds are that whatever brand of cable you buy
will work they're pretty good pretty good odds any longer than that and actually any shorter
than that too well you're now more likely to run into some trouble why well I'm going to try and
break it down for you but let me be clear I'm about to brutally oversimplify matters just to
get you some baseline understanding if you want to dive deep into the rabbit hole then I'll have
links down below to offer some deeper discussions on the topic but also if you don't care about the
why and just want to know what to look for in an HDMI cable you can skip ahead for my best advice
for now by clicking the what to look for Link in the description below this video so at the heart
of the why seems to be an intersection between the higher bandwidth or speed of information
that we're trying to shove down this series of pipes in an HDMI cable the construction of
the cable itself and a bunch of complicated math and physics bottom line there's a lot more going
on inside that HDMI cable than you probably think most folks I talk to are of the opinion
that we're talking about digital signals ones and zeros right and that since it's a digital process
it should be super simple and that there's no real quality difference in the output of one HDMI cable
or another well to a point that's true the signal that is being delivered is digital but the manner
in which it's delivered involves a bunch of pretty analog factors take a look at this diagram that I
borrowed from a conversation on YouTube between Jeff boccaccio at DPL labs and Jason dustel at
meridio link below as you can see here there's a 5 volt line a hot plug a display data Channel some
video channels and then down at the bottom a clock I don't know about you but just that diagram shows
me there's more going on in an HDMI cable than I thought again tragically oversimplified here
but that 5 volt Channel up top has to negotiate a very specific milliamperage between a source like
an Xbox series X and a receiver like a TV or an AV receiver just to get the party started if this
one little thing doesn't happen then nothing happens and while that trigger went off fairly
successfully in the past it's now getting more and more difficult to do I'll get to why in a
moment then on the other side of this diagram is a clock now without getting into what the clock
actually does it's like Air Traffic Control in a way if that clock can't do its job then forget
it party's over you could be looking at failure which means no audio or video signal to your TV
or AV receiver there are other factors like hdcp and edit and CEC that need to happen successfully
all before audio and video can make it to where it needs to go so where am I going with all this
well I mentioned that the higher speed or higher bandwidth was a factor the more you're trying to
jam down a pipe the more demand there is for that pipe's capacity and the bottom line here is that
now that the demands have gone way up with 4K resolution at 60 FPS or more with HDR metadata
and uncompressed Dolby Atmos audio look if the copper in the cable isn't Stout enough and isn't
Stout enough in the right places for a given length of cable the failure is imminent in a
way that it just wasn't before demands were lower in the past so there was more tolerance for error
as demand has risen that tolerance has gone way way down and now we're seeing more failures than
we used to the longer your HDMI cable is the Better Built the cable needs to be or the more
urgency there is to go get a different kind of cable that isn't just a bunch of thin copper
inside so Caleb you may ask if I buy a cable that says HDMI 2.1 on it or 8K certified or 48 gigabits
per second apps a freaking lutely guaranteed then that cable should work right it says certified
right on the package well in a perfect world yeah it should and for shorter runs it probably will
but without commenting on the whole certification process all I can say is that we're hearing about
a lot more failures than we used to that's the AV World we're living in and it's not just the cables
but the source devices and receiving devices we use those are changing too it's an evolving
situation and based on conversations I've had with some industry folks who are in the know it's kind
of a mess and getting Messier okay so what do we look for when shopping for HDMI cables that helps
reduce the risk that something is going to go wrong and if it does go wrong then what do you do
well first off buy from a reputable retailer so you can get a return or exchange for another
product and keep your receipts second when you do get your cable or cables plug them in and stress
test them before you do anything else game in 4k 120 whatever the highest demand audio and video
thing you might do do it then before you carefully route cables around or move hundreds of pounds of
equipment back and forth and if it works great if it doesn't exchange it this should save you
from learning the hard way that your cable doesn't work and you should be able to remedy the problem
relatively quickly but in terms of picking an HDMI cable all I can do is try to point you in
the right direction I mean there's kind of a lot of uncertainty right now and keep in mind the
following advice is for folks who are dealing with 4K High frame rates HDR next-gen consoles
that kind of advanced stuff or if you just want to Future proof as much as possible if you're hooking
up your PS3 or an old laptop you're going to be fine with most decent HDMI cables on the market
today so first off you'll be safest if you don't buy a standard copper-based HDMI cable under one
meter or six feet if you do there's a possibility that clock I mentioned earlier won't work and the
cable could fail so even though it may be longer than you think you need your safest at starting
at about one meter from there don't go with a standard copper cable over two meters I'll get to
other cable types in a moment but between one and two meters make sure that the cable is rated to
handle 48 gigabits per second and buy a cable from a brand you trust I'm not here to specify Brands
because I can't list all the ones I personally trust here and I'm not taking endorsement deals
but if you've never heard of the brand before well it could be okay but are you okay taking
a chance of returning the product if it doesn't work I'll also say don't buy the cheapest cable
and don't buy anything outrageously expensive the good stuff is somewhere in the middle I mean the
really expensive cables are probably going to be totally reliable but they are also probably
totally Overkill it's easy to Verge into snake oil territory but again the notion that anything other
than the most basic inexpensive cable is snake oil that's just not true now if you're going to
run an HDMI cable over 2 meters or 10 feet I think you should very seriously consider stepping up to
an HDMI active optical cable or HDMI AOC you could get away with longer runs before but now it's just
kind of too risky HDMI AOC is a hybrid that uses fiber optics for some jobs and copper for others
and it's a much safer bet for longer runs what I can say is that if an HDMI AOC cable doesn't
work then there's one more option that we can look up to that would be HDMI cable power now
there are two types of utilizing the HDMI cable power feature right now most devices don't have
HDMI cable power built in so the HDMI cable power cables you would get come with a little separate
connector that will provide Power via like USB for example but in the future as more devices support
HDMI cable power you'll be able to start using HDMI cable power cables without that little
connector the power will just be baked into the HDMI cable connector itself if HDMI AOC doesn't
work HDMI cable power should now this is all for just general consumer use if you're talking about
in-wall use then you need to make sure that on top of all that other stuff I just talked about
the cable is rated for in-wall use that usually means it has a special jacket on the outside to
prevent the spread of or in some cases the cause of fire okay I know that was a lot but I hope it
was helpful and as things evolve you can be sure I'll be here to update you thanks as always for
watching everyone what do you think about this deeper kind of content let me know down in the
comments don't forget to like And subscribe and here's two other videos I think you might like