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we told you we would test the most popular HDMI cables and we're doing it

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but it turned out to be a lot more work than we bargained

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for the good news is it was all worth it

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53 cables from 17 different

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manufacturers totaling ,000 dollars

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$1,000 and after painstakingly labeling

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testing and logging all of them we've got the juicy details for you which ones

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are topnotch which ones aren't even worthy of being used as a skipping rope

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we're going to tell you and also give you some guidelines that you can follow

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to make sure that you are not getting ripped off on

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cables ask a cable vender and naturally they'll claim that their product does

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everything from dissipating noise to reducing Emi interference to Turning

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water into wine but you an intellectual

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you're too smart for that you should just buy the cheapest cable every time

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right well not quite the truth as usual

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lies somewhere in between you see on the

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surface an HDMI cable is basic you've got your plugs on the ends 19 conductors

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in between and some kind of plastic sheath covering the whole thing they're

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basically a commodity item but as we learned on this journey there is a lot

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that can happen in between the two ends and some of the Bold performance claims

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actually can change the user experience

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also well over 10% of the cables that we bought and tested failed to meet their

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claims let's start then with a handful of things that don't matter one while it

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looks nice and feels premium this right

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here is not a signal carrying component of the cable and as long as it isn't so

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corroded that it literally cannot fit in the slot the inclusion of gold plating

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on the HDMI connector housing doesn't matter two and this is going to blow

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your mind but I give you my personal Linus Tech tips guarantee that anyone

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selling you a cable based on the conductors inside is probably bsing you

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to be clear better conductors or better construction can improve signal

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Integrity which will increase the chance that a cable will meet spec and we will

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talk about that more in a bit but that is the manufacturer's problem not yours

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for digital signals like HDMI all that matters is that the signal arrives

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reasonably on time and at a high enough amplitude that it can be read what that

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means is that whatever materials are used if the cable meets the spec there

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will be no loss of ones or zeros and therefore there cannot be any

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discernable difference in quality if you say you believe otherwise you are a

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sucker or you are a liar but here's the

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thing that doesn't mean that all of the marketing is snake oil in order to meet

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the spec or to improve the user experience there can be numerous

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physical differences from one cable to the next many of which wouldn't be

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obvious to the eye at least not without cutting them open category 1 and

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Category 2 cables for example both have four Twisted pairs to carry color sink

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and clock signals but the with Ethernet versions took some of the extra

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conductors and added a fifth twisted pair to carry Ethernet the Category 3

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spec by contrast includes this fifth Twisted Paris standard so then

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are all HDMI cables with Ethernet the

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same no not even close remember how I

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said materials don't matter well they do

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in theory because we're still using the same conductor count and connector from

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nearly 20 years ago a cable that was made in 2001 could conceivably carry a

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modern 8K 60 HZ signal just not very far

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the thing is each new generation of the HDMI spec has approximately doubled the

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maximum data rate putting much greater demands on cable quality that is why

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certification is so important everything from the gauge of the wires to the

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tightness and consistency of the Twisted pairs to the yes the materials including

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both the conductors and the shielding will impact the Integrity of the signal

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over a given distance so a manufacturer who cracks the code so to speak might be

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able to stay in Spec over a longer distance or create a a lighter more

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flexible cable using thinner conductors

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but from a performance standpoint if you are comparing two compliant cables at

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the same length you don't need to care what's inside them with that in mind we

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set off and purchased a whack load of cables from The Usual Suspects Amazon

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Best Buy mono price and a few others for good measure for the majority of these

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we bought three or more of each cable why well because one failure could be a

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Luke two is a coincidence but three

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that's a pattern before we get to the results though one really important note

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here is we were initially aiming to test only HDMI 2.1 cables cuz that's the

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latest and greatest but because neither Amazon Basics nor Best Buy Insignia

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brand offer HDMI 2.1 cables we decided to test those 2.0 rated cables as well I

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mean they're both Category 3 right maybe it'll work wow Colin that's a lot of

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tests yeah it was it was a

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lot there uh something is there's more than 53 here yeah uh I also went around

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the office and grabbed some interesting cables just to see what would happen they're down at the bottom as bonus got

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it okay let's start with the normies though of the 53 cable tests nine failed

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these failing cables were made by four different manufacturers belcon mono

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price Amazon Basics and cable Decon doing the math here that is a 16.9 nice

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perc failure rate that means that the odds of buying an out ofpc HDMI 2.1

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cable even if you shop with reputable Brands is nearly one in five wow two of

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them passed the signal Integrity test meaning you'd probably never know

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something was wrong where they failed was on continuity that means that some

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of the wires were outright not connected where they were supposed to be pretty

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lame the other seven failed on either signal Integrity alone or or a

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combination of the two at HDMI 2.1 speeds none of our cables failed on the

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third category DC resistance which means that any of them would comfortably power

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a low power device like say an early generation chomecast this kind of makes

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sense because DC resistance increases with length and most HDMI 2.1 cables are

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quite short we found that this is a much bigger concern with passive cables at

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lengths of 25 ft or more let's start with the most surprising of our failures

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Amazon Basics was doing really well until they had one that failed number 28

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here now because this is the only one that didn't make it out of our batch of

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three it looks more like a one-off and

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considering that it's also one of the 10-ft cables it's not that surprising

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what is surprising though is that these three numbers 25 26 and 27 all of which

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are 6-t cables not only passed the HDMI

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2.0 spec but they also passed the HDMI 2.1 spec at 48 G gbit per second that's

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pretty good that makes Amazon basic six-footers one of the best bang for the

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buck cables on the market but not quite the best that Throne is reserved for

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infinite cables who not only guarantee their cables for HDMI 2.1 instead of

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just maybe it'll happen but they even charge about 17% less per foot our next

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runner up in the fail Olympics then is mono price which hands down had the

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worst showing out of all the manufacturers we tested only 11 of their

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15 cables passed our tests and we're also starting to see a trend with the

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only failures coming from either 10 or 15t lengths due to Signal Integrity that

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makes sense if you remember from our previous video the longer a cable gets

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the more voltage drop is experienced across its length and the more

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opportunity there is for interference something else interesting is that the

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fails all occurred on the same pair of signal wires number four and number six

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now consistency in manufacturing is usually a good thing but consist

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failing well that's a bad thing looking

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at these fail reports we also find something very interesting you know how

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the best lies have a grain of Truth at their core well much of the marketing

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particularly around audio file HDMI cables centers around Jitter and Jitter

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is bad really bad High Jitter means that

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even though your signals are being sent at regular intervals they might not be

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arriving at those same intervals it's terrible for any application but in

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really different ways Professor Riley in

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analog signaling even a small amount of Jitter can manifest as an obvious loss

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in audio quality with pops crackles and

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other unpleasant anomalies maybe snaps

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this appears to be the grain of Truth upon which modern audio file marketing

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is built but where it turns to horse plop is when these same principles are

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applied to digital signaling digital

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signals are made up of discrete

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zeros and ones Jitter can't change the order of

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the data but it can change when it arrives which can lead to it being read

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incorrectly let me show you this is an

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eye diagram from our tester and at its Center is a single data sampling point

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right where the ey is a one or a zero is

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measured at this point as Jitter increases the the variance between our

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samples also increases thickening these lines causing the eye to narrow like

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this lots of Jitter takes what used to be a good signal like this and makes the

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signal not come in on time meaning the sampling Point could be at a point where

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the signal is still rising or falling to a one or a zero respectively once you

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can't get a clean reading your data is

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garbage and you will experience a very obvious failure either sparkly or more

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likely a complete loss of signal so there you have it either

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everything arrives in order and on time or nothing does that's why I Mark all

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late assignments with a zero back to you lonus oh nice hoodie by the way LTT

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store.com you better believe it Wan hoodie V2 is awesome and it's finally in

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stock get yours today let's move on to the most expensive cable we tested this

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braided HDMI 2.1 cable from belon it

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cost me a tiar inducing $841 cents per foot and it failed

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miserably on its continuity checks we did only get one of them and the signal

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Integrity technically passed but at this price frankly one failure is enough for

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me don't take a risk on this we also tested an Rog cable that we had lying

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around the office and to our surprise even though it was in included with a

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monitor it also failed though it was just on continuity so it probably will

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work for most applications it just goes to show that we should be checking the

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cables that come with products going forward to see what kinds of Trends we

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discover our last cable that failed was this short little cute one from cable

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Decon we're assuming that the LED

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feature that's in the cable here caused it to fail on the continuity test but it

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also failed on Signal Integrity so best just to skip over this particular cable

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so that's some pretty surprising results now if we step back for a sec and take a

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more macro view we start to see some Trends first is cost paying more than

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say about a dollar a foot for an HDMI cable appears to be a complete and utter

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waste of money at least from a signaling perspective with that said there are

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other attributes that might be important for your application properly rated

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sheathing for example is probably required for an in-wall installation in

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your area UV resistant cables can be useful for outdoor installations flat or

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flexible cables might look nicer in your theater room and active cables are great

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for hitting longer distances or in the case of optical active cables running in

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environments with a lot of interference we can also say that if you're going

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anywhere over 10 ft with HDMI 2.1 you're

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asking for trouble only 50% of our 15t

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cables passed and it seems like the high bandwidth signal just doesn't have the

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beans to transmit over lengths like that without the voltage dropping to

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unreadable levels so for those situations you're going to want to

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consider going active or even Optical active I think this testing is pretty

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definitive at this point and answers the most important questions about the HDMI

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cables that y'all are actually shopping for and turbo nerds can check out the

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full data dump on our Forum at the link down below but if you guys disagree and

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you think that we should blow hundreds or even thousands of dollars testing

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extra snake oily audio file gear tell us in the comments who we should be secret

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shopping and maybe we'll take another stab at in a future video there's still

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tons of stuff we want to get into with our cable tester here and we sure hope

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you guys have enjoyed this deeper dive into HDMI cable quality which leaves

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only one question what am I going to do with all

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these HDMI cables actually I know I'm going to

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replace all the bad ones that have been causing intermittent problems for us

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here at the office for the last seven

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years I'm actually super stoked

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if you guys enjoyed this video go check out our original cable tester video

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because it's got a lot more detail about how you guys can interpret some of the

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visuals that you just saw