1 00:00:00,110 --> 00:00:06,150 I made a joke on my most recent episode of Handy Tech Under 100, where I said, 2 00:00:06,790 --> 00:00:12,430 all the items will be priced at over $100, and none of them are going to be useful. 3 00:00:12,790 --> 00:00:18,310 So we're going to kick things off then with the Apple Watch, which, I'm just kidding. 4 00:00:18,730 --> 00:00:19,830 It's the usual thing. 5 00:00:20,310 --> 00:00:24,550 And then literally hundreds of you were clearly full of disappoint. 6 00:00:25,050 --> 00:00:27,650 I mean, I can't think of another reason to dislike that video. 7 00:00:27,650 --> 00:00:35,890 So I decided to follow up with a new segment devoted to legitimately crappy stuff that costs more than $100. 8 00:00:36,490 --> 00:00:47,690 Welcome to Useless Tech Over 100, Episode 1, featuring the Wireworld Starlight Platinum 7, a $1,000 HDMI cable. 9 00:00:57,520 --> 00:01:03,800 Cooler Master's new Master Keys Pro-L and Pro-S keyboards provide 16.7 million color RGB backlighting, 10 00:01:03,940 --> 00:01:05,100 genuine Cherry MX switches. 11 00:01:05,360 --> 00:01:07,600 And an industry-leading ARM Cortex processor. 12 00:01:07,860 --> 00:01:09,280 Learn more at the link in the video description. 13 00:01:10,250 --> 00:01:13,530 So why did I spend this kind of money on a cable? 14 00:01:13,930 --> 00:01:19,870 Because while it's all fine and good to know that premium cables are pure nonsense for digital connections, 15 00:01:19,870 --> 00:01:21,850 because the internet said so, 16 00:01:22,450 --> 00:01:28,770 I felt like before taking shots at Wireworld specifically, or the premium cable industry in general, 17 00:01:29,030 --> 00:01:33,650 I owed it to my viewers and to myself, given that I'm the proud owner of this cable, 18 00:01:33,970 --> 00:01:35,430 to at least try it. 19 00:01:35,610 --> 00:01:38,610 With an open mind, and give them a chance to wow me. 20 00:01:38,870 --> 00:01:41,590 Let's start then with Wireworld's side of the story. 21 00:01:42,050 --> 00:01:47,050 At the entry level, you're already getting double the number of signal conductors. 22 00:01:47,230 --> 00:01:53,790 They call this their Symmetricon design, versus a round HDMI cable that has a mere 12 signal conductors. 23 00:01:54,110 --> 00:01:58,570 You're getting their HD grip plug, including silver with gold-plated contacts, 24 00:01:58,750 --> 00:02:05,470 which is very nice feeling, by the way, and the conductor used is 28 gauge OFC, or oxygen-free copper. 25 00:02:05,810 --> 00:02:11,570 It's of debatable importance for audio-visual applications, given its identical conductivity to regular copper, 26 00:02:11,570 --> 00:02:19,610 but hey, it costs more, so at least they're taking your money and spending it on more expensive materials to build the cable you're buying, 27 00:02:19,610 --> 00:02:21,770 rather than just lighting their cigars with it. 28 00:02:21,770 --> 00:02:22,970 That's somewhat noble. 29 00:02:22,970 --> 00:02:27,270 As you step up to the Chroma series, you get thicker gauge wires and... 30 00:02:27,270 --> 00:02:27,770 What? 31 00:02:28,410 --> 00:02:30,170 Amazing visual clarity? 32 00:02:30,170 --> 00:02:31,510 Is this of the cable? 33 00:02:31,510 --> 00:02:34,730 I mean, does it come with a pair of reading glasses, so I can see it better? 34 00:02:34,730 --> 00:02:35,470 Maybe this one's not. 35 00:02:35,470 --> 00:02:41,010 This one is just about the colors, because it does say, right on the Island 7 cable description, 36 00:02:41,010 --> 00:02:46,530 that you can enjoy all, their words, not mine, of the performance benefits with the entry-level one. 37 00:02:46,530 --> 00:02:51,290 But that doesn't prevent the higher-end ones from existing, so moving on, the Ultraviolet series, 38 00:02:51,510 --> 00:02:54,750 now you're getting silver-plated OFC conductors, 39 00:02:54,750 --> 00:03:00,190 which will provide you with an immediate improvement to your listening and viewing experience, apparently. 40 00:03:00,410 --> 00:03:04,890 But probably not as much as the Starlight 7, which increases wire gauge to 41 00:03:04,890 --> 00:03:10,850 23 AWG, and adds another eight silver-plated OFC conductors, 42 00:03:10,850 --> 00:03:16,490 in Wireworld's patented DNA helix design that twists the conductors around each other. 43 00:03:16,490 --> 00:03:24,050 I mean, hey, if it's good enough for DNA, it's good enough to forex the number of efficient paths for electromagnetic energy, right? 44 00:03:24,570 --> 00:03:32,090 The Silver Starlight 7 adds a thicker layer of silver over the copper cables, and promises vibrant color and exquisite sound quality, 45 00:03:32,090 --> 00:03:32,830 but I mean, come on. 46 00:03:32,830 --> 00:03:34,830 If you're gonna get the Silver Starlight 7, 47 00:03:34,890 --> 00:03:37,490 you might as well spring for the big kahuna. 48 00:03:37,670 --> 00:03:42,950 The Platinum Starlight 7 includes all the benefits of the previously mentioned designs, 49 00:03:43,010 --> 00:03:46,130 but opts to use carbon fiber plug-ins and 50 00:03:46,870 --> 00:03:53,130 solid silver conductors in place of copper, which sounds like you're getting a killer value. 51 00:03:53,130 --> 00:03:54,410 I mean, effectively, 52 00:03:54,410 --> 00:03:56,750 24 meters of silver wire in this one. 53 00:03:56,970 --> 00:04:03,570 That is until you actually look up the cost of 23 gauge silver wire, and realize that the bomb cost of this entire package that 54 00:04:03,570 --> 00:04:04,570 you receive, 55 00:04:04,570 --> 00:04:09,790 including the admittedly attractive carrying case and printed signed certificate of authenticity, 56 00:04:09,790 --> 00:04:12,070 is around a hundred US dollars and change. 57 00:04:12,550 --> 00:04:17,950 But, if everything in life was as simple as covering the bill of materials cost, 58 00:04:18,070 --> 00:04:22,270 then we'd all be paying four to six bucks for dinner at a fancy restaurant. 59 00:04:22,370 --> 00:04:29,810 So labor and patented technologies, assuming they deliver a tangible value, do justify spending more sometimes. 60 00:04:30,090 --> 00:04:33,210 Which leads me, finally, to my test. 61 00:04:33,210 --> 00:04:34,390 I sat down, 62 00:04:34,390 --> 00:04:41,150 in front of my curved 4k OLED TV from LG, tried first the random cable that I stole from the office, 63 00:04:41,510 --> 00:04:47,290 then a wire world one, and it did not observe any difference in image or sound quality. 64 00:04:47,390 --> 00:04:51,510 But then it hit me. I only have one wire world cable. 65 00:04:51,570 --> 00:04:57,590 That means that between my computer and the receiver, I'm still using a standard quality cable, 66 00:04:57,890 --> 00:05:01,390 effectively bottlenecking the data flow. So I needed a new test. 67 00:05:01,830 --> 00:05:04,370 There are a couple of situations where high 68 00:05:04,390 --> 00:05:07,410 quality cables have made a difference for me in the past. 69 00:05:07,910 --> 00:05:12,570 Long runs, where red mirror HDMI cables have saved my buns, and 70 00:05:13,270 --> 00:05:20,210 high refresh rate DisplayPort monitors, where flaky cables have caused intermittent display blanking issues. 71 00:05:20,590 --> 00:05:22,590 Since I wasn't about to spend another 72 00:05:23,710 --> 00:05:28,150 $9,000 to test long-distance, I settled on the latter. For my first test, 73 00:05:28,150 --> 00:05:33,790 I used the cheapest, you know, bundled in the monitor box, one meter cable I could find. Truly horrendous. 74 00:05:34,390 --> 00:05:41,750 And I managed to successfully overclock the 50 Hertz 3440 by 1440 ultra-wide display to 61 Hertz. 75 00:05:41,750 --> 00:05:43,750 A fair result, but nothing amazing. 76 00:05:43,910 --> 00:05:50,150 So I followed that up then with a $10 or so retail cable that I purchased a while back. 77 00:05:50,870 --> 00:05:57,890 And no improvement. 61 Hertz. Looks like if it works, it works. At least for basic cables. 78 00:05:58,270 --> 00:06:02,950 So finally then, and with a lot more anticipation than I actually expected, 79 00:06:02,950 --> 00:06:04,230 I plugged in, 80 00:06:04,230 --> 00:06:07,850 the Platinum Starlight 7 silver cable, and 81 00:06:08,590 --> 00:06:10,410 was disappointed. 82 00:06:10,410 --> 00:06:17,430 61 Hertz. I was actually rooting for it after reading so much about how their design and materials improve signal integrity. 83 00:06:17,830 --> 00:06:19,830 Which I guess leads us to the conclusion. 84 00:06:20,510 --> 00:06:26,070 While I'm sure that someone will be happy to point out some kind of a flaw in my testing methodology, 85 00:06:26,230 --> 00:06:33,450 like that the HDMI ports on my video card or the processor in my monitor might be bottlenecking this magnificent cable, 86 00:06:33,450 --> 00:06:35,690 but here's a newsflash for you. 87 00:06:35,690 --> 00:06:41,310 HDMI ports are not like cars, where everyone has to have a steering wheel and an engine, 88 00:06:41,650 --> 00:06:44,790 but can pretty much find their own way to roll it down the road. 89 00:06:44,870 --> 00:06:53,490 They are built according to a rigid standard to ensure interoperability and support for all the cool features like stereo 3D, deep color, 90 00:06:53,630 --> 00:06:59,190 multi-channel audio, Ethernet, 4k, etc, etc, etc. And if the processor in a 1440p 91 00:06:59,830 --> 00:07:03,130 100 Hertz monitor and an NVIDIA video card, 92 00:07:03,450 --> 00:07:09,930 in this case a GTX Titan X, remember, NVIDIA is one of the only devices that I'm aware of that offers 93 00:07:10,630 --> 00:07:13,770 manufacturer-supported display link overclocking. 94 00:07:14,230 --> 00:07:20,550 Can't take advantage of this cable. The only conclusion that I can draw is that nothing can. 95 00:07:20,930 --> 00:07:23,670 I didn't break out an oscilloscope or anything like that. 96 00:07:23,670 --> 00:07:30,330 That would have been super cool and may have actually revealed the 6% conductivity improvement between solid copper and solid silver. 97 00:07:30,690 --> 00:07:33,390 But what I wanted to know was whether it makes a 98 00:07:33,450 --> 00:07:40,730 real difference, even a small one, 62 Hertz would have been good enough, to a person rather than a machine, and the answer is 99 00:07:41,390 --> 00:07:45,520 no. 100 00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:48,040 Speaking of whatever I was talking about on that day, 101 00:07:48,040 --> 00:07:51,000 I recorded this video when I was supposed to be in the office, 102 00:07:51,700 --> 00:07:54,720 Massdrop.com. If you're not familiar with Massdrop, guys, 103 00:07:54,720 --> 00:08:01,620 it's the site that takes the deals that their community requests and goes to the manufacturers or the authorized distributors and 104 00:08:01,940 --> 00:08:06,100 sources them, not just sources them, but at a better price. And the more people buy, 105 00:08:06,360 --> 00:08:12,920 the better it gets. But Massdrop does more than just that these days. In fact, they've started doing some exclusive deals, 106 00:08:13,140 --> 00:08:19,840 including the Fostex TH-X00 headphones that I reviewed a little while ago back there. 107 00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:26,680 But this is different this time. This is the TH-X00 with a different type of wood. 108 00:08:27,400 --> 00:08:31,260 Gone is the mahogany and in is the Purple Heart or 109 00:08:31,960 --> 00:08:35,720 Peltagene wood, which basically gives it a darker aesthetic, and 110 00:08:35,720 --> 00:08:40,500 also slightly changes the sound signature, giving it a little bit less kick in the lows, 111 00:08:40,660 --> 00:08:45,640 but a little bit more clarity in the highs, according to Massdrop. I haven't actually listened to these personally. 112 00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:51,700 They are available for $4.49 on Massdrop. They have already reached the lowest drop, and they've sold over 113 00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:56,760 1,100 pairs so far, but that doesn't mean that you can just wait around, because there's only 114 00:08:57,100 --> 00:09:02,580 2,000 available and just a couple of days left in the drop. So check out the deal over at DrawedUps.com 115 00:09:02,960 --> 00:09:05,320 slash Linus. We've got that linked in the 116 00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:07,720 video description. 117 00:09:07,900 --> 00:09:11,440 Thanks for watching. Guys, if you hated this video, hit the dislike button. 118 00:09:11,880 --> 00:09:17,920 But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button, or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at 119 00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:19,920 Amazon. Don't buy these cables, by the way, please. 120 00:09:20,260 --> 00:09:26,040 Buy a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum, which is linked in the video description. 121 00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:29,680 Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering, hmm, what should I watch next? 122 00:09:29,680 --> 00:09:35,620 Well, maybe check out Channel Super Fun, where we've got this video over there that I guarantee you is worth watching. 123 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:37,720 That's assuming that you haven't already.