$1,000 HDMI Cable!? - Useless Tech Over $100 Ep. 1
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,655 words · ~8 min read
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I made a joke on my most recent episode of Handy Tech Under 100, where I said,
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all the items will be priced at over $100, and none of them are going to be useful.
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So we're going to kick things off then with the Apple Watch, which, I'm just kidding.
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It's the usual thing.
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And then literally hundreds of you were clearly full of disappoint.
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I mean, I can't think of another reason to dislike that video.
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So I decided to follow up with a new segment devoted to legitimately crappy stuff that costs more than $100.
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Welcome to Useless Tech Over 100, Episode 1, featuring the Wireworld Starlight Platinum 7, a $1,000 HDMI cable.
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Cooler Master's new Master Keys Pro-L and Pro-S keyboards provide 16.7 million color RGB backlighting,
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genuine Cherry MX switches.
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And an industry-leading ARM Cortex processor.
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Learn more at the link in the video description.
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So why did I spend this kind of money on a cable?
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Because while it's all fine and good to know that premium cables are pure nonsense for digital connections,
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because the internet said so,
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I felt like before taking shots at Wireworld specifically, or the premium cable industry in general,
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I owed it to my viewers and to myself, given that I'm the proud owner of this cable,
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to at least try it.
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With an open mind, and give them a chance to wow me.
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Let's start then with Wireworld's side of the story.
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At the entry level, you're already getting double the number of signal conductors.
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They call this their Symmetricon design, versus a round HDMI cable that has a mere 12 signal conductors.
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You're getting their HD grip plug, including silver with gold-plated contacts,
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which is very nice feeling, by the way, and the conductor used is 28 gauge OFC, or oxygen-free copper.
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It's of debatable importance for audio-visual applications, given its identical conductivity to regular copper,
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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,
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rather than just lighting their cigars with it.
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That's somewhat noble.
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As you step up to the Chroma series, you get thicker gauge wires and...
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What?
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Amazing visual clarity?
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Is this of the cable?
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I mean, does it come with a pair of reading glasses, so I can see it better?
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Maybe this one's not.
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This one is just about the colors, because it does say, right on the Island 7 cable description,
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that you can enjoy all, their words, not mine, of the performance benefits with the entry-level one.
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But that doesn't prevent the higher-end ones from existing, so moving on, the Ultraviolet series,
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now you're getting silver-plated OFC conductors,
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which will provide you with an immediate improvement to your listening and viewing experience, apparently.
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But probably not as much as the Starlight 7, which increases wire gauge to
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23 AWG, and adds another eight silver-plated OFC conductors,
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in Wireworld's patented DNA helix design that twists the conductors around each other.
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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?
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The Silver Starlight 7 adds a thicker layer of silver over the copper cables, and promises vibrant color and exquisite sound quality,
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but I mean, come on.
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If you're gonna get the Silver Starlight 7,
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you might as well spring for the big kahuna.
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The Platinum Starlight 7 includes all the benefits of the previously mentioned designs,
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but opts to use carbon fiber plug-ins and
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solid silver conductors in place of copper, which sounds like you're getting a killer value.
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I mean, effectively,
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24 meters of silver wire in this one.
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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
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you receive,
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including the admittedly attractive carrying case and printed signed certificate of authenticity,
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is around a hundred US dollars and change.
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But, if everything in life was as simple as covering the bill of materials cost,
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then we'd all be paying four to six bucks for dinner at a fancy restaurant.
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So labor and patented technologies, assuming they deliver a tangible value, do justify spending more sometimes.
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Which leads me, finally, to my test.
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I sat down,
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in front of my curved 4k OLED TV from LG, tried first the random cable that I stole from the office,
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then a wire world one, and it did not observe any difference in image or sound quality.
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But then it hit me. I only have one wire world cable.
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That means that between my computer and the receiver, I'm still using a standard quality cable,
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effectively bottlenecking the data flow. So I needed a new test.
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There are a couple of situations where high
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quality cables have made a difference for me in the past.
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Long runs, where red mirror HDMI cables have saved my buns, and
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high refresh rate DisplayPort monitors, where flaky cables have caused intermittent display blanking issues.
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Since I wasn't about to spend another
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$9,000 to test long-distance, I settled on the latter. For my first test,
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I used the cheapest, you know, bundled in the monitor box, one meter cable I could find. Truly horrendous.
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And I managed to successfully overclock the 50 Hertz 3440 by 1440 ultra-wide display to 61 Hertz.
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A fair result, but nothing amazing.
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So I followed that up then with a $10 or so retail cable that I purchased a while back.
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And no improvement. 61 Hertz. Looks like if it works, it works. At least for basic cables.
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So finally then, and with a lot more anticipation than I actually expected,
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I plugged in,
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the Platinum Starlight 7 silver cable, and
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was disappointed.
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61 Hertz. I was actually rooting for it after reading so much about how their design and materials improve signal integrity.
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Which I guess leads us to the conclusion.
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While I'm sure that someone will be happy to point out some kind of a flaw in my testing methodology,
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like that the HDMI ports on my video card or the processor in my monitor might be bottlenecking this magnificent cable,
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but here's a newsflash for you.
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HDMI ports are not like cars, where everyone has to have a steering wheel and an engine,
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but can pretty much find their own way to roll it down the road.
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They are built according to a rigid standard to ensure interoperability and support for all the cool features like stereo 3D, deep color,
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multi-channel audio, Ethernet, 4k, etc, etc, etc. And if the processor in a 1440p
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100 Hertz monitor and an NVIDIA video card,
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in this case a GTX Titan X, remember, NVIDIA is one of the only devices that I'm aware of that offers
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manufacturer-supported display link overclocking.
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Can't take advantage of this cable. The only conclusion that I can draw is that nothing can.
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I didn't break out an oscilloscope or anything like that.
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That would have been super cool and may have actually revealed the 6% conductivity improvement between solid copper and solid silver.
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But what I wanted to know was whether it makes a
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real difference, even a small one, 62 Hertz would have been good enough, to a person rather than a machine, and the answer is
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no.
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Speaking of whatever I was talking about on that day,
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I recorded this video when I was supposed to be in the office,
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Massdrop.com. If you're not familiar with Massdrop, guys,
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it's the site that takes the deals that their community requests and goes to the manufacturers or the authorized distributors and
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sources them, not just sources them, but at a better price. And the more people buy,
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the better it gets. But Massdrop does more than just that these days. In fact, they've started doing some exclusive deals,
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including the Fostex TH-X00 headphones that I reviewed a little while ago back there.
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But this is different this time. This is the TH-X00 with a different type of wood.
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Gone is the mahogany and in is the Purple Heart or
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Peltagene wood, which basically gives it a darker aesthetic, and
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also slightly changes the sound signature, giving it a little bit less kick in the lows,
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but a little bit more clarity in the highs, according to Massdrop. I haven't actually listened to these personally.
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They are available for $4.49 on Massdrop. They have already reached the lowest drop, and they've sold over
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1,100 pairs so far, but that doesn't mean that you can just wait around, because there's only
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2,000 available and just a couple of days left in the drop. So check out the deal over at DrawedUps.com
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slash Linus. We've got that linked in the
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video description.
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Thanks for watching. Guys, if you hated this video, hit the dislike button.
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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
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Amazon. Don't buy these cables, by the way, please.
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Buy a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum, which is linked in the video description.
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Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering, hmm, what should I watch next?
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Well, maybe check out Channel Super Fun, where we've got this video over there that I guarantee you is worth watching.
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That's assuming that you haven't already.