Why otherwise good HDMI cables won't always work with modern devices and how to test them
Why otherwise good HDMI cables won't always work with modern devices and how to test them. A friend had trouble connecting a modern 4K TV streaming dongle, Chromecast with Google TV, to an older 4K TV. The problem lay with the HDMI cable. It had worked with the previous device, a DVD player, I think, but not the newer 4K dongle. I was mystified by how the cable did not work, so chased it up. HDMI cables are very high-tech and work at very high data rates and bandwidths. As such, the possible length of a cable has always been an issue, something I discovered trying to run long leads to home cinema projectors. The physical construction of the cable has a big impact on the data rate it can handle. Like network cables, HDMI cables use shielded twisted pairs of wires, including a shield ground for each pair. There are three signal pairs and a clock pair. As well there are other wires for digital control signals. There are, or should be, nineteen wires in total. The HDMI standard has b