29/10/2008

Altering HDMI cables

Hi,
I`m writing from Portugal, please excuse my English.
After some digging I realized that the perfect product for me is your cable 680200 series, with 15m long (680206). But I have a serious problem, because I need to install it in a pipe between the power amplifier and the projector. The only way I can do that is cutting the cable in one of the edges and reweld it again after doing the work on the pipe.
Can I do this? Will the cable loose is properties if I do that?
I looked in all your FAQs and many sites and still can`t answer these questions.
Please give me your feedback, it is very important for me.
Many thanks,
Paulo Mariante
Ilha do Pico - Açores

Dear Paulo
I am not precisely sure what you mean by cutting the cable ‘in one of the edges’ but I think you mean chopping the cable and reconnecting all the wires – I can’t say I would recommend it! There are 21 wires, and 7 shield foils in the 68 series HDMI and even if you solder them all back together fine you will have lost some shielding and almost certainly some of the interference resistive properties of the precisely twisted pairs. Compounded with the cable being 15m - near the limit for most HDMI output devices anyway - I think you would be fairly unlikely to get a picture afterwards.
One solution you may want to consider in HDMI over Cat-5 data cable.
TECHLINK do not currently make such a device but we are working on a system that will be launched in 2009; this would allow you to convert the HDMI signal and run it over a simple Cat-5 data cable and then convert it back to HDMI near the other end.
Best regards,
Richard

01/11/2010

Webmaster's comment on HDMI 1.4:

All current TECHLINK HDMI cables up to and including 3 meters in length are HDMI 1.4 certified by HDMI Licensing, LLC.

Currently the HDMI organization only tests and certifies HDMI 1.4 cables up to and including 3m in length. There is no test for longer lengths which means any manufacturer claiming official HDMI specification of any variety for cables over 3m is making an erroneous statement. On the other hand - TECHLINK have undertaken technical and specific "real-world" tests of our long HDMI cables with a variety of HDMI enabled devices and have found all our cables attain or surpass the HDMI 1.4 specification.

The main concern for consumers is whether a cable or adaptor supports the HDMI 1.4 specification. We have tested Wires cables up to 15m (and up to 50m when used with the Wires Repeater) with a 1080i/p and with 4K sources and got a perfect picture. However, the quality is ultimately dependent on the source equipment - we have designed our cables to handle 1080i/p and 4K x 2K resolutions and 99.9% of all the source equipment we have tested so far has worked faultlessly.

All HDMI crossover cables and adaptors, such as HDMI to DVI cables, are HDMI 1.3 compatible due to limitations in the DVI specification.