The Murideo can output test signals at a variety of resolutions, frame rates, and color depths, so we could confirm whether each cable could actually carry each type of signal. Keep an eye on your inbox! Packaging can be deceiving, but cable prices can also be inflated. The upshot of this is that you if you see a TV claiming to carry one or more HDMI 2.1 sockets (its common, just to confuse you more, for TVs to carry different HDMI generations), dont assume that it will necessarily provide all the features HDMI 2.1 is capable of. A concerted industry-wide push of CEC technology would likely help CEC realise its full smart home potential. Those were the only failures from a pile of HDMI cables. The vast majority of new HDMI cables you shop for will be High Speed or above, which means they can carry a 4K signal. Explore the four main types of HDMI cables on the market. Its 18.0 gigabits per second throughput is enough to support 4K at frame rates of up to 60Hz, as well as high dynamic range video up to the wide Rec 2020 color space with 10/12-bits of color resolution. Can you get the 4K visuals with a standard HDMI cable, or is a high-speed cable the better option? The number of pixels that can fit per square inch determines the type of scans resolution. HDMI v1.4 also introduced the HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC). Copyright 2007 - 2022 CDW. When used with equivalent HDMI equipment, this type of cord offers a clear sound and picture for high definition video sources such as: The type of cable needed depends on its intended application. DirecTV to Dump One America News, Cord Cutting's Latest Toll: 1.34 Million Legacy Pay-TV Subscribers Gone, Legendary Strays: 8 More Intriguing Games Where You Play As a Cat, PlayStation VR 2 Getting Room-Scanning, Live-Streaming Modes, Google Pixel 6a vs. Apple iPhone SE: The Best Phone Under $500. Cables that have received official certification from the HDMI Licensing group may cost a little more, too. It offers six-feet HDMI cables for a few dollars each, even if you want to splurge on particularly fancy, colorful, heavy-duty, or ultra-thin cables. Ultra High Speed cables are the most extreme home theater future-proofing, and they're getting more and more common. Since 2019, one or two brands have been able to squeeze one or two features associated with the HDMI 2.1 standard were coming to next into HDMI 2.0 bandwidths. Theyve led to untold numbers of cable breakages due to their flimsy attachments. Relative to a standard HDMI cable, the main difference is that a high speed cable uses HDMI versions 1.3 to 1.4a. Should You Buy a New TV or Wait? If you have ever been shopping for an HDMI or, Game consoles including X-Box, PlayStation and Wii U, Some digital cameras, tablets and smartphones, To cover a sprawling business complex or campground, you need Cat5 or, Watch standard HDTV, Blue-ray DVDs and media streamers, Play video games with up to 30fps and use design software, Play video games with over 30fps and leverage all HDR TV features. The hitch is that the bandwidth will only support 4K24, or 4K video at 24 frames per second. Standard HDMI cables are rare to find in stores, but if you find an unmarked cable in a bucket somewhere, or hooked up to a home theater system that hasn't been upgraded in five years, it might be Standard. Find out more about how HDMI cable length should factor into your purchasing decision. If you're running long cables between, say, a projector and a closet full of home theater components across the house, you'll want to make sure your cables are rated to handle it. One potentially useful trick of HDMI cables for smart home applications is CEC. HDMI 2.0 supports many new features to take your A/V entertainment to a new and exciting level. Premium High Speed pushes the bandwidth up to 18Gbps, which will cover any consumer-level video source you deal with. These specifications are all important for making sure media streamers and other devices can transmit and TVs can receive enough data to do what they need to do, but for the cables themselves, they aren't all that directly significant. This HDMI cable buying guide will answer these questions and everything else you need to know about these cables. It doesnt matter which end is plugged into the input and output ports because the data packets can flow both ways. Most HDMI cable options on Amazon have far fewer incremental length choices, and that flexibility is very useful if you know your home theater components are going to be very close together and you want to keep dangling cables to a minimum. You can get longer cables without active components, but they won't be able to handle the full 4K60 HDR signal. You will see refresh rates measured in Hertz (HZ). HDMI 1.4 and 2.0 don't matter nearly as much as their speed ratings, also defined by the HDMI Forum and HDMI Licensing Administrator. If you have a 4K TV, don't have a 4K120-capable game system, and don't plan on keeping your home theater components too far away from it, nearly any HDMI cable you buy new will work for video content. The longer a cable you plan to run, the better insulated it needs to be. None of these premium options, though, need to cost hundreds or thousands of pounds. Basically, they can handle any 4K video you throw at them. What Is 8K? A premium high speed HDMI cable is an excellent option for design applications, such as Adobes Creative suite, and for playing games with up to 30 frames per second. After all, it's just a cable. For commercial and high-end home installations that use long runs, you should seriously consider an extender system that sends the signal over Ethernet for most of the distance, switching back to a shorter HDMI cable once you run the easier-to-manage Ethernet through your walls or ceiling. Active HDMI cables, though, only send their video signal in one direction. Right? This doesn't mean you should sneer at cables from Amazon or Best Buy, or even most unknown brands you can order online. As with HDMI connections, different HDMI cables can carry different amounts of data. Signup for our special promotions and new customers will receive a code via email for 5% off their first order. It also supports so-called Dynamic HDR, where extra scene by scene information is provided to displays to help them show their HDR pictures better. It might show some strange artifacts, but then it will simply cut out. Whendeciding on an HDMI cable, it's important to understand the classifications available. A lot of the news around HDMI in the last few years has focused on the different versions of the cable standard. So, for instance, if you connect a CEC-enabled Blu-ray player to a CEC-enabled TV, you will get extra menu options that let you use your TV remote to control Blu-ray playback. You need the right cable for the job, and ideally you want to spend as little as possible for it. Theyve been responsible, for instance, for generations of AV equipment going suddenly and unceremoniously out of date. The HDMI Forum would likely recommend going with a certified Premium High Speed cable with a QR code for security, but after looking at the variety of cable options out, there we're not so sure. There are two primary considerations when selecting a cord type: classification and distance. No officially certified Ultra High Speed/Category 3 cables have yet gone on sale. For more, see HDMI 2.1: Why It Matters for PCs and TVs in 2021. If your components are three, six, or even 15 feet from each other, you should be fine with regular cables. The Monoprice 75-foot Commercial Series Standard Speed HDMI Cable could carry a 4K24 signal both with and without HDR, but once we moved up to 4K60, the signal failed. Some relatively expensive cables can offer handy tricks such as extra-strong mounts, or smart home-friendly flat cable profiles for running under carpets. Even then, at some point it needs an active component to amplify or repeat the signal to get it all the way to its destination. Amazon Echo Show vs. Google Nest Hub: Which Smart Display Should Be in Your Home? Each subsequent version builds upon the previous version. This cable is also a solid choice for playing Blu-ray DVDs or media streamers. Similarly, while it supports high dynamic range playback, that support is restricted with 4K to 8-bit color quality, rather than the 10 or 12 bit support offered by later HDMI versions. These cables are monodirectional and labeled so you know where to plug them in. Find out more about HDMI cables, which are conduits that transfer HDMI video and audio between two HDMI-enabled devices. This further cemented 4K support with the ability to handle 4K video at 60 frames per second with all forms ofhigh dynamic range (HDR), and laid the groundwork for 8K. You can achieve up to a 4K resolution with a high dynamic range (HDR) and a refresh rate up to 60Hz with a premium high-speed HDMI cable. Samsung has managed to get some HDMI 2.1 features (auto game mode, variable refresh rate support, support for other non-Dolby dynamic HDR formats) working on its current HDMI 2.0 TV connections. Monoprice also consistently offers the widest range of options for cable lengths and types. If you want a fairly long running cable with the extra peace of mind of Premium Certification, this is an impressively affordable option. These features are all expected to be supported by the the latest gaming consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and have actually already arrived on Nvidias RTX 30 graphics cards. So you can use an HDMI port to, say, pass a digital audio track out from a TV to an external ARC-capable audio device such as a soundbar (the Sonos Arc, for example) or AV receiver, even if that HDMI port is also receiving video and sound. Ive been PCMags home entertainment expert for over 10 years, covering both TVs and everything you might want to connect to them. The newest HDMI 2.1 format depends on data rates far higher than HDMI 2.0s 18Gbps. The applications of these cables are similar to standard cables, with the added benefit of better coloring and the ability to watch 3D videos. Ultra High Speed cables have up to 48Gbps bandwidth, allowing for uncompressed 8K video with all the trimmings. This kind of cable is optimized for HDMI 2.1 and primed for new technology, which makes it a great choice for tech enthusiasts. Much of this potential confusion is down to manufacturers deciding to support different data rates with their various HDMIs, where the data rate can dictate the level of HDMI 2.1 features that can be supported. At least, to a point, and that point is between 25 and 75 feet. So quickly has HDMI had to adapt, in fact, that there a number of different generations of HDMI port are simultaneously playing a key part in todays AV world. HDMI 1.4 was developed to look forward to 4K and set certain criteria to enable support for it in the future (from 2009) by providing enough bandwidth for 4K video at up to 24 frames per second. Because of this, things like "signal fidelity" and the importance of gold-plated connectors are completely irrelevant when shopping for them. Amazon Echo vs. Google Nest: Which Smart Speaker Is Best. HDMI 2.0b additionally added playback of the new Hybrid Log Gamma format already used by the BBC and expected to be taken up by other broadcasters soon. You can achieve up to 10K resolution and refresh rates up to 240Hz on an HDR TV or 4120Hz refresh speed for video data with lower resolutions. Short for Consumer Electronics Control, CEC lets you control multiple devices connected via HDMI using only one remote control. That's fine if you want to watch movies on Ultra HD Blu-ray, but if you have streaming TV shows or gaming hardware that can push 4K at 30 or 60 frames per second, it won't be able to handle it. People trying to run long HDMI cable runs have sometimes found they get no picture. OANN and Done? Because they contain power boosters that amplify the signal coming from your source as they send it on its way. In fact, the vast majority of HDMI cables you buy new in stores will say they have these features and bandwidth; you'll have to hunt to find a 10.2Gbps or 4.95Gbps HDMI cable that hasn't been sitting in a drawer for years. Premium High Speed cables support 4K60, or 4K video at 60 frames per second, with the capacity for BT.2020 color space and 4:4:4 chroma sampling. Standard is the most basic, and slowest, HDMI cable you can get. Each HDMI Cable version includes all of its sub-versions: document.write(new Date().getFullYear()) Multicom, Inc. | All Rights Reserved. CEC can currently be clunkily implemented or hard to follow on many devices, though - and many consumers dont even know it exists. Learn more about HDMI, a set of rules for rendering uncompressed, high definition audio and video. Pay attention to equipment specifications for the best understanding of what each item can do. HDMI v1.4 was a big deal when it debuted in 2009 because it was the first HDMI platform with enough data bandwidth for 4K picture resolutions. The chart here has been truncated to reflect that. The v2.0 HDMI provides much more bandwidth - chiefly so that it can better handle 4K video. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners. Try to select a cable that is just long enough for your application and to maneuver connected devices. PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. When making your selection, use this HDMI cable buying guide to find a product that fulfills your current needs and has enough length to connect your devices. This has led to some confusion over the usual HDMI naming/numbering conventions, with essentially 2.0 HDMIs getting referred to in terms of HDMI 2.1 features they might support. The trouble with HDMI 2.1 is that its implementation has become very fragmented between different displays, with different TVs and TV brands claiming support for various HDMI 2.1 features, rather than everyone just using a single HDMI 2.1 standard that covers ALL HDMI 2.1s potential capabilities. It covers all you need to watch any content on your 4K TV, but as both 8K TVs and 4K120 sources are still a rarity, we haven't tested those higher rates yet. Ive reviewed more than a thousand different consumer electronics products including headphones, speakers, TVs, and every major game system and VR headset of the last decade. For instance, the Dolby Vision dynamic HDR system has actually worked on every HDMI since v1.4. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. But theres doesnt seem to be any compelling reason to do so. Looking out for officially certified cables is particularly recommended if you need a relatively long cable run (5m or more). Gigabytes per second (Gbps) is the unit of measure that represents bandwidth. That's a lot of data to send from your media streamer, Blu-ray player, game console, or PC to your TV, and you're going to need a cable for it. It should be noted that these are all tests for up to 4K60 video, and not 8K or 4K120. Many devices (such as cable boxes, the original PS4, most projectors and many relatively affordable TVs) still carry these relatively affordable ports.