HDMI cable to do some GPU work?

[Lewis - A2A]

Well I figured this would be a 'crap tech over $100' video form Linus in which he essentially tests snake oil products but it turned out to be something that actually works. Now the price is still a little high but its interesting to see this stuff hit more mainstream as it means down the line it'll end up being the stuff we run anyway. Worth a watch for sure;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjJzibFTaqA[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjJzibFTaqA

For anyone not sure and interested, Linus Tech Tips do daily videos and a weekly tech show called the WAN show. If interested in keeping up to date with tech stuff its a great little weekly conversation show to watch.

cheers,
Lewis

[Dangerous Beans]

I wonder if it would be of any benefit with a Rift or Vive.

[bobsk8]

I have worked in this industry all my life. This is snake oil hogwash, but if you have money to throw away, then throw it away.

[DrumsArt]

but if you have money to throw away, then throw it away.

Nope, give to me

Regards,

[shortspecialbus]

This is literally impossible unless you have a broken or otherwise out of spec HDMI cable, or are trying to push a 4k signal or so over too long a distance over a non-premium certified HDMI cable.

It is fundamentally impossible for HDMI to improve visual quality unless there's some sort of video processor chip involved. The cable itself just passes bits. If the bits make it from one end to the other, then everything is fine. Jitter and stuff like that is nothing you have to worry about.

Either your picture will be fine, or it will have lots of flashing white specks (they are insanely obvious) or it will cut out a lot or otherwise just not show any picture. Sound will either work or not work or potentially crackle, badly.

A digital transport cable cannot improve the quality of the signal. It can only bring it correctly, or bring it so badly that it no longer functions.

This is, as the previous poster said, a bunch of hogwash.

If you really care, get Premium Certified cables from Monoprice. They will work as well as a cable can possibly work, and if they don't because of whatever reason, Monoprice will swap it out with a new one. Blue Jeans Cable and such is fancy and fat and stuff but it won't actually work any better than a Monoprice Premium Certified.

Digital is Digital is Digital. It either works properly, or it works in an obviously broken way.

-stefan

Edit: I didn't watch the video, because these are all bunk. It's possible that it has something like a Darbee video processor or something similar, which may subjectively look better depending on who views it. A lot of high end receivers and blu ray/UHD players have something like this built in already. Not to mention high end TVs, although you're still generally better turning most of that crap off anywhere past the Blu Ray player.

[Molly - A2A]

It does have a small inline video processor. Really it should be called that, and not an HDMI cable.

[shortspecialbus]

It does have a small inline video processor. Really it should be called that, and not an HDMI cable.

Ok, that makes some sense then. But if you're the sort of person that wants that sort of thing, you probably already have an Oppo Blu-Ray/UDP player or like at least an Onkyo or Marantz something or other for a receiver. Those have a pretty nice video processor in them.

If you're playing games you want that all turned off anyways, i.e. Game Mode, because trying to play with 100ms display lag is really frustrating and un-fun.

The audience for this cable is extremely limited, consisting of people who

1.) don't game
2.) are willing to invest $150 in an HDMI cable but not $500 into a Blu-Ray/UHD player, to get the ultimate best quality out of their Amazon FireTV.
3.) use a soundbar or at least a super cheap "home theatre in a box" kind of thing, or maybe the TV speakers.

I think that's a limited target audience because there's seriously not a lot of overlap in those 3 things.

Although, I'm ignoring #4:

4.) Rich old men with golden ears/golden eyes that also own a $1200 wooden volume knob, $4500 speaker wire stands, and $60,000 speaker wire who don't watch anything other than their DVD copy of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

I take it back - this product will make mint.

-stefan

[Molly - A2A]

Actually Linus and team did test the input lag and found it added none (at least none their input lag tester could pick up.)

*I'm not defending this product, it's just stuff that was stated in the video. I personally don't like video processors either. I would rather just put the extra $150 into a nicer TV or AVR.

[shortspecialbus]

Actually Linus and team did test the input lag and found it added none (at least none their input lag tester could pick up.)

*I'm not defending this product, it's just stuff that was stated in the video. I personally don't like video processors either. I would rather just put the extra $150 into a nicer TV or AVR.

Interesting. There's no way it's adding 0ms, but it could be <10ms or so, which unless you're already pushing 60ms, isn't going to matter.

Does the video (or something else) state what chip it is?

-stefan

[Tutmeister]

Basically it is an upscaler built in to one end which takes its power from a usb port.
They saw bigger benefits when running standard definition content and 720p, as they increased through 1080 and beyond it still applied a sharpening effect but the upscaling effect was almost imperceptible.
There is a market for this, as covered in the video, but for people who only play high resolution content on a high resolution display there is little to no benefit.
If this was marketed as a mini upscaler then nobody would have batted an eyelid!

Chris

[Lewis - A2A]

I have worked in this industry all my life. This is snake oil hogwash, but if you have money to throw away, then throw it away.

You might want to watch the video before making that assumption, kinda the point in my post lol

[Lewis - A2A]

It does have a small inline video processor. Really it should be called that, and not an HDMI cable.

Ok, that makes some sense then. But if you're the sort of person that wants that sort of thing, you probably already have an Oppo Blu-Ray/UDP player or like at least an Onkyo or Marantz something or other for a receiver. Those have a pretty nice video processor in them.

If you're playing games you want that all turned off anyways, i.e. Game Mode, because trying to play with 100ms display lag is really frustrating and un-fun.

The audience for this cable is extremely limited, consisting of people who

1.) don't game
2.) are willing to invest $150 in an HDMI cable but not $500 into a Blu-Ray/UHD player, to get the ultimate best quality out of their Amazon FireTV.
3.) use a soundbar or at least a super cheap "home theatre in a box" kind of thing, or maybe the TV speakers.

I think that's a limited target audience because there's seriously not a lot of overlap in those 3 things.

Although, I'm ignoring #4:

4.) Rich old men with golden ears/golden eyes that also own a $1200 wooden volume knob, $4500 speaker wire stands, and $60,000 speaker wire who don't watch anything other than their DVD copy of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

I take it back - this product will make mint.

-stefan

As I've just posted, watch the video. Your assumptions seemed like mine initial ones, ones that once tested are just not bourne out of real world tests.

The whole point of me posting this was because if you judge a book by its cover its snake oil, as we all initially think and as have been evidenced by a bunch of the responses, but as soon as you test and look at the actual real world testing this stuff has real world application. I know 4k and above is all up there but the main stream are still 1080 or below, I'm here with a couple 1080 monitors and ive no plan or need to go 4k, the cost in everything associated with it still means its very much out of range. If I can offload a little filtering from the GPU in a cable, that sounds like a damn fine idea.

[n421nj]

Did you try it Lewis?

[shortspecialbus]

It does have a small inline video processor. Really it should be called that, and not an HDMI cable.

Ok, that makes some sense then. But if you're the sort of person that wants that sort of thing, you probably already have an Oppo Blu-Ray/UDP player or like at least an Onkyo or Marantz something or other for a receiver. Those have a pretty nice video processor in them.

If you're playing games you want that all turned off anyways, i.e. Game Mode, because trying to play with 100ms display lag is really frustrating and un-fun.

The audience for this cable is extremely limited, consisting of people who

1.) don't game
2.) are willing to invest $150 in an HDMI cable but not $500 into a Blu-Ray/UHD player, to get the ultimate best quality out of their Amazon FireTV.
3.) use a soundbar or at least a super cheap "home theatre in a box" kind of thing, or maybe the TV speakers.

I think that's a limited target audience because there's seriously not a lot of overlap in those 3 things.

Although, I'm ignoring #4:

4.) Rich old men with golden ears/golden eyes that also own a $1200 wooden volume knob, $4500 speaker wire stands, and $60,000 speaker wire who don't watch anything other than their DVD copy of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

I take it back - this product will make mint.

-stefan

As I've just posted, watch the video. Your assumptions seemed like mine initial ones, ones that once tested are just not bourne out of real world tests.

The whole point of me posting this was because if you judge a book by its cover its snake oil, as we all initially think and as have been evidenced by a bunch of the responses, but as soon as you test and look at the actual real world testing this stuff has real world application. I know 4k and above is all up there but the main stream are still 1080 or below, I'm here with a couple 1080 monitors and ive no plan or need to go 4k, the cost in everything associated with it still means its very much out of range. If I can offload a little filtering from the GPU in a cable, that sounds like a damn fine idea.

The issue I take is how it's marketed. It's marketed as a magic cable. It's not the cable that does anything. It's an attached processor. There's nothing remotely unique or newsworthy there. In fact it's less useful than separate parts would be because you're stuck using a fixed cable length.

If they called it a video upscaler with attached cable then sure. But they didn't. It's also going to be very subjective on if it improves anything over someone's existing hardware/display upscalers, since every tv/monitor has one built in, and I don't know what "filtering" you're offloading from the gpu here. Offloading resolution isn't actually offloading resolution so much as just faking it with a potentially better interpolate.

-stefan

Edit: fixing mobile typos

[gonzman]

An Australian consumer advocacy group called Choice did some tests on HDMI cables when Blu-Ray was coming out and the format was becoming a standard.

In Australian retailers (I know this for a fact as I worked for one at the time) You could buy a 1.5m HDMI cable for anything from $20 to $499+

After testing various brands and lengths they concluded that the image quality to the general consumer (the cables target markets) was indiscernible and the sales people trying to up-sell you a $200 HDMI cable with your $250 Blu-Ray player was pretty much a scam as the $20 one works just as well over that distance.

Expensive cables started to pull ahead at long/industrial usage lengths, 20m+

I tried digging up the article but can't find it at the moment, fascinating read at the same as I was in that industry selling TV/Entertainment stuff to family consumers, never did flog any $450 HDMI cables, much to the displeasure of my bosses and the cable company CEO's!