HDMI 1.4 cable

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OK, I'm not a fool hardy consumer who will buy a £200 cable because its gold plated. However I am a techie and understand that a 20p printer cable works the same as a £20 printer cable but a UDMA 100 ran faster than a UDMA 60 (ask your dad if your not sure ;) ).

I have had flat screens with HDMI for years and I'm still using the cheap ebay cables I bought years ago, however I have just upgraded to a 50" plasma 3D with LG 3D Blu-ray player which supports 1.4 HDMI.

I watched Harry Potter DH2 last night in 3D and while it was good it was grainy in places or horizontal lines every now and again which was disappointing, could this be the cable? Are there any physical differences between old 1.1/1.2 HDMI and 1.4 HDMI?
 
HDMI Revision History

HDMI 1.0 Released December 2002.
Single-cable digital audio/video connection with a maximum bitrate of 4.9 Gbit/s. Supports up to 165Mpixels/s video (1080p60 Hz or UXGA) and 8-channel/192 kHz/24-bit audio.

HDMI 1.1 Released May 2004.
Added support for DVD audio (DVD-A)

HDMI 1.2 Released August 2005.

* Added support for One Bit Audio, used on Super Audio CDs, up to 8 channels.
* Availability of HDMI Type A connector for PC sources.
* Ability for PC sources to use native RGB color-space while retaining the option to support the YCbCr CE color space.
* Requirement for HDMI 1.2 and later displays to support low-voltage sources.



HDMI 1.3 Released June 2006.

* Increases single-link bandwidth to 340 MHz (10.2 Gbps)
* Optionally supports 30-bit, 36-bit, and 48-bit xvYCC with Deep Color or over one billion colors, up from 24-bit sRGB or YCbCr in previous versions.
* Incorporates automatic audio syncing (lip sync) capability.
* Supports output of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams for external decoding by AV receivers. TrueHD and DTS-HD are lossless audio codec formats used on HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. If the disc player can decode these streams into uncompressed audio, then HDMI 1.3 is not necessary, as all versions of HDMI can transport uncompressed audio.

* Availability of a new mini connector for devices such as camcorders.
* The Sony PlayStation 3 is the first product on consumer market with HDMI 1.3.
* Epson released EMP-TW1000 as the first display supporting 30-bit deep color.

HDMI 1.3a
Released November 2006.

* Cable and Sink modifications for Type C
* Source termination recommendation
* Removed undershoot and maximum rise/fall time limits.
* CEC capacitance limits changed
* RGB video quantization range clarification
* CEC commands for timer control brought back in an altered form, audio control commands added.
* Concurrently released compliance test specification included.

HDMI 1.3
Background:

The transition from analog to digital in video has been relatively quick and HDMI has been a key enabler. Virtually all HD equipment utilizes HDMI to transport audio/video from the source to the display. The original rendition of HDMI, HDMI 1.0 was released back in 2002 and has been the de facto standard for HD Video transmission. As the digital revolution has continued, HDMI has also evolved from 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and HDMI 1.3.

-Availability of a new mini connector for devices such as camcorders.


You will still get incredible HD picture quality with HDMI 1.1 and 1.2 and all versions support 1080P. HDMI 1.3 is backwards compatible with previous versions of HDMI. Getting HDMI 1.3 display and HDMI sources will enable you to take advantage of the extra feature enhancements available. If you are in the market for a new HDTV, then it would be advisable to get one with HDMI 1.3 support.

HDMI 1.3 – what is different:

On the physical layer level, all HDMI versions utilize Transmission Minimized Differential Signaling, TMDS and the physical connector looks identical. The major enhancements of HDMI 1.3 are:

Expanded Data Rate Support
HDMI 1.2 supports aggregate data rate of 4.95 Gbps.
In order to ensure that HDMI is the connectivity of the future, HDMI 1.3 has provisions to eventually double the bandwidth from 4.95 Gbps to 10.2 Gbps. For comparative purpose, USB 2.0 has a maximum data transfer rate of 480 Mbps, 1/20 of the data rate of HDMI 1.3.

Although, HDMI 1.3 has provision for up to 10.2Gbps, the transition will be gradual with the first devices available to achieve 6.75Gbps initially.

Deeper Color and higher resolution
The increased bandwidth in HDMI 1.3 enables higher display resolutions beyond the typical 1920x1080P resolution and improved color depth. For example, HDMI 1.2 allows 8 bits/ pixel to be allocated for color information. In version 1.3, HDMI has provisions to support 10, 12 and 16 bit color/ pixel thus allowing for even improvement in picture quality.

Lip Synch Correction
The modern HDTV performs complex digital processing to the incoming video signal such as de-interlacing, format conversion, noise reduction and etc. The digital video processing takes finite time to execute and must be synchronized with the audio portion of the incoming signal to ensure that both video and audio are synchronized and no delay is perceived. Most HDTV have compensation to ensure that the audio and video are properly synchronized However, many consumers will likely process the audio separately in a surround sound system. HDMI 1.3’s lip synch feature allows the audio and video signal to be synchronized to external HDMI devices.

Mini Connector
HDMI 1.3 has also added an optional mini HDMI connectors so hand-held HD video devices such as HD video cameras can also utilize HDMI for HD connectivity.

What is still the same
HDMI 1.3 is fully backwards compatible with previous versions of HDMI. So if your display supports 1.2 and your source is 1.3 capable. The source and display will arbitrate for the best available format. HDCP, although not required by HDMI 1.3, still enables HDCP to be implemented over the HDMI interface.

HDMI 1.4 Released June 5, 2009

# HDMI Ethernet Channel
# Audio Return Channel
# 3D Support
# 4K Support
# Content Type
# Additional Color Spaces
# HDMI Micro Connector
The new Type-D HDMI connector - Type-D is a micro connector defined in the HDMI 1.4 specification that keeps the standard 19 pins of Types A and C but enclosed in a 2.8 mm x 6.4 mm package - smaller than a micro-USB connector.
# Automotive Connection
 
For picture @ 1080p from a non-3D source then the earliest 1.0 and 1.1 versions of a HDMI cable will work fine...but they have to be the High Speed versions of the cables.

If you're watching in 3D then a High Speed cable wired to comply with either 1.3a or 1.4 is what you need.

The rest of the features are either non-picture related i.e. audio support for HD formats, Lip Sync, CEC, Audio Return, Ethernet over HDMI....or they are features that haven't got a real world application.

A good example is Deep Colour. There's no commercial Blu-ray movie release yet that uses anything more than the standard 8bit/channel (24bit) colour depth we've had since day one of HDMI equipped devices. So 30bit, 36bit and 48bit colour depths for movie and TV viewing are a complete red herring. The "extended" or "expanded" colour depth actually messes up colour reproduction rather than improving it.


What is important with HDMI cables is the margin of error.

I know the herd mentality is to think of HDMI cables as "digital" and so they either work or don't work. The fact is though that that is a gross over-simplification, but I can see where it stems from. As long as there's at least a minimum margin of error then all else being equal a £1 cable will work as well as a £10 or £50 cable that may have 10% and 20% margins of error respectfully.

Something that is overlooked is that the performance of any piece of electronics or interconnect degrades over time. This could be down to something as simple as a bit of oxidisation on connectors, or the cumulative effect of component drifting within their tolerances. Whatever the cause, if the cable has only a 1 or 2% margin of acceptable error then the chances are that it will start to become a problem.

Replacing the cable with the latest spec version will help. I still wouldn't spend huge sums on HDMI cables, particularly short ones. But equally I wouldn't buy the £1 versions either.
 
No the cables are the same, theres no extra wires between a hdmi 1.0 and hdmi 1.4 spec cable.

at 1-5 meters any cable will do the job of hdmi 1.4 . It's all marketing BS.
 
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