Fiber HDMI Cable 50ft 4K 60Hz, Fiber Optic HDMI Cable 2.0b HDR10, ARC, HDCP2.2, 3D, 18Gbps Subsampling 4:4:4/4:2:2/4:2:0 Slim and Flexible HDMI Fiber Optic Cable

An HDMI Cable That Actually Passes True 4K HDROn March 22, 2019 I purchased a 25’ FURI fiber optic HDMI 2.0b cable to connect my Onkyo RZ820 receiver to my Vizio P75 TV mounted on the wall across the room which required a 25’ HDMI 2.0 cable. Connected to the Onkyo’s HDMI inputs are two 4K HDR sources, an Oppo UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player and the Amazon Fire 4K TV Stick. Before I moved the receiver to the other side of the room, everything worked perfectly with a 10’ High Speed HDMI 2.0, HDCP2.2, 18Gbps cable.When you are using relatively short cables, 15’ and under, the length of the cable will usually not cause noticeable signal degradation and some even say you can go up to 20’. I have tried several 25 and 30 foot cables including the Monoprice High Speed Active HDMI Cabernet Ultra Series, a High Speed HDMI cable by KabelDirekt and this cable and none managed to fully support full 4K HDR with Dolby Vision. I returned this cable, posted a review and the company contacted me immediately wanting to know a bit more about my issues with the cable. After a brief exchange of letters they sent me a replacement cable and I have to say it is working perfectly for several weeks now, the picture is gorgeous. Watching “The Expanse” in 4K UHD on Amazon Prime looks great and “The Gladiator” in 4K HDR/Dolby Vision on Blu-ray looks spectacular!The first FURI cable had “handshake” (which I explain below) issues with my receiver which did not allow it to pass the video signal when I enabled Full UHD on my TV while the replacement cable had no such problem. The new cable works as advertised passing 4K @60Hz with full HDR including Dolby Vision from the Amazon Fire TV 4K as well as 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 from my Oppo UDP-203.What I also appreciate about this cable is how thin and flexible it is. By not having to use heavy gauge wire to carry the video data substituting thin fiber optic cables instead, this cable is very easy to work with and especially easy to hide in narrow channels. Be careful not to pull/stretch it or bend it excessively as you could damage the very fine fiber elements inside it. FOR THOSE WANTING TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HDMI CABLES, 4K AND HDR CONTINUE READING…..When I was first shopping for an HDMI cable, I really didn’t know what all the numbers and specifications meant and why they mattered. Here is a brief primer to help you understand what it all means.4K refers to how many pixels are on a screen while HDR (High Dynamic Range) indicates the range of brightness to darkness that those pixels can cover either by having brighter highlights, darker black areas, or a combination of the two. UHD or "Ultra-High-Definition Television" is an industry specification that combines the two (plus some additional features) into an easily recognizable term.Consumer video is stored, transmitted, and processed in a color space called Y’CbCr. The three components stand for: Y’ = Luminance, or brightness of the pixel, Cb = Blue color difference andCr = Red color difference. There are three main types of color subsampling used today. These are 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0.If 4:4:4 is a full bandwidth signal, then 4:2:2 occupies 2/3rds the space and 4:2:0 occupies 1/2 the space. Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray both store the video signal in the 4:2:0 format on the disk. When that disk is played by the player, it is upconverted to 4:2:2, which is sent through the HDMI cable to the display which upsamples the signal to 4:4:4 and converts to it RGB. Why does the display do most of the upconversion (4:2:2 to 4:4:4 to RGB), this reduces the HDMI bandwidth requirements. If you have a Home Theater Receiver between them, it just passes the signal though some may process the signal if your player or TV can’t perform this function.There are several types of HDR formats: HDR10, HDR10+ (Samsung’s answer to Dolby Vision), Dolby Vision and HLG. All “HDR” devices support HDR10 while support for the other formats is manufacturer specific. Right now, virtually all companies also support Dolby Vision and HLG with only Samsung refusing to do so. As their Blu-Ray players only supported HDR10, sales were mediocre and as of February, 2019, Samsung says it won't produce any new 1080p or 4K Blu-ray players for the US market.Dolby Vision seems more focused on pushing HDR to its technical limits than HDR10. Dolby Vision uses frame-by-frame metadata (Metadata is data sent along-side the image portion of an HDR signal that gives the monitor extra instructions about how to display the video adjusting brightness levels and color range) to manage HDR performance, significantly increasing the amount of data that passes through the cable. Dolby Vision content is mastered in 12-bit color depth, compared to HDR10's 10-bit (which is where HDR10 gets its name from). UHD Blu Ray is also 10 bit when it reaches the display and most newer consumer TV displays use 10-bit panels.In order for this all to work properly every component in the system has to communicate it’s design parameters and capabilities so they are all on the same page which requires the exchange of metadata between them. HDMI handshaking is a process that occurs between sources and display which does just that, when it works, your video and audio signals are properly passed through the HDMI cable. Many cable “failures” are due to handshake errors which will result in audio or video signal failures.Inside every HDMI cable, there is a pair of wires for DDC - Display Data Channel (pins 15 and 16). The DDC carries two kinds of data: HDCP (the copyright data) and EDID, Extended Display Identification Data, in metadata format for display devices such as TV’s to describe their capabilities to video sources such as Home Theater Receivers, Streaming Devices, Blu-ray Disc players, and even gaming consoles. This allows the video sources to then send out a video signal that is supported by the display. If the data passing through these two wires is corrupted or under the specified voltage (5 volts DC +/- 0.3) you may not be able to get a decent picture, the correct resolution or any picture at all. So it is important that every connection inside the cables connecting your equipment functions properly. In longer length standard cables there may be a voltage drop and if it goes below 4.7 volts DC, there may be handshake issues which could impact the audio and/or the video signal as well as degrade the high data rate Y’CbCr video signals passing through them. By replacing heavy gauge copper wires with slim fiber optic conductors, signal loss issues are greatly decreased.Hopefully, this additional information will help you understand not only what the HDMI standards are but also give you better insight into how to set up your various devices. If anyone has any further questions please ask.Art

I have a dedicated Home Theater, with audiophile grade equipment. I also have an Xbox that I occasionally play. I’ve had intermittent problems with the video when using the Xbox with my Sony HD projector. I tried buying different HDMI cables, changing settings, updating firmware, taking my receiver out of the loop by going directly from the Xbox to the Projector. Nothing worked. The next thing I did was buy the Xbox One X, thinking that the newer hardware would resolve the problem. Well it didn’t. There was no software or firmware updates for my projector so I knew it was the connection media. As I said, I bought a couple different HDMI cables before to test, ones touting they support 4K, 18Gbps transfer rate etc, and I spent good money on those cables. I happened to stumble on an article online while researching a resolution and came across Active HDMI. I use a 50’ cable length and one thing I learned was Passive HDMI cables are at their best under 25’. The longer you go, the more of a voltage and current drop and can impact the handshake between the source and end device. So I bought this cable. First impression was there was no way this cable was going to resolve my problem. It is literally 1/3 the size in diameter of my existing HDMI cable. So I hooked this up and could not believe I found some that fixed the issue! Not too mention, I think the colors on my entire system are more rich. So for those of you pondering whether to pull the trigger on this, especially because it is on the higher side from a cost perspective, do not. I promise this will fix your problem if you have something similar to what I was going through.

Addendum 11/26/18: The company got in touch with me immediately after reading my review and sent me a replacement cable. The replacement did work, but still had some signal loss from time to time. Therefore, they have since sent me a 2nd replacement cable free of charge and refunded my money from my original purchase. I have yet to test the 3rd cable, but I am hopeful that it will work. I can say that these cables are very sensitive to any curviture in them. Since they work via light the cable doesn’t do well when you bend it sharply. I am changing my review because of the excellent customer service. I never asked for a replacement cable or a refund and the company. They went ahead and did this on their own. They also were very persistent( making sure their product worked for me. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this 3rd cable has no signal loss. If it doesn’t I will update my review to 5 stars.This item did not work for me. I purchased a 50ft cable routed it through my attic from my Sony str-dn1080 receiver to my Optoma UHZ65 projector. No source was found upon turning on both the projector and the receiver. Therefore I tried running it directly to my PS4 still no source found. I then ran it backwards thinking maybe the ends of the cable were marked incorrectly as it is a one way cable. This still did not work. I then swapped the cable out for an HDMI certified monoprice 25ft copper cable hooked it directly to my PS4 and Projector. This cable performed perfectly. I am very disappointed as I really need a reliable 50ft cable and this cable is much more expensive then the normal copper cables.