HDMI cable doesn't work with every device

PeterT · January 9, 2020

Hi everyone,

I work in my freetime as a VJ, working with led projectors and large led walls. I consider myself in this area as a quite experienced person.

BUT, there is something that I doesn't know why it's happening, and haven't got answer online.

I had a few of these weird experiences with HDMI cables that works fine on one device but not on another. For example, it happened at venues and festivals, where the HDMI cable worked with my laptop but not with the notebook that the presenter / dj wanted to use. It wasn't time to troubleshoot what was causing this, so I taught the socket was worn out or something like this. It also happened with one of the projector at a Christmas party weeks ago.

It happens sometimes, with some device-cable combinations mysteriously.

But today, I bought a quite good looking braided 10m cable. It's not the cheapest, but still a generic one not the most expensive. Tried with HTPC(windows 10) - Samsung television. Works fine, even 4k. Tried with my laptop and my secondary display (old 720p AOC) it doesn't work.

I went to the my company's warehouse for the HDMI tetster, guess what, all the 19 pins perfect, even when I moved and twisted it. So it's not a contact issue. Not a worn out issue or a faulty from the factory issue.

I known for a digital connection the cable doesn't need to be fancy, but why is this working with this but not with that thing.

Is it the quality of shielding? Is it the diameter, and the length of the cable? (The strange thing is that I have even longer 15m cables that has never failed me, with the same outer diameter, so i guess the inside is the same as well) Is it something with DHCP? Is one device's transmitter /receiver gives "stronger" signal?

Can anybody explain me, why is this happening? It drives me crazy. Thanks.

P.S: I know HDMI wasn't created for 10/15 meters, I'm not seeking for a solution like HDMI over FTP or something like that. I'm just curious about the what causes this.

KoolkatBrianYT · January 9, 2020

I know there are different versions of hdmi like 2.1 and others, but, if I'm right, that shouldn't effect if it works or not, there could be a chance the peripherals are just too old for the new hdmi cable. Maybe try an older cable?

PeterT · January 9, 2020

50 minutes ago, KoolkatBrianYT said:

I know there are different versions of hdmi like 2.1 and others, but, if I'm right, that shouldn't effect if it works or not, there could be a chance the peripherals are just too old for the new hdmi cable. Maybe try an older cable?

Yeah, for higher resolutions and higher data rate (2.1) cables are important,but in my situation, I can't get any signal with this brand new cable (as I said it's not this particular one cable is like faulty or smhting, just managed to catch the problem with this one). Can't be that old, for example the LED video processor is like 3 years old. That won't be it.

But thanks for the contribution to the thread.

KoolkatBrianYT · January 9, 2020

29 minutes ago, PeterT said:

Yeah, for higher resolutions and higher data rate (2.1) cables are important,but in my situation, I can't get any signal with this brand new cable (as I said it's not this particular one cable is like faulty or smhting, just managed to catch the problem with this one). Can't be that old, for example the LED video processor is like 3 years old. That won't be it.

But thanks for the contribution to the thread.

Yeah, never heard of an issue like that.