This $150 HDMI Cable Boosts Image Quality.. WHAT??

[Emily Young]

Marseille claims their mCables can improve image quality, but we all know HDMI cables can't do that, right? ... Right?

 

 

Buy the 3ft mCable Gaming Edition on Amazon: http://geni.us/7zxg
Buy the 6ft mCable Gaming Edition on Amazon: http://geni.us/4t33K
Buy the 9ft mCable Gaming Edition on Amazon: http://geni.us/03H8Wq

 

For more info on the mCable and to buy the mCable Cinema: http://geni.us/HehVN

[Guest]

Thanks to that hashtag, I now have the Super Troopers enhance scene stuck repeating in my head...lol

[NowThatsDamp]

IT ACTUALLY WORKS

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

The first tests I say it looks worse than the regular hdmi, but the rest actually surprisingly are better than regular hdmi.

Something that I didn't think would be possible.

[SlipperyPete]

wasnt this available a little while ago? or is this a re upload

[Emily Young]

Just now, SlipperyPete said:

wasnt this available a little while ago? or is this a re upload

As a Floatplane Pilot, you have access to a time machine.  

[Megah3rtz]

I thought you already did this 

 

[kameshss]

Just now, SlipperyPete said:

wasnt this available a little while ago? or is this a re upload

may you you watched it on Floatplane.

[kameshss]

Just now, Megah3rtz said:

I thought you already did this 

 

This one works better tho. Watch the video.

[SlipperyPete]

2 minutes ago, GabenJr said:

As a Floatplane Pilot, you have access to a time machine.  

can i go back in time to stop intel from fucking up X299?

[givingtnt]

1 minute ago, Megah3rtz said:

I thought you already did this 

 

its not the same
and aparently they are ok with the false advertisement of the product as a htmi cable when its OBVIOUSLY a image processor with extended I/O

[Daniel644]

honestly it just looks like it ramps up color saturation to me, not really an improvement in my opinion.

[Keveldinho]

Wouldn't this be similar to the Darbee Vision Products? Digital enhancer?

[erejnion]

Okay, all of this is cool, but the question is something else: what is better?

This cable + a graphics card

or

normal cable + 140 dollars more expensive graphics card that drives 1) better AA on games 2) madVR with more insane settings for video

 

Frankly, I see two use cases for such a cable. One is watching lots of internet streams, and you don't want to bother feeding them through your video player, so that you can chain in madVR. The other is having a laptop as your main computer, and for that you have sacrificed GPU beef for ...  iunno, cooling, battery life, whatever.

 

P.S. If you don't know what madVR is, I won't hold it against you. But it's awesome. A', this is in your garden.

[Trialhak]

I have my PS4 Pro hooked up to a 1440p monitor. Would this cable make the image sharper? (Can't believe I actually asked that seriously.)

[Jon Jon]

I am intrigued by this for sure.

 

I would be curious about connecting this up via the VGA to HDMI adapter I use for my Dreamcast.

[Bcat00]

Props to this company in making a great product.

 

Can't say i'll be getting one because i play on 4k on my computer. 

[richardsim7]

What I'm concerned about is the apparent change in colours when using the mCable, or at least that's what it looks like in your captures

[White Noise]

I wish you guys would've tested the Nintendo Switch. Realistically it's the latest piece of tech which has the biggest anti-aliasing issues. It would've been interesting to see if the dynamic resolution on that console works with this cable, and if so how it interacted with the image output. BoTW and Xenoverse 2 come to mind when it comes to noticeable lack if AA.

 

I signed up just to say this.

[Skanky Sylveon]

46 minutes ago, erejnion said:

Okay, all of this is cool, but the question is something else: what is better?

This cable + a graphics card

or

normal cable + 140 dollars more expensive graphics card that drives 1) better AA on games 2) madVR with more insane settings for video

 

Frankly, I see two use cases for such a cable. One is watching lots of internet streams, and you don't want to bother feeding them through your video player, so that you can chain in madVR. The other is having a laptop as your main computer, and for that you have sacrificed GPU beef for ...  iunno, cooling, battery life, whatever.

 

P.S. If you don't know what madVR is, I won't hold it against you. But it's awesome. A', this is in your garden.

Number 2 would be the better choice for most people.

Not to mention that I would like to see toggles for all of the cables features.

[Emily Young]

27 minutes ago, richardsim7 said:

What I'm concerned about is the apparent change in colours when using the mCable, or at least that's what it looks like in your captures

This has been pointed out before, and it's worth addressing: This is an artifact of our capture device - It was recorded in the Rec 601 Partial colour space, but while that looked correct for the regular HDMI capture, the mCable does a conversion and outputs to Rec 709 Full if the display supports it (our capture device exposes this capability via EDID). We later confirmed this after we noticed black crush in our histograms during editing, and Marseille corroborated this.

[LudwigVonSneider]

Imo it makes it look worse.

It just makes everything soft and then cranks up the contrast and sharpening filter crushing blacks and drawing halos all over the place.

 

 

If you look at the first side by side from Tomb Raider, it makes all the small highlights three times bigger blobs destroying all detail in the process.

The same soft blobbiness is preset in the whole image, not only the highlights.

Also notice the the halo from the sharpening in the bottom right corner.

 

 

 

In the next side by side, Lara's jacket almost black (on my screen) with severe loss in detail where as the original looks completely fine.

This contrast boost can be seen in every example, but here you can see the downside well.

I'm not sure if this is the cables fault though, it could definitely be fuckup from LTT and how it was captured.

 

 

 

Here you can see what the overly done sharpening filter does. Look at the edges of the character. There is noticeable halo all around the character.

The pillar on the left is another good example. The original is perfectly fine, the edges are sharp and you can see some texture in it.

The filtered has horrible edges and all the global softening takes away from the texture in the pillar.

 

 

 

The whole image is just soft. The grass has little detail to left anymore. And look at the leaves and flowers, they are just blurry mess.

 

Some of the 1080p videos didn't show too many negative effects, but it wasn't better either. The contrast boost can fool you thinking it looks better... well, I mean, if you like it, then just crank that shit up on your tv.

 

You can find this type of conversations about bluray transfers from the day first blurays were released.

Some people like digital noise reduction that removes film grain, sharpened and contrasty image.

Others hate how digital noise reduction makes the actors look like wax sculptures, the halo around edges from over harpening and crushed blacks/blown out whites.

(I'm one of the latter ones)

 

I guess it boils down to - as it often does - personal preference.

[lagittaja]

For the Cinema Edition, follow up video: madVR

[The Angry Computersmasher]

22 hours ago, LudwigVonSneider said:

Imo it makes it look worse.

It just makes everything soft and then cranks up the contrast and sharpening filter crushing blacks and drawing halos all over the place.

 

*wall of text and pictures cut*

 

You can find this type of conversations about bluray transfers from the day first blurays were released.

Some people like digital noise reduction that removes film grain, sharpened and contrasty image.

Others hate how digital noise reduction makes the actors look like wax sculptures, the halo around edges from over harpening and crushed blacks/blown out whites.

(I'm one of the latter ones)

 

I guess it boils down to - as it often does - personal preference.

I actually agree with this above post, even after watching the comparisons in 4k.

 

Additional notes:

I literally cringed harder when I see this.

Spoiler

That screenshot perfectly shows how mCable Gaming Edition processes: it just interpolates the image, sharpens the image to a degree that I consider unacceptable, slightly saturates the colours, and increases the contrast to the point that it does crush blacks too much. It does not look like "anti aliasing" to me.

Honestly it just looks more horrible using mCable GE than just straight-up HDMI cable.

 

I encourage you to just save $150 for a better-performing graphics card than just wasting it on a cable that processes the image to crap levels.

[LAwLz]

Gonna have to agree with @LudwigVonSneider on this.

In a lot of the tests the image was just softer and had ringing artifacts. Sure it got rid of some aliasing, but I don't think it's worth the trade-off (lower sharpness and more ringing).

 

Can someone from LTT tell me which video player you used for this test?

I would also love if you could upload the original footage and maybe explain how you captured the video, just so that it's easier to compare and confirm the findings.

 

By the way, good video. I might not agree with your conclusion, and I find it a bit lacking on the explanation, but it's good to see that you put in a lot of time and effort to test this product.