HDMI Cables and Older TV Compatibility Issues?

[BLUEVOODU]

I have an older LG Plasma TV (maybe 12 -13 years old) that I am SUPER reluctant to give up.  The colors are awesome... the screen, though 1080p, still looks awesome in my opinion.  It has actually stopped me from buying LED tv's in the past... as well as stopped me from upgrading recently.  Side note, there are a couple tv's I'm looking to maybe move to in the future though.

With that... has anyone ever noticed a quality different in HDMI cables?    I'm sure my LG has a very old HDMI version "compatibility," though I'm not sure this actually makes a difference.  The 1st time I  noticed a difference was with a Rocketfish cable @SpartanEvolved brought over many years back when we were playing Mortal Kombat on the Playstation 3 in 2011(ish).  The screen looked pretty harsh  and there were weird solid shadowing effects to white text.   I haven't really tried other cables except my old monster m1000 hdmi and a couple BlueJeans hdmi cables.  They all worked well and I didn't see this ever again... UNTIL... I recently bought a Monster M-Series 3000 HDMI cable for my Playstation 5.  The cable states it's HDMI 2.1 compatible... but I thought most HDMI (if not all) are backward compatible.  Needless to say, I'm returning the cable.  I need to find something these days that will work with the TV as my old Monster M1000 cable is now breaking.  I might try to invoke the lifetime warranty and just get it fixed.

Has anyone else ran into these issues?  In the past, it was thought Digital cables either work or they don't.  I've now ran into 2 different brands (at least) and different technologies... that have somewhat shown a counter to this thought.    The Rocketfish cable could have been a newer version of HDMI as well.... though I also downplayed it to a Rocketfish issue.

[retro junkie]

@BLUEVOODU
Yes I have noticed a difference in HDMI cables. I thought I needed a new Blu Ray Player and have discovered that it was the HDMI cable. I was having audio dropouts. It would be the volume I needed, then it would drop very low. It would some time produce white specks in the video. I am not sure of the brand name of the cables I have. A lot of my cables have been cheap cables, but in light of some of the recent troubles I have been thinking of spending some money. I just don't know what brand would be best.
And I did not know that there was different types of HDMI. I have an older LED flatscreen, four years old, at least.

[CreepinDeth]

The only issue I've ever ran into was an ultra slim cable that would be picky about what device it was plugged into. It just wouldn't send a signal. However, it still worked with 95% of my devices.

If the HDMI cable is well built, (eg. doesn't use metals that corrode easily, bad terminations between the cable and the plug, insufficient insulation, etc.) then it will just work as long as both the TV and the HDMI cable are up to spec. Yes, HDMI cables are backwards compatible.

@BLUEVOODU  I would recommend trying out that Monster cable on another TV and see if it works. If it does, then it's your TV that's picky and the HDMI input might not be up to spec. HDMI was fairly new back then and I would not be surprised if LG did not properly implement the HDMI input.

I tend to get all of my audio/video cables from Monoprice. They have a lot of great cables for reasonable prices. I've replaced all of my HDMI cables recently with these -

Monoprice 4K Slim Certified Premium High Speed HDMI Cable 6ft - 18Gbps Black



Here is a list of devices and TVs/Monitors I use these with:

Devices
- PS3 Slim / PS3 Ultra Slim / PS4
- Xbox 360 / Xbox One S / Xbox One X
- Nintendo Switch
- 3 PCs hooked up to a KVM
- Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player
- Elgato 1080p external capture card

TVs/Monitors
- 2010 Samsung Plasma TV 720p/1080i
- 2019 TCL 4K TV
- 2011 Asus 1080p monitor
- 2020 Dell 1440p 165hz monitor (cable only goes up to 60hz but it works)
- 2010? Sony PlayStation 3D TV

I highly recommend them. If you need something that can go higher than 60hz, Monoprice should have some. Do not get Monoprice 2.1 cables as explained in the video of my next post.

[CreepinDeth]

So I did some more research on this because I was curious as I don't have any HDMI 2.1 devices in my house yet. So what did I learn?

HDMI 2.1 is a still a spec that has a moving target. Meaning the full spec isn't even done and most cables probably don't meet them. Also, any 2.1 cable that is longer than 10ft will probably fail because the spec doesn't do well in those lengths.

The only devices that do HDMI 2.1 anyways are the PS5, Xbox Series X and Nvidia 3xxx GPUs. If your TV doesn't support the 2.1 features though, then a 2.1 cable is not needed.

The cables that I recommended work because they're 2.0, less than 10ft and are built well. However, the ultra slim cables that gave me trouble for a certain device was probably caused by the thin gauge of wires. They may be nice because they're slim but it's more likely to fail because of it.

I found a Linus Tech Tips video that goes into a better explanation than I did. And if anyone is interested, I'm posting a link to the forum post that has the spreadsheet of the cables they tested.

Link to spreadsheet forum post

[BLUEVOODU]

Great information @CreepinDeth   That's very helpful.    I really dove into this as well... but the information on why it looked the way it did was not readily available.  It also seems that many have had different negative experiences.  I ended up returning the cable... and bought an older spec monster HDMI cable.   However, I couldn't find one at the time for shorter lengths.  I think the new one is 9 feet... and I haven't had a chance to play around with it.

I'm still not ready to retire the plasma.  I love the picture... but there are some newer tvs that are getting more and more tempting.

[CreepinDeth]

I'm still not ready to retire the plasma.  I love the picture... but there are some newer tvs that are getting more and more tempting.

Accidentally stumbled onto this thread searching for something else and reminded me about a reply I wanted to do.

@BLUEVOODU If you're not already, I highly recommend calibrating the TV. It should help your plasma last you for a long time. A simple calibration disc like the Disney WOW blu-ray helps a ton.

[BLUEVOODU]

Very good idea @CreepinDeth   Thank you for the suggestion

I originally did something like this when I 1st bought the TV... a pretty long time ago.  The process was never repeated.  I will take a look into this as well... Not sure if repeating would help to prolong... definitely will check this out and read up today.

[CreepinDeth]

It's good to do it every couple of years. TVs aren't going to perform the same year after year. The pixels will eventually wear it out one way or another, so calibration helps compensate for that.

[BLUEVOODU]

Well then.... looks like I'll be making some plans to do this! 

[CreepinDeth]

The Disny WOW blu-ray that I mentioned before is a good disc to have. It comes with the blue filter for calibrating colors on non-HDR televisions. Helps a ton.