Connecting up the cabling and adaptors

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Like a USB cable, these HDMI cables can be plugged in by first ensuring the plug at one end has the ‘HDMI’ logo facing up and then carefully pushing it into the player’s HDMI socket.  The same goes with the other end when plugging the cable into the display or AV receiver, as both ends of a HDMI cable have male plugs.

For those with AV receivers or displays that handle the audio over HDMI, unlike hooking up a High Definition set-top box or player with component video or DVI cables, the HDMI cable is the only cable required.  For example, here is what the cabling would be like between the NeoDigits HD upscaling player and a HD display that handles audio over HDMI:

To give a comparison of how much neater and simpler the above setup is, the following photo shows the minimum number of cables required for 5.1 surround sound audio and HD video when hooked up to an analogue 5.1 amplifier and a TV using component video:

While the above scenario does not look that bad, usually with this many cables, these easily become tangled, particularly when hooked up to an AV receiver that has another set of 6 audio cables to the audio amplifier and another 3 component video cables to the TV.

The purpose of the DVI to HDMI adaptor is to allow the connection of an existing DVI cable to the HDMI port.  Due to how bulky, heavy and stiff some DVI cables are, we would strongly recommend physically replacing the DVI cable with a HDMI cable and using a HDMI to DVI adaptor to hook up the other end, particular due to HDMI ports on many displays and players not being designed to support the weight of a heavy DVI cable hanging from an adaptor attached to it.  The following shows this adaptor in use:

To show a comparison of what it is like to use a HDMI cable with a HDMI to DVI adaptor at the other end instead, the following picture shows the other adaptor using the 1.5m Fusion HDMI cable:

Comparison against DVI cables

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While a DVI cable looks to be a superior cable to HDMI due to the large plug size and cable thickness, in fact HDMI can handle pretty much everything DVI can apart from analogue VGA signalling, which is generally only used by PC graphics cards, such as for the connection of a second analogue CRT display using its DVI output.  Unlike DVI, HDMI is also capable of carrying multi channel digital audio as well as carry extra signalling, such as for a DVD player to signal the TV to switch over to its HDMI input or for the TV to put the DVD player into standby when powered off (where supported) and so on.

To give an idea of how thick DVI cables can be when compared with HDMI cables, the following photograph shows a 3m Fusion-HDMI cable alongside a basic dual-link DVI cable and a premium dual-link DVI cable featuring extra shielding.  A pencil and AA battery have been placed in the photo to help give an idea of how thick the cables are:

As fairly clear from the image, our premium dual-link DVI cable is around as thick as our AA battery and is very stiff to bend.  In fact, as we usually have it connected between a PC and a projector and the projector is mounted very close to the wall, this cable has scrapped the paint of the wall as a result of the cable rubbing against the wall while mounting the projector, not to mention adjusting it.  In fact, the mark on the cable filter in the photo is a paint mark. 

While the standard dual-link DVI cable on the right is more flexible than our premium DVI cable, it can still be awkward to work with when the display has its DVI port facing out and is set up very near a wall.

The HDMI cables on the other hand are about as flexible as a USB cable.  The 5m Fusion HDMI cable is slightly thicker than the 1.5m and 3m versions, but still very flexible.  With such a small plug length, it makes the HDMI cables ideal even in many tight spaces where the HDMI port may be facing outwards from the display.  The following photo shows the HDMI plug size (right) compared with a typical USB cable plug (left):

Even with a HDMI cable plugged into a HDMI to DVI adaptor, it barely comes out any further than our standard dual-link DVI cable once the cable flexibility is taken into account:

Features and techniques

Testing and performance