Oh no, has Clint finally succumbed to the powers of Monster Cable marketing? Has Monster Cable threatened to sue AV Rant for any past misgivings about their overpriced cables or power centers? Perhaps the offer of a ride in one of the many luxury sports cars available to tier-one sales persons has finally allured us to the west coast in a hedonistic fit of uncontrollable yearning.

Or maybe we’re just taking advantage of an offer to use their Tektronix scopes to evaluate over 36 cables sent to use by various manufacturers over the course of several months. Yeah, baby.For months I’ve been “preaching” about how the debunking of analogue speaker cables and the almost universal adequacy of optical and digital coax cables does not reflect equally on the world of HDMI.

With HDMI, cables that barely passed 720p and 1080i at 8-bit were suddenly thrust into 1080p – doubling the bitrate. Then they were asked to do 1080p at 10-, 12-, and 16-bt color. This was never the case with other digital or analogue audio formats. HDMI has been a moving target for cable manufacturers – and the format was already taxing on cable lengths over 7.5 meters before HDMI 1.3 dramatically changed the rules of the game and added features no one had really asked for.

So there you have it – a preview of my article without the measurements. Going to Monster Cable allows me to test my theory and show which cables can truly pass both the current Deep Color 1080p standards as well as the full capacity of HDMI 1.3 which allows for even greater resolution then is currently shipping with consumer electronics HDMI chipsets. It’s a safe bet that cables under 2m – 3m should be able to pass with flying colors, however I am expecting somewhat more varied results when we test cables exceeding 5m in length – and we have quite a few of those. One of the tests I am excited about is seeing how well an active cable solution works to improve a sub-par cable that may be installed in some users’ walls. If an active cable solution can compensate for an older cable that was spec’d only for 720p or 1080i, then some users have options before they need to rip out their installed cables.

So I’m excited. Currently very very tired starting my journey to the airport at 3am, but excited about this opportunity to finally test cables using a more scientific method than any employed by other publication we’ve seen to date. As for Monster Cable – I’m planning on testing their cables as well. And considering they have about 5-6 speed-rated cables plus a new budget line, I’m guessing the results on several of the cables will be completely identical, rendering much of their line a bit superfluous.

Liked it? Take a second to support AV Rant on Patreon!