HDMI Failure....

[Too Late]

Has any experienced a HDMI lead failing?

I was watching TV last night, a 3 month old LG 50" with a Raspberry Pi2 running openelec connected by 'said' HDMI cable. Then all of a sudden the signal was droping in and out leaving just sound.

I replaced the rPI2 with another spare and exactly the same issue
Swaped HDMI socket on the TV thinking it could have been the TV.
Then swap the cable,

Swapping the cable solved it... I then put the faulty cable on the PC and no issues..
Strange....

[megaphone]

HDMI is a law unto itself, it's the worst form of video connectivity ever invented, the connector is badly designed, it does not work well over distance and it's difficult to distribute reliably.

It's also difficult to fault find, all you can do is swap stuff out until it bursts back into life. Yes, cheap cables do fail, a lot of the issues are down to HDCP (copy protection).

The sooner something comes along to replace it, the better. Maybe HD-BaseT will be the answer, if enabled devices start to be produced.

[JustinP1]

Too Late said:

Swapping the cable solved it... I then put the faulty cable on the PC and no issues..
Strange....

Bandwidth.

In general better conducted cables allow more data bandwidth.

If you're watching a 3D blu-ray the data bandwidth is more than for example your 1080i Sky box.

I had this a while back when contributing to a thread about 'all HDMI cables are the same - fact' or similar.

In my case on 3D the picture would exhibit 'twinkling snow' on random pixels. Basically the cable was pushed just over its limit - any more and I would have had full dropouts.

[varsas]

I've had a couple of cables fail. Like you I thought it was the TV. In my case I got momentary drops, so the picture/sound would drop out for a few seconds and then come back. I now buy branded ones only and have not had a problem since.