Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot of fuss about HDMI cables and the sometimes extortionate prices charged for them. 

Anyone who has been in a business where cables are sold as an add-on knows that it's usually a profit-increasing scam that is employed to catch the customer at the time of the sale of the printer, tv, plasma, LCD or any device needing cables. 

About twenty years ago, I worked in the retail computer business for a major chain. We had to sell parallel printer cables with every printer sold. The printer would be sold very, very cheaply but the cable was a flat $25 and could not be discounted - on orders from the management. The truth of it? Scam. They were buying the cables in massive lots from the supplier for around $2 each. The 'purchase' was made by the warehouse. The warehouse sold the cables to the stores for $20 each. The warehouse nets a profit of $18 per cable. The store nets $5. A money shuffle scam without a doubt, wasn't it? They weren't the only ones doing it - other IT sales guys I have known over the years had been part of similar schemes where the customer was over-charged unreasonablyfor cables and other necessities for getting their new equipment going.

Recently, Choice Magazine ran a comparo about HDMI cables and concluded generally that there wasn't a big difference in the visual quality between the most expensive and the least expensive. 

That's all about to change.

Cue: Deep Colour. 

At the moment, most consumer LCD and plasma screens are only True Color. It's an 8 bit standard. 8 bits per colour that is, therefore giving 24 bit colour or about 16.7 million colours - much the same as the computer display that you're reading this on right now.

Deep Color is an enhanced standard which calls for 10, 12 or 16 bits per colour, therefore outputting 30, 36 or 48 bit colour. 

Still with me?

The HDMI Standards Association has separated the connecting cables into two kinds: Category 1 and Category 2. Cat 1 can carry 720 p (about the same as DVD) or 1080p (Full HD) using a 74.25 MHz signal. Cat 2 can carry a signal of 340 MHz in order to accomodate the new Deep Color standard. However, the average punter isn't going to be able to remember those fun frequencies and fancy names, so they're decided to call the cables 'Standard' and 'High Speed'. Much easier to remember. 

Right now, it's not an issue. Only a handful of high-end screens can accommodate the 10 bit per colour standard presently. However, as you well know, technology marches on and new models with the new Deep Color feature will be on the market very soon. After all, early adopters of plasma are possibly finding their screens already reaching their maximum lifespan and finding the displays beginning to dim or reproduce colours poorly. Planned obsolescence at work, yet again. 

In other words, it's going to be much like the changeover from CAT5 to CAT6 ethernet cables. Except that existing cable infrastructure in commercial HDMI installations will probably cause dark screens as there is presently no fall-back method between the source and the sink for HDMI applications, unlike ethernet where if the cable can't accept the higher bandwidth signal of 1 gigabit (CAT6) the NIC (network interface card) in the connected devices will fall back to the old 100 megabit standard. 

So, if you're a fan of bleeding edge technology, prepare to spend heavily on high end cables from famous brands until the whole mess is sorted out. 

Obviously, as the new standard gains traction in the market there will no longer be such a significant separation between the prices of the cables and eventually the 'Standard' ones will disappear. 

Cheers!!