At 2013 CES, I stumbled upon a tiny booth with HDMI cable connectors that puzzled me. Usually HDMI cables come with 0-degree angle, 90-degree angle, or swivel connector. With 0-degree angle, the cable connectors, usually about an inch, will protrude out of the back of the TV or other equipment. With 90-degree angle, although in theory you will have shorter connector, you will still cover other inputs below the HDMI connections and there is no way you can stack them when one input is above another. Swivel head have always been the best for installation, however, often times the internal connectors within the swivel plug fail. Beyond that, I have yet to find a single swivel HDMI that is reliable with high-bandwidth sources such as 4K video signal or 36-bit video signal. At Inakustik booth, David Schliep of Ansmann USA (distributor of Inakustik in North America), showed me how Inakustik Angled HDMI cables can help many install problems.
As you can see from the photo above that the plugs are all angled. This way, for a receiver installation, you can tie the end-cables together sideways so you will always have easy access to the other inputs. Or in the case of TV connections (usually they are located on the left side, standing vertically), you can have all of these cables connected with minimal strain and space so you can hang your TV with the slimmest mount possible, all without squishing the cables.
One big problem solved, but how about the performance? When I received the cables for review, I became sceptical. The packaging does not have pizazz of high-end cable. Even the packaging mentioned that the cable is “only” rated 4 out of 6 stars by Inakustik themselves. As previously mentioned, the angled cables tend to be unreliable for any high bandwidth signals such as 2D with 36-bit 4:4:4 colour, or 3D, or the worst of them all: native 4K (Ultra HD) which is currently available in the form of 24-bit 4:4:4 colour at 24 fps. Even non-angled cables have sometimes failed delivering 4K content although the packaging claims to be able to do so, especially at lengths of 3 feet or more. Even when the ones that actually work, can sometime fail after more than an hour or two of usage (please don’t ask me the technical reason behind it — I honestly don’t know).
So obviously for the test, I automatically use Sony’s 4K movie server playing my current movie favourite: Total Recall 2012. Many people hate this movie but I like it better than the Governator original. So, I deliberately run the movie in repeat mode and on the fourth hour, I went back to my dedicated home theatre to see whether I’ll be seeing sparkles, handshake issues or even a complete and total blank on the screen. Nope! Nothing! The movie still play flawlessly without any additional visual artefacts.
I’m not David Susilo if this test does not include an impossible-scenario test too. So I tied three AC cables running parallel to the HDMI cable (see photo). Most cables failed when the second AC cable run in parallel and even when they succeed, many of them will have sparkles when I tied the third AC cable (all with AC currents running, of course; all of these cables are cheap, virtually unshielded AC cables). With this Inakustik cable, even 4K signal runs flawlessly. I guess their brochure claiming the triple-shielding to reject EMI is true.
The next question will be whether this cable produces better picture than other cables? No. A cable does not produce anything. It passes through the signal and it should pass the signal without degradation… and the Inakustik cable does just that. Passing through the signal as is, without adding anything, without losing anything. It is a pure as an HDMI cable can get.
For more information, please visit : www.in-akustik.com
