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Rift HDMI Cables "Issue"

tlopes
Honored Guest
I wanted to report that I had issues with the cables that shipped with the Rift, or more accurately, I had trouble plugging the cables into my video card port. The HDMI plugs that are in the Rift dev kit have pin 19 (the hot-pluggable pin that is optional with HDMI 1.4+). However, the physical port on my video card (a Radeon HD 4650) physically cannot connect to plugs that have that pin (the HDMI plug won't go in all the way). In order to remedy this, I just used a HDMI cable that didn't have that pin. Everything seems to be working fine now, but you may want to include this info in a FAQ if you're collecting data on it, or perhaps mark the cables somehow so that people who have this issue in the future can resolve it more quickly 🙂
3 REPLIES 3

edzieba
Honored Guest
The use of Pin 19 for Ethernet was added in HDMI 1.4, but Pin 19 has always been used for Hot Plug, and should be present on all connectors (i.e. if your plug has only 18 pins, it's out of spec). Your connectors may appear to be missing the 19th pin, as the pin is deliberately recessed further in to ensure the others have made a connection before triggering a hot-plug event.
Looking at the cables included in my devkit, they all appear to be built to spec and function correctly. Might you have something stuck in your card's HDMI port?

OculusOptician
Explorer
I found the included HDMI cables (one cable if you are post kickstarter) are really not the best of quality from a fit and finish perspective. The pins inside the actual head are not within strict tolerances and I refuse to use the included cable because of this and have been using my own quality HDMI cable instead.

Industry trade secret low cost alternative HDMI cables can be found here:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10240

Remember, this is a digital medium. Meaning that the issue is mainly fit and finish and not so much with insulation and grade of the physical wire that makes up the cable itself.

One thing I would like to know is how much of a latency difference there is in using a long vs short HDMI cable and also a comparison in just using the display port connector instead.

tlopes
Honored Guest
"OculusOptician" wrote:
I found the included HDMI cables (one cable if you are post kickstarter) are really not the best of quality from a fit and finish perspective. The pins inside the actual head are not within strict tolerances and I refuse to use the included cable because of this and have been using my own quality HDMI cable instead.

Industry trade secret low cost alternative HDMI cables can be found here:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10240

Remember, this is a digital medium. Meaning that the issue is mainly fit and finish and not so much with insulation and grade of the physical wire that makes up the cable itself.

One thing I would like to know is how much of a latency difference there is in using a long vs short HDMI cable and also a comparison in just using the display port connector instead.

Some of the reported differences that I know of have been:
- Some graphics cards reduce color range when displaying over HDMI (using the TV-safe 16-235 rather than the full range of 0-255 per color channel)
- Users report added lag when the "Audio over HDMI" option is enabled in their video card settings